Dear Middletown Reformed Church Family and Friends,
Blessings to you on this tenth day of Christmas!
This Sunday is Epiphany Sunday when we celebrate Light, seeking, guidance, pilgrimage, practicing life in the face of deathly powers, and revealing. Come and listen to the familiar story of the Magi/Wise Men’s visit to the young Jesus, but this time, perhaps hear it in a different way. The kids will ring “We Three Kings” on the Krystal Bells and Fleming will sing “Tell It!” for the Message for all ages. Tom will lead us in our hymns and sing the Anthem “Hope Has a Name.” I am preaching from Matthew 2.1-12 and my sermon title is Little Epiphanies. As it is the first Sunday of the month, we will come to God’s table of grace and receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
I leave you with one of my favorite poems by Madeleine L’Engle based on the visit of the Magi called “One King’s Epiphany.” There is a feeling of mourning in this poem and yet, it also has a sense of awe-inspired wonder.
I shall miss the stars.
Not that I shall stop looking
as they pattern their wild will each night
across an inchoate sky, but I must see them with a different awe.
If I trace their flames’ ascending and descending –
relationships and correspondences –
then I deny what they have just revealed.
The sum of their oppositions, juxtapositions, led me to the end of all sums:
a long journey, cold, dark and uncertain,
toward the ultimate equation.
How can I understand? If I turn back from this,
compelled to seek all answers in the stars,
then this – Who – they have led me to
is not the One they said: they will have lied.
No stars are liars!
My life on their truth!
If they had lied about this
I could never trust their power again.
But I believe they showed the truth,
truth breathing,
truth Whom I have touched with my own hands,
worshipped with my gifts.
If I have bowed, made
obeisance to this final arithmetic,
I cannot ask the future from the stars without betraying
the One whom they have led me to.
It will be hard not ask, just once again,
see by mathematical forecast where he will grow,
where go, what kingdom conquer, what crown wear.
But would it not be going beyond truth
(the obscene reductio ad absurdum)
to lose my faith in truth once, and once for all
revealed in the full dayspring of the sun?
I cannot go back to night.
O Truth, O small and unexpected thing,
You have taken so much from me.
How can I bear wisdom’s pain?
But I have been shown: and I have seen.
Yes. I shall miss the stars.
With gratitude for the privilege of being your pastor and the holy call of loving you,
Pastor Trish