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My friend was baptized this morning. She is not a child – she is of “riper” years, as the prayer book says, so this was an adult baptism, and the words spoken, the heartening vows, rang through the vast nave and were carried to the tabernacle on the altar.

With this sacrament she has been engrafted onto the organic Body of Christ, the Church, with water poured, the Holy Spirit descending.

Our baptismal font is in the back of the church near the entrance doors on the north side of the central aisle, and when the procession of acolytes and clergy, the torchbearers and crucifer, moved down from the chancel to the font, my husband and I, as sponsors, stood with Cathy before the huge marble shell that would hold the holy water. Our priest donned a white stole, and blessed the water in the large silver pitcher set out on a small table alongside.

The children and teachers came in from the Sunday School, the babies cuddled over shoulders and the older ones standing nearby, their eyes wide. The congregation turned in their pews as the procession moved past, until they faced us, following the Elizabethan service in our Book of Common Prayer. For the parish members were a vital part of this sacrament of water and spirit. We all prayed the prayers together and heard Cathy’s vows, her belief in the creeds, her belief in Jesus Christ, her desire to be washed clean of sin and be baptized in His Church.

The moment came, and Cathy stepped forward to the font. My husband and I stated her name. Our priest poured water from the silver pitcher over her forehead and into the font, saying, “I baptize thee In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”  With these words and with this water, she was washed clean of all sin and joined to the Christ’s Body, the Church.  She was given a flaming candle, passed from the priest to myself to my husband to Cathy.  “Receive the light of Christ,” the priest said.

There are many beautiful moments and stunningly profound phrases spoken in this ancient rite, and I thought of all those before us and all those that would come after us, all those who had said and would say these words with family and friends and parish brothers and sisters, with water poured and spirit descending.  But my favorite words are these, spoken by the priest:

We receive this person into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do sign her with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter she shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified…

So many believers today seem to be ashamed of the Cross.

On this First Sunday in Lent we enter the world of the Cross. During the week the Sign of the Cross was marked upon my forehead with Wednesday ashes. I walked Friday’s Stations of the Cross, following the fourteen colorful depictions of Christ’s way to Golgotha, recalling these historic moments when eternity intersected time and God acted among men. I prayed for myself, my family, my parish, my community, my nation, my world. I considered my Lenten rule, and decided to try to give up meats and sweets, and try to pray the morning and evening offices.  I knew that if I was faithful in these small things, God would be faithful to me in so many things, both small and large.

And so today was a great gift, a large thing, an incredible blessing, a time when God’s faithfulness was abundantly real. I was given a new sister today – we all were, those of us in our little flock – and this Sacrament of Holy Baptism fed us like manna in the desert. We entered into a deeper, richer communion with the holy, and with one another as well.

Even now, writing this, I am stunned by it all. I am in awe of this great gift of God, this sacrament in which my friend became my sister.

As Ash Wednesday of the year 2012 approaches, I am reminded again of time, its passing, its significance, its insignificance.

“We are all passing through,” a friend said once, and the phrase took hold, for it appears in my mind at random moments, more and more frequently.

To the Christian, the world is a way station, a place through which we pass.  We are born, we love, we suffer, until death takes our body and our souls move on.  Where we go – to sleep, to purgatory, to paradise – we conjecture.  But Christians are promised, they know, that their souls will not die and they will be given new, resurrected bodies.

Speaking to a friend about her baptism a few days ago, I prayed for wisdom in explaining the remarkable phenomenon of the Body of Christ.  For she would be engrafted onto that organic Body, the Church, when the priest pours the water and says the words, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  We are told by Christ we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we are born again, baptized, by water and the Spirit.  Since we desire eternal life with this God of love, we are baptized in His name, engrafted onto His Body the Church, to be one with God and one with us, the Communion of Saints.

