Merry Christmas and Happy Epiphany to you all!
These holy days go by very quickly at the end and the beginning of this year. Suddenly, it is January 7th and the kids are back in school, choir practice has begun again, and you might be lucky to have a bit of fruitcake to snack on. All the buildup, all the anticipation, and all the glitter give way to crisp, clear, dark January nights. The kind of nights when the stars shine so bright that you can see them from my backyard in North Minneapolis. The kind of nights that are quiet, even in the city. The kind of nights where it just snows and snows and snows.
Epiphany comes with all the joy and bustle of the Magi’s visits and their fantastic gifts (shout out to our Latine siblings who wait for the gift giving until Three Kings Day – Epiphany). Epiphany ends with a warning that scared tyrants won’t be held at arm’s length forever. The Magi go home by a different way to avoid Herod, who will slaughter the babies soon after the gifts are given. I wonder if Mary and Joseph packed up the frankincense and myrrh, because I think they probably had to spend the gold to get out of town as fast as they could.
January in the Northern Hemisphere allows us to go home, shut the door, snuggle in, and try to forget what’s happening around us. This year, I pray, we can identify this quiet as an unnatural one. It is quiet because our neighbors are afraid to leave their homes, because war is a constant threat, because the threat of losing housing is real. One of the gifts of church is that we bear one another’s burdens. We can speak against injustice together. We can shatter the silence. None of us needs to suffer alone. We are the light of Epiphany, given to shine in the beauty of the night to be sure everyone is led home.
Shalom,
Pastor Melissa