![]() By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector Earlier this week, while I was spending time with a set of Epiphany prayers from Daily Prayer for All Seasons, I stumbled upon a meditation, attributed to Richard Meux Benson. Benson was an Episcopal brother and the founder of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, whose order began in England. Benson wrote, “The wise men cannot return to their own country by the same way they used to come to Bethlehem. While they cannot go the same route because of Herod, we cannot go the same way once we have met Christ. We emerge from our encounter with Christ as changed people. We cannot follow the same path as before. Like the wise men, we must seek out Christ, but we will always leave as transformed people.”* We cannot go the same way once we have met Christ. We emerge from our encounter with Christ as changed people. It is this precise change that draws us out of our own worlds, and into our common life as the Church. We gather with those who understand how profoundly Christ has changed us. Together we listen to the scriptures and break bread. We discern how our individual gifts can be shared in community, to strengthen the mission and ministry of the Church. We explore how to embody Christ’s values in a world that seems to value the market, individualism, and power above and before God’s dream. Sometimes finding our way together as the Church is challenging. This was certainly the case for the early church in Corinth, Greece. This city was an important trade center, featuring two ports, and it embodied Rome’s imperial culture.** The church in Corinth was composed of some Jews, but primarily of Gentiles - those who were not of the Jewish tradition. This meant folks from two very different backgrounds were trying to figure out how to be the Church together, while living in the heart of Roman imperialism. Paul wrote to help the community grapple with their unique challenges. One question the community was stuck on was whether it was okay to eat meat from animals that had been offered to other gods in pagan temples? At the heart of this issue, was a more substantive question. One we still have to sit with today: How do we navigate being the Church in a world that has different values? Paul offers many insights in his first letter to the community. One of his