This Wednesday I, with my fellow believers, will kneel before the altar.  The priest will say, “Remember o man, that dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,” and he will mark my forehead with the Sign of the Cross, using ashes made from burning last year’s Palm Sunday palms.  We are a people marked with the Cross.

Just so, in baptism I was signed with the Sign of the Cross, “in token that hereafter (I) shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto (my) life’s end.”

Ash Wednesday is a time when I remember, recognize, and anticipate.  I remember the earlier marking of my flesh with holy oil, the marking that engrafted me onto Christ’s Body.  I recognize that my own flesh is aging, that one day it will return to ashes, to the dust of the earth.  I anticipate my new and resurrected body, as I rise with Christ on Easter morning.

When I spoke to my friend about baptism, I began by saying, “It all begins and ends with the Resurrection.  All history led to this moment, and all history falls away from it.  If we believe in the resurrection of Christ in history two thousand years ago, all other belief falls into place.  And there is ample evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and walked among men.”

We are indeed all passing through, to the day when we will rise from the dead as well.  God became Man to take us home with him.  We are engrafted onto him, and we rise with him.  We bear his Sign of the Cross.  We are in him and he is in us.

I’ve been reading a small volume called The Faith, by Raymond Raynes, C.R., possibly an Anglican saint.  The book is a transcription by Baron Nicholas Mosley of retreat addresses Father Raynes gave at St. Michael and All Angels, Denver, Colorado in October of 1957. Father Raynes had been Superior of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, England, for fifteen years, and was to die a few months later.

A number of years ago I was introduced to Raymond Raynes’ remarkable life and work by my bishop, who knew Father Raynes and who encouraged me to read Nicholas Mosley’s biography of him.  I was so stunned by Father Raynes’s description of what it means to be a sacramental Christian that I included some of his reflections in my third novel, Inheritance, about Christianity in England.  I owe Father Raynes a great deal.  I owe Baron Nicholas Mosley as well for having written down his words.

Unfortunately, these works are out of print.

So I was pleased when the American Church Union asked me to read an old tattered copy of The Faith with a view to its reprinting. As I read, once again I was enriched, entranced, and brought closer to God.  Once again I caught the exuberance and joy of what it means to be a sacramental Christian.  Hopefully we can obtain permission to reprint this work.

In the meantime, I’d like to share a few of Father Raynes’ words, particularly on this Sexagesima Sunday, in which the Gospel is the parable of the Seeds and the Sower. The seeds fell on rich soil when they fell into life of Father Raynes, and they are seeds we do not want to lose.

On believing in Christ:

People label themselves Christians and will talk about Christianity as if it were some kind of philosophy or some theory… yet the fundamental question which we must face is ‘What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?’   (9)

Indeed.  Who is He?

We come to the second question – what shall I do with Jesus? – and there is no kind of half-way house about this. We have either to receive Him as He is or to reject Him…. You cannot separate a person from what he does and says and thinks and endures… (26)

So I ask myself, what does this mean for me?

On the sacraments:

The whole of God’s creation is sacramental because the creation is the outward and visible expression, in various forms, of the life and love of God… a flower is an outward and visible sign of the beauty of God… (69)

The sacrament of Baptism… has the outward and visible sign of water… water cleanses. So the effect of Baptism is to cleanse the person baptized, the whole of the person, from their fallen nature… we are made a member of Christ, the child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. That is a fact which cannot be undone… what our Lord is by nature – the Son of God – we are by adoption through Baptism – the sons of God. (72)

The other Sacrament of the Gospel is the Lord’s Supper… The outward and visible sign is that which our Lord gave us, bread and wine, which are taken, offered, blessed, broken and received. The sign effects what it signifies. So when I receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, I receive our Lord Himself. (72)

The sign effects what it signifies.  This is a phrase I want to learn, for in a sacrament, through the Church, God enters our world.  The cleansing and adoption of Baptism.  The receiving of Christ into my body and soul in the Eucharist.

On the Communion of Saints:

The one fellowship which doesn’t depend on any manmade rule, the eternal fellowship, is our fellowship with one another in Christ. Of course on earth it centres on the Altar. For when we come to the Altar not only are we renewing our one-ness with Christ, but we are strengthening and renewing our one-ness with one another. This fellowship is the eternal fellowship, the Christian society called in the Creed the Communion of Saints. (84)

The work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, as St. Paul tells us, is the building up of the body of Christ and the sanctification (the making holy) of the people of God that they may see God; because it is only the pure in heart who shall see God. (84-5)

I have long enjoyed my communion with fellow believers partaking in the Holy Eucharist.  As Father Raynes goes on to say, this communion includes those who have come before and who will come in the future.  And of course there are those who are so pure of heart, they are closest of all to God, those men and women we may consider capital-S Saints.

On prayer:

You cannot pray as a Christian except as a member of Christ’s body, the Church…it is the Holy Spirit that prays within us… we the Holy Spirit within the Church and it is the Holy Spirit that not only prompts us to prayer but informs our prayer. We pray within the Communion of Saints. So when a Christian prays, he never prays alone… Prayer has been called the breath of a Christian; and if I don’t breathe, I die. (95-6)

On taking up the cross:

Taking up the cross isn’t a kind of dreary acceptance of some kind of burden, under which we are going to be so good and patient and resigned… That’s all nonsense. For what is the cross of Christ and why were you marked with it in your baptism?  It is not only the sign of our redemption, it is the source of it. And we are marked men; we are crossed men. And we have got to grip the cross and realize it and not think that it is just concerned with suffering and sorrow, because that’s not true… There is [also] power, light, strength, beauty, radiance from the cross of Christ… It’s terrific. And it redeems the whole of our life if we live under it… it is concerned with everything… your work, your pleasure.  For it is through the cross of Christ that we can only truly enjoy ourselves. (104)

How true, and how unrealized by many, believers and unbelievers alike.

On Holy Scripture:

I don’t derive my religion from the Bible, I derive it from Christ. Christ was preached and I was baptized and became a member of Christ. Within the body of Christ I find certain treasures given to the Church by God. One is Holy Scripture, which is a lantern unto my feet; and the other is the Sacraments of the Church… Now the Holy Spirit which was given to me in Baptism and in Confirmation is the inspirer of Holy Scripture, and He is the interpreter of it. It is not a private interpretation.  Through the Scripture under the inspiration and operation of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God speaks to me.  (108)

And finally:

Life for a Christian is meant to be… a love-song sung unto God… When the sun rises, it brings colour to things and they spring to life… so with our Holy Religion, it isn’t some kind of addition to life. Our Lord is the Light of the World, and as the children of light we begin to see all things in the light of Christ, including our own lives… [we] walk in the light. (113)

And so much more.  Thank you, Father Raynes.  Thank you, Nicholas Mosley.

With straw hat and dark glasses, I went for a walk along the beach, breathing deeply the fresh air.

We have carved a few days from our home life to live our away life.  The change of routines, the change of scene, the time to read and reflect, give us new visions, new ways of seeing the world in which we live.

This Septuagesima Sunday, the sea-washed sand, packed hard and dense, gleamed, mirroring the morning sun.  I stepped with bare feet upon the packed-down shore, following the edge of the shallows slipping in, then out.  I walked on the border of sea and land and soon my flesh was washed by the rhythmic action of the waters.

It was a glistening time, an hour of clear skies and unbroken sunshine, the air moist and sweet, and I felt as though I was carried along the shoreline by invisible wings.  As I walked I glanced out to sea, to the deep royal blue horizon, where a few cumulus could barely be seen, hanging low, hovering over the waters.  Between me and those distant deep blues, variant shades of turquoise painted the cove with wide brush strokes, until, nearing the gleaming sands under my feet, the water grew light and clear, and the twinkling diamonds of the sea that bathed the land danced a hymn to God.

The hymn of sparkles swirled upon the shallows and a chorus of surf gathered and rolled and tumbled.  The tide pulled the waters out and the surf pounded, matching my own tempo, my bare feet arcing, cradling the sand, my heels bearing down, the balls of my feet moving me forward, my toes propelling me on.

I passed children playing in the waters, screeching with delight as they eyed the teasing surf, some held by parents also mesmerized by the sea, its beauty, its calling pull, its pulling call.  Watchers stood in wonder, gazing upon the ocean kingdom, touched by another realm.  Man and the sea met as though for the first time, tentatively, yet with recognition.

I stepped along the edge of the sea, glancing now over the land, the beach rising to the lawn, the lawn spreading to the hotel that rested under an azure sky stroked by palms crowning tall bare trunks.  I moved through a painting of color and sound and soft scents borne on breezes, and watched the sun mirrored on the gleaming sand.

The golden spot moved with me, just ahead, and I followed it until, as I turned with the curve of the shore, it disappeared into the sands.  I padded on, slipping through the foamy shallows, to the black lava bordering the cove, the rush of the sea upon my ears.

I turned to see the half-moon of the beach bordering the cove, joining the sea and the land.  From there at the far edge of black rock, the ocean reared and crested and dashed.  I could not see the gentle sliding of the waters, the caressing of the shore.  A red flag waved in the breeze, warning swimmers of powerful undertows.

The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land.  What would God show me here, nestled in this gentle bay with these roaring winter waters?  I prayed for ears to hear and eyes to see.  I prayed, take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

We are ending Epiphanytide and soon to begin Pre-Lent. We have known the light of Christ and will soon have the light shine into our souls, revealing who we are.

Who we are is a good question, an important question, and one we all yearn to have answered. So we trundle through the Church Year, seeking and finding out. Christ comes to us in the Incarnation at Christmas, beginning the Church Year.  He reveals himself throughout Epiphany – in the temple, his baptism, his miracle of water into wine, today his healing of Jew and Gentile alike. “Lord, let it be according to thy word. Speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”

The word only. Indeed. We listen for the word and when we hear it we laugh for joy. We listen and when we hear it we are healed. Healed of self, of sin, of all the cancers that slowly corrupt and kill us, robbing us of him. We listen, throughout the year.

The end of January in California is a waiting time. Chilly, sometimes rainy, but dry this year and today clear with a haze that covered the evening sky. The days are longer and we wait for the lengthening, the Lent that will mark our next season of listening and watching and learning who we are. We ponder the meaning of God coming among us, becoming one of us.

Candlemas is this Thursday and we celebrate the presentation of the Christ child in the temple.  We listen to the prophetic words of the aged Simeon as he and elderly Anna recognize who the child is – an epiphany.  He has been waiting for this child that was promised to him: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”  Now Simeon has known the coming of the Messiah.  Now he can go to God.

Candlemas appropriately has become a time in our Church when we bless the candles that will be used for the year, bless the flaming light that will not be put out.  It is the end of Epiphanytide but the beginning of the Word made flesh among us.  It is the beginning of Heaven on Earth.

I’m reading a book about a boy who went to Heaven and returned to tell us all about it. Remarkable. Encouraging. For we are made for Heaven, and we all know and feel this deep down. We are made for, meant for, something wonderful, something good. The world pulls us away from this great desire and knowledge, but also tells us it is true – in the sunsets, the quiet at dawn, in the blade of grass covered in glistening dew. The world tells us about Heaven when we search one another’s eyes, when we pet the rich fur of our cat and hear the purr. And we know, as we worship on Sunday week after week, year after year, that there is something greater, something wonderful waiting for us.

So in this time of lengthening, of light, we travel from Incarnation towards death on a cross and joyous Resurrection. We travel into God, into who we are, into Heaven itself.

We submitted our pledge cards at church today, making our financial commitment for the year.  We stepped to the altar and placed our cards of promise on a plate which was then offered, in the liturgy of the Mass, to God.

We are commanded by Scripture to give back to God ten percent of our “first fruits,” our income for the year.  Some of us do not pay much attention to these commands, but put a few dollars in the plate as it comes down the pew.  Some of us pledge a fraction of the ten percent, or what we think is appropriate after all of our expenses, needs and wants, are met.  Some of us pledge ten percent.  Some of us more than that.

A pledge is a promise, an intention of faith and fidelity.  We pledge, or make vows, to one another in marriage, and the relationship between the Church and Christ is considered one of marriage, for Christ refers to himself as the bridegroom in Holy Scripture.  The Church is his bride.

Our preacher spoke of these things today, saying that God wants much more from us than belief.  God, like a loving spouse, wants a living, loving relationship with us.  We do not come to church to mouth words and listen to empty phrases.  We come to actively partake in God’s kiss.

God’s kiss!  That got my attention, and I listened closely for the explanation.  God is not an idea, our priest continued, but a living person who desires union with his beloved, his bride.  He wants all of us.  He wants even little me.  He wants to fill us with himself in the bread and the wine.  It is a Eucharistic kiss, a kiss between the bride, the Church, and the bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

So it is fitting that the Gospel today, the story of the Wedding in Cana, is about water turned to wine at a wedding feast.  It is Christ’s first recorded miracle.  It is the third epiphany that reveals Who He Is in this season of Epiphanytide, of manifestations.

And it was fitting for us to pledge our troth (truth, faith, as is said in our Sacrament of Holy Matrimony) to our bridegroom, to step to the altar and give him our promise.  In a marriage we promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health.  Just so, we as his bride, promised these things, to him and to one another as members of his body.

My husband and I have found that in our thirty years of marriage, pledging to the Church has been important.  We have tried to be faithful with at least a ten percent offering, and I believe it is true that miracles happen when we are faithful.  When we are steady.  When we worship together weekly, and partake of God’s presence weekly.  When we do the hard regular duty, honing our consciences with love’s demands, feeding on sermon and Scripture, worshiping in song and prayer and bread and wine, giving of our time to the Body of Christ as well as our means, in sacrifice.  Sometimes it’s a struggle to be faithful to God, to family, to anything.  Sometimes it’s a joy.  But God is always there in the faithfulness, working his miracles.

We filled out our cards and processed with our brothers and sisters to God’s altar.  Later, in the parish hall, we celebrated the arrival of our newest member of Christ’s body, Luisa, now two months old, with a shower of food and presents.  But we were the ones showered… by the love of our bridegroom, ever faithful, to bring this new life among us.

We pledge our tithe, we are faithful, and God hears us for he is faithful too.  Only now can he work his miracles among us, embracing us, kissing us.

I am a simple person.  Raised in a bookish home, the daughter of a clergyman, in the long ago past with no Internet, no DVD’s, and limited television, I cherished reading from an early age.  Once a week, on Mondays, my father’s day off, we made a trip to the local library.  My sister and I carted our loot home, ten books (the limit), that we would cherish until the next Monday.  The worlds inside the books became our worlds, so that our growing up reflected many galaxies.

I carried that simplicity into my adulthood and the tumultuous ’sixties.  I carried the simplicity into marriage and motherhood and middle age, into what is often called our gentler years.  I continued reading, listening to the sound of the words, picturing the people and the places and the problems that threatened at every turn.

Along the way I rediscovered the Church, and began to understand the profound simplicity of her teaching, her practice, her faith.  With each year the simplicity has grown in its own deep complexity, and I continue to marvel at how this can be.  The creeds that tell of God’s love for Man. Holy Scripture which documents God’s love for Man.  The sacraments and the feasts and the seasons of the Church which all act out God’s love for Man.  Simple love.  Simple Incarnation.  Simple Resurrection.  Simplicity.

Yet the tapestry, the weave that lies within, inside and behind, these events and beliefs is so very rich, infinite in color and variety.  I know that in this life I shall never plumb the depths, never see all the shades of color, never touch all the marvel-ous textures of this faith.

I thought these things as I listened to today’s sermon on baptism.  It is Epiphanytide, a time in which we celebrate the manifestation of who Jesus was and is, meditating on the Gospel passage at the beginning of Mark where Christ is baptized in the Jordan by John. As Jesus rose from the water, “he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him: and there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Our preacher said that Christ was baptized to become one of us; God was engrafted onto mankind.  Later, Christ tells his disciples to baptize in his name, that only those baptized will inherit the Kingdom of life.

These are strong words, and the early Church took them seriously.  Baptism became the first and most important rite for every believer.  It was soon understood that with this rite of “water and the Spirit,” being born anew, we become engrafted, become part of the Body of Christ, the Church.  A mystery.

I do not believe baptism is only a symbolic act, nor is it only a symbolic result.  The Body of Christ is more than a group, but a living breathing body.  Baptism is far more than membership in a club, and today I looked at my fellow worshipers in the pews, a part of my body of Christ.  I considered how we would soon partake of the Holy Eucharist, another sacrament making us one body.  We were engrafted onto each other and into, onto Christ, God the Son.  Because we were part of him, his resurrection would resurrect us as well, into the Kingdom of life.

Each of us journeys alone in this life, from birth to death.  We reach out to one another in friendship, in marriage, in family, in bonds of every shade of intimacy and distance, in love.  Yet we journey alone.  We are born alone and we die alone, for no one can make this final journey with us.  But the Body of Christ can.  The Body of Christ bridges the worlds, sanctifies our time on earth so that we may travel with the saints and the angels.  And not only at the time of our death and our passing into new life, but during our earthly journey as well.  Each year, day, hour, minute, even second of our time is colored, enriched, made holy by this Body of Christ, the Church.

So we journey with the Church, through the seasons and the feasts and the great acts of God on earth.  Through life into death and into life again.  With each day we are quite simply made whole, holy, and with each day we step deeper, further and farther, into the glory that God promises us.

My simplicity has become richly complex.

The twelve days of Christmas came to an end on Friday, the Feast of the Epiphany, and we celebrated in our new chapel now called the Chapel of the Holy Innocents.

The events of Christ’s birth, this great God of love coming among us, form a kind of poem or painting that tells the story of the Incarnation and its meaning for us.  We prepare for Christ’s coming throughout Advent, decorating our homes and singing carols. We gather for family meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, giving gifts and toasting Christmas.  We go to church.

For many folks, Christmas ends on Christmas Day.

But in the Church it is only beginning.  Throughout the twelve days of, after, Christmas we celebrate this great gift of God, until we come to January 6, Epiphany, the visit of the Wise Men, the Magi from the East, who bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

In the Gospels, this visit is recorded, but probably occurred much later in time than twelve days.  But the visit is important, so tradition has collapsed time to place Epiphany in the same celebratory frame, the same poem or painting, as Christmastide itself.

For it is the Magi from the East who reveal the light of Christ. They are the ones who follow the star (possibly an angel) that lights their way to Bethlehem.  Why do they follow?  They want to see, to discover, to learn what this means.  They want to be enlightened. And here we have the essence of Epiphany, that light lighting the darkness so that we can see out and in.

Epiphany comes from the Greek epiphaneia, to appear, to show forth, to see.  We use this word to mean a sudden realization, a sudden burst of mental clarity, of light shining in the darkness of our understanding.  When I have epiphanies it is as though I have tapped into something outside myself, as though the revelation has come from some outside source, suddenly inspired.  In-spired comes from the Latin inspirire, to breathe into.  To be inspired, to have an epiphany, is to have God breathing his life into me.  He lights up my darkness.

This is the light of Christ.  It fills all who welcome it so that they may in turn burn with his love and light.  They become living flames to others.  And this is what it means to be a Christian, to burn each day with love, with this light, and thus to enlighten our world.

Today at church, as I gazed on the crèche arranged in its bed of greens near the altar rail, I saw the three Wise Men kneeling before this humble baby, this king.  Something new and miraculous had come to the earth, a being that would lighten their dark.  The Gospel account in St. Matthew states that the Wise Men presented gifts, but we don’t really know how many.  Tradition has made the gifts part of the poem and painting: gold for the child’s kingship, frankincense for his priesthood, and myrrh for his burial.

This visit completes Christmastide, for these foreign travelers represent us, those not part of the People of Israel at the time of Christ.  All of us, the world, may now be part of this huge epiphany that happened two thousand years ago in a cave outside of Bethlehem, this real historical event.

Epiphanytide continues for four Sundays, and during this season we will see the other epiphanies of Christ.  Today the Gospel spoke of the child Jesus speaking with the doctors in the temple, revealing his divinity.  Soon we shall hear how his baptism revealed his divinity.  We shall follow him to Cana, where he turns water into fine wine, revealing his divinity. Each Sunday shall be another epiphany of light, a burst of inspired understanding.

So God becomes man, lighting the darkness.  St. John writes, “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not,” so the church celebrates the poem and painting of Christmas, splashing the season with lots of light-filled epiphanies.

Happy Epiphanytide!

I was not proud of something I said this last week, in an uncontrolled outburst, and even after apologizing, repenting, and receiving forgiveness from the injured party, a cloud still hovered over my heart.  My heart was torn.  Was I carrying false guilt?

I carried the cloud to church today, and when I left church, the cloud was gone.  My heart was mended.

How did that happen?  I feel reborn.

Did the priest’s absolution really cause such a miracle to occur?  I believe it did.  When I sinned, I sinned against God as well as man.  And while I had confessed to God privately, his Church had not absolved me.  Today God absolved me through the Church, sacramentally.  The tear around my heart was mended with this blood, and I received Christ in the chalice as though receiving a blood transfusion.

Today is New Year’s Day.  It is also, in the Church Year, the Octave (8th day) of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, a day when we consider the meaning of this seemingly foreign and strange act.  And the meaning wove through my heart and soul, for it was all about blood and sacrifice and, yes, transfusion.

Our preacher spoke of these things.  He spoke of Christ’s circumcision.  Man from the earliest days sensed an innocent, blood sacrifice was needed to appease the gods, and a firstborn child was often offered in those ancient cultures of Mesopotamia. When God called Abraham out of this world, he ordered a substitutionary sacrifice, an animal sacrifice, as well as the rite of circumcision, the sign of his covenant with his people.  In this covenant God regulates the sacrifice to become the paschal sacrifice, the Passover Lamb, and finally himself, entering the world in the Incarnation, taking on our flesh.  He became the final and fulfilling blood sacrifice, poured into the chalice, so that we may be fulfilled, full.  Christ becomes the fulfillment of the law, not a denial of it.  All that went before prepared the way for him, prepared for this blood to be shed for us.  All of those generations, all of those centuries, prepared mankind for this one great redemptive act of God.  Circumcision, our preacher said, is an evidence of the Incarnation, God coming among us for a reason.  The law of Moses is a tutor that brings us to Christ.

My redemption this morning was real.  I was set free, at least of my selfish acts to this point in time.  They had no more power over me, could no longer weigh upon my heart and mind, no longer hover over me like a dark cloud.  And I was given a way forward, a way to handle my selfish acts in the future.  For we all fall short of perfection; we all sin.  We all say what we regret, do what we shouldn’t, don’t do what we should.  We are fallen creatures, but through penitence, forgiveness, and Christ’s blood sacrifice, the tears in our hearts are healed.  We partake of his Body and his Blood.

When, in Jewish tradition, the child was circumcised, he was named.  The blood offering became one with the identity of the child, now a child of God.  When Christ came in history, when he took on our flesh and blood, circumcision was no longer needed.  Christ’s blood sacrifice is enough for our covenant with God.  So Christians are named in baptism, not circumcision.  They are offered to God, becoming a part of his Church body in a bloodless rite of circumcision.

Who are we, what are we, as human beings on this earth, this spinning planet?  We are creatures who belong to God, and he brings us back to himself with each sacramental offering – Baptism, the Eucharist, Confession, Absolution – through his Church.  With each offering he fills us with his own lifeblood.

We begin a new year, 2012.  We consider the last year and plan the next.  I am full of thanksgiving that God loved us so that he came to us as he did, as a child in a manger, that he gave us a way out, a way forward, a way to truly love.  He makes the crooked straight; wrong turns are righted; clouds no longer hover over us; torn hearts are mended.

Incarnation.  Circumcision.  Offering and re-offering.  Penitence and absolution.  The Holy Name of…  Jesus.

Happy New Year!

He came to us, Emmanuel, God with us.

We gathered together around the Christmas buffet, twenty of us, three sons with their wives and their children.  We held hands and thanked God for being together this day.  We thanked him for the food laid before us, and we thanked him for his great gift of himself.  Alleluia.

Each of us had known both joy and suffering during the year, had met our own challenges, private and public.  Each of us had become a slightly different person, formed by the choices we had made, the path we had taken.  The changes in some were subtle – some of us were triumphant, some were weary, some were in love.  Some had grown wise.  Some had grown foolish.

I thought about my own year as I looked into their faces.  I too had known all of these things – love, suffering, joy, the challenge of choice at each turning.  And I was thankful that Christ was in the choices, in the choosing, at least for the most part.  When he wasn’t there, I generally chose wrongly, and most often became aware of sin taking hold of my heart. Then another turning, a repenting, a new beginning again with more choices.

And so I was thankful that Christ came among us as he did, that he too suffered, that he too made choices and experienced our human-ness.  He knew the love of his disciples and he knew betrayal in the garden.  He knew how to serve, to wash the feet of his friends.  He knew our hearts then and today, in each minute of our choices. He knew the love of the Father was so great that we would be brought home through himself, the Son, that we would be raised on the last day.

Incarnation.  God in the flesh.

We attended a local church for Christmas Eve Mass, an afternoon service so that our grandchildren (six and nine) could attend.  It is a historic mission-style church with dark wooden rafters and white stucco and vivid stained glass.  The sanctuary blazed with lights from two giant Christmas trees.  The Bethlehem manger scene was set out in front of the trees and I looked forward to the children’s Christmas Pageant.  The church was packed – folks stood along the side aisles and wedged into the pews.  We sang carols and listened to the Gospel accounts of Jesus come among us, born to Mary, watched over by Joseph in a humble stable.  A bright star appeared.  Shpherds knelt.  Kings offered gifts.  We welcomed Christ into our world and our into our own hearts with great fanfare, drums and song.

On Christmas Day, those golden moments hovered as I stirred gravy and heated potatoes, tossed spinach with candied walnuts and mandarin oranges.  They lingered as I spooned cranberries into white ceramic pitchers.  A platter of shrimp was set in the next room, an offering before the Christmas tree and as the guests arrived, their laughter and greetings flavored the dishes of brown-sugared yams and sausage stuffing.  The turkey lay sliced in its bed of parsley alongside platters of yeast rolls and cornbread squares.

We gathered around the buffet in the kitchen and prayed our thanksgivings.  We took our places at two long tables.  We toasted family and Christmas, Christ among us.  And I knew as I looked at the faces of three generations pulled to my table this Christmas Day that Christ was indeed among us.

Emmanuel.  God with us.  Merry Christmas!