Candlemas – your light in my darkness

A reflection for Candlemas – text below

And so now, Peace

Epiphany at Cana

A violinist played.

 Of course he did. 

 This world was made by grace,

and is healed by grace. 

To know and be known – Nathanael’s Epiphany

A reflection for the 2nd Sunday of Epiphany

Nathanaell said “how do you know me?”  John 1:48

A Riverside Epiphany – The Baptism of the Lord

In his baptism, Jesus touches all water.

A homily preached for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord

‘It pleases me, loving rivers’ Raymond Carver

Well, how are your new year’s resolutions going?

Epiphany – included

Homily for the Feast of the Epiphany (the Holy Family walking the way of the dispossessed)

All of it, everything, every blade of grass

A friend rode a bus back and forth to work every day.

On this daily journey she sat watching the world pass by, gazing out of her window.   One day, she caught sight of a poster hanging from a Church notice board. It looked faded and unloved, but carried some words from S. John’s gospel:  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son”.

Those words, “for God so loved the world” struck something deep in her soul.   They kept circling in her mind.

“For God so loved the world –

-for God so loved the world”.

She began to notice the poster each day; its tattered old image started to become a daily blessing

Like a holy spell, Jesus’ words seemed to take hold of her, and with dawning joy she realised that she must  simply be part of the creation that God so loves;  that every soul is in fact an irreplaceable instance  of that broken but beloved world.Epiphanies love buses

Epiphanies:  they come from God to us all.   You must keep your eyes closed if you want to avoid them.

Epiphanies love buses

In this season we celebrate all of the Epiphanies of Jesus in the gospels.   Gospel Epiphanies usually come to people on the fringe, on the outside, who think that they couldn’t possibly be part of God’s world.

The Epiphany we celebrate today comes to foreign star-gazers from the East – people who were not part of the holy nation.  But to them is given the Epiphany that Jesus is the Saviour of all people.

You’ll know if you’ve had an Epiphany, because you’ll have a deep sense of being included in something sacred, healing and holy that you thought excluded you.

Epiphany – The all-conquering weakness of God

Not being able to do really basic things for yourself – that would be the first thing that would hit me, if I was kneeling with those wise men in front of Him.   Here he is, God almighty, the Word made flesh, and He can do absolutely nothing for Himself.   And that’s the very FIRST Epiphany to the gentiles, to the nations:  God as the One who has made Himself utterly  vulnerable to human response.

God’s Epiphany to a wounded world:   He has chosen to be touched by the most basic needs of the body, and know what it if feels like to be able to do nothing to meet them.  He has come to share all feelings of desperation, rage, frustration and make them – all of them –  His own.   Not just in his birth but in his life and death Jesus had has arms tied, binded, nailed apart even.

At the first and at the last, Christ could not even raise a cup or a cloth to His own face.

The Epiphany of the cradle, the Epiphany of the cross, the Epiphany of all conquering Divine weakness  that reaches out, in the most tattered, humble way,

to you, me,

and all people,

on every journey,

in this most fragile, broken,

so-loved world.