New Year, New Light

Today is one of those days when a Holy Day, what I sometimes call a Red Letter day, falls on a Sunday. When that happens, typically speaking the rector is free to move the celebration of the Holy Day to the following day, which is what we are doing. So, January 1st is traditionally a celebration of the Circumcision and Holy Name of Jesus, but instead we are celebrating the Second Sunday of Epiphany today and the Circumcision and Holy Name tomorrow at 11 am.

The reason were celebrating these days in this way, rather than replacing the Second Sunday of Christmas with the Circumcision and Holy Name is because this Friday, January 6, is Epiphany, and Epiphany is one of the Principal Feast days on the Christian calendar. These seven Principal Feasts are:

Christmas Day

The Epiphany

Easter Day

Ascension Day

The Day of Pentecost

Trinity Sunday

All Saints’ Day

The expectation is that every church will celebrate these feasts on the appropriate day, so that’s what we’re going to do because that’s what our vision and mission statement say we’re supposed to do. Our vision statement is:

Vision Statement: to see the world and especially the communities in which we live, work, and worship filled with disciples of Jesus Christ

This is why we will be emphasizing discipleship this year and for years to come. We are going to be all about making disciples of Jesus Christ. But, this is what we say in our mission statement. How are we going to see the world filled with disciples of Jesus Christ, by…

Mission Statement: to abide in Christ through the Anglican tradition so that, filled with the Holy Spirit and living transformed lives, we may love and serve God and our neighbors as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.

To do that “through the Anglican tradition bit”, we’ve got to be good Anglicans, and to be good Anglicans, we’ve got to at least the principal feasts and holy days of our church calendar. So that’s another thing we’re going to do this year. We’re going to do our very best to celebrate every one of the principal feasts and holy days on the appropriate day, and I hope that you’ll join us because these days help us fill out the church calendar. That is to say that the church calendar for Sundays is designed with these celebrations in mind. If we are only gathering together on Sundays and using the lectionary and propers for a given Sunday, we’ll be missing on all kinds of moments from the life of Jesus and all kinds of opportunities to focus our minds on other prominent New Testament figures like the Evangelists and Apostles and see how they point us back to Christ.

So, in the spirit of New Years Day, those are our/my New Years Resolutions

First, we are going to celebrate all the Principal Feasts and Holy Days on the correct day.

That’s the one that explains what we’re doing today, but it’s the least important one.

Second, we are going to continue our focus on Discipleship. And to be clear, I’m talking about all ages of discipleship. If you’re attending this church, whether you’re a member or not, then I assume that means that you want to be discipled, that you want to be helped by me and your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in the process of becoming more like the God-man whose birth we celebrate at Christmas. From our oldest to our youngest, this is the expectation for everyone. If there’s an area where you feel like you aren’t being discipled or maybe you are but you want more specific discipleship in that area, come talk to me. Give me a call. They used to say, “my door is always open.” I think it’s more appropriate in my case to say, “my phone is always on.” So next Sunday, we start our second discipleship-oriented class.

The Story of the Bible

The first was “The Story of the Bible, which I am not calling:

The Story of the Bible, Pt. 1

And Pt. 2 starts this Sunday. In part one, we focused on the story in the Bible and in part on our place in that story. This is critical for disciples of Jesus Christ to know and understand, and if you weren’t able to be a part of the class I’d strongly suggest going to our YouTube page and looking them up. But with:

The Story of the Bible, Pt. 2

we’re not going to focus on the story in the Bible but rather:

The Story of How We Got the Bible

Reading our Bibles is imperative for all disciples of Christ, but for many of us, we aren’t quite sure what this book is, what it means when we say it’s the word of God, even how it’s supposed to relate to our lives, or even why there are so many translations. It’s this uncertainty that I want to help resolve in The Story of the Bible, Pt. 2. So if you’ve ever sat there holding your Bible and felt unsure about what this thing is or the role it’s supposed to play in your life, this is the class for you. It’s an important class for all disciples of Jesus Christ, but it’s particularly important for anyone who wants the Bible to be a greater part of their daily life. We’ll start next week. It will be very light and easy. I mostly want to hear from you what kind of questions you want answered, just like we did at the start of our last class, and then the following Sunday, we’ll start answering them.

But here’s what I need from you. I’m telling you my New Years resolutions. I’m going to ask one of you. This community is wonderful, loving, welcoming, and caring, and we have big plans for who we want to become as a church, and I say we because they aren’t just my plans. But if we’re going to become the church that we believe God has called us to be, we’re going to have to start inviting people to come worship Jesus Christ with us. We’re going to have to start inviting people to be a part of our community, both churched and unchurched. I can make signs and online advertisements and cards to help aid you in inviting people, and if that’s what you want, we’ll do it. But you all are the best ambassadors for this community. More than me. More than Facebook ads. More than a website. You all are the best evidence for the wonderful things happening in this community. You all are exhibit A, and if you love this community, and I know you do, then you should want other people to be a part of it. So I’m asking you, today, New Years Day, to make a resolution with me to begin inviting people to join us in our worship of Jesus Christ here at St. Dunstan’s. That’s how you grow a church, and we most certainly need to grow.

Now, like I said, The Epiphany is coming up, and we’re going to celebrate it on Saturday at 11am. Fortunately, the Gospels readings for Epiphany and the Second Sunday of Christmas are the same, and there’s no adult catechesis after this, so let me give you a little teaser about the Epiphany.

In Matthew 2, we hear about a star that “came to rest over the place where the child was.”

Matthew 2:9 ESV

After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.

There’s a lot I could say about this particular scene, but I want you to see something first.

After the death of Julius Caesar, his successor whose name was Octavius and later known as Caesar Augustus, held a festival in Rome in honor of Julius Caesar. At this festival, a comet hung in the sky over Rome. This was said to be the ascension of Julius Caesar’s soul to be with the gods. Augustus used this event to invest the position of Caesar with divine rights, and one of the way he did this was by printing the image of the star on Roman imperial coins. The front says, “Caesar Augustus” and has an image of his face. The back read “Divine Julius” with an image of that star that rested over the seat of power in the Roman Empire. People in the first century would have used this coin with frequency. The star coming to rest “over the place where the child Jesus was” is a public claim that the God and king of the whole world, including the Gentiles, was not the Roman Emperor but Jesus of Nazareth, and it’s his birth and his kingdom brought through his sacrifice that are good news for the whole world, and to be his disciple is not only to read daily the book that tells us about him and his life but it’s also to tell other people about him. Part of being Jesus’ disciple is inviting other people to join you in worshipping the world’s true Lord and King. I’m asking you, as disciples of Jesus Christ, to make that part of your New Years resolutions. If we believe what we say we believe about that baby over whom the the heavenly light came to rest, how can we not invite people to come join us in worshipping him.