January 5, 2020

We observed his star at its rising, and have come to worship him.

This coming Sunday, January 5 — which we’ll celebrate as the Epiphany of the Lord — we’ll hear the word of God from

Isaiah 60:1–6,
Ephesians 3:1–12, and
Matthew 2:1–12.

We’ll sing Psalm 72, and other great music. And the Lord Jesus — God’s light in which we see light (Psalm 36:9) — will meet us at his table as he promised.

Epiphany is technically Monday, January 6 — the day after the twelve days of Christmas — but we’ll acknowledge its significance by giving Sunday over to it. (And after church we’ll do our traditional Twelfth Night taking-down of Christmas decorations in Deane Chapel.)

It is, of course, also a new year according to the civil calendar, and, soon, a new school semester. Resolutions and deadlines will fill the air and shape our days again. But God continues to do his new thing, on his own schedule, and our wonder and gratitude will follow.

I had resolved to pick up again, when 2020 finally reared its head, with Luther’s 1519 sermon “The Holy and Blessed Sacrament of Baptism.” So:

There is no greater comfort on earth than baptism. Through baptism we come under the judgment of grace, which does not condemn us for our sins but drives them out by many trials. For this reason we need not despair because of our wild appetites and failures. Regard them rather as an admonition from God that we should remember our baptism and what was there spoken, that we should call upon God’s mercy and exercise ourselves against sin.

Our baptism — the beginning of our new citizenship — is there to remember. More factual than our feelings (even the feelings we had as we were being baptized!), more Biblical than “accepting Jesus,” more God’s gift than human initiative, baptism makes our identity in Christ available, both to us and to the world.

And what is that identity? Think of the way the apostle Peter famously puts it:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10)

We are the people defined by God’s mercy, by God’s light, and therefore not — not any more — by our disobedience and rebellion against him.

Happy new year!

December 29, 2019

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

This coming Sunday, December 29 — the first Sunday after Christmas Day — we’ll hear the word of God from

Isaiah 63:7–9,
Hebrews 2:10–18, and
Matthew 2:13–23.

We’ll sing Psalm 148, and other great music. (The Gloria in excelsis Deo returns to the liturgy after taking its Advent break!)

For the church, what comes after Christmas (besides closeouts and cleanups) is more Christmas. One day, December 25, isn’t enough for us to commemorate the Lord’s birth as it deserves to be commemorated. Naturally it’ll come to an end at some point — we’ll put away the garlands in Deane Chapel for another year on January 5 — but perhaps we can see in the famous Twelve Days from Christmas to Epiphany a kind of reflection of the long reach that this birth has.

This is so, of course, not merely because it was a birth — as extraordinary a birth as it was — but because of the person who was born. Jesus’ birth made him public, visible, in a new way; but the Son who became thus public and visible was, we know, “in the beginning with God” (John 1:2), “in the form of God” though “he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited” (Philippians 2:6), the one in whom God “chose us before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). Thus the significance of “the child who has been born king of the Jews” (Matthew 2:2).

In January we’ll follow the wise men to the place where the child was, and soon after that we’ll welcome Westmont students back from their winter break. But, until then, partridges in pear trees, calling birds, golden rings, pipers piping, and all the rest may remind us of what our true love — all creation’s True Love — has given, that we might find ourselves within his kingdom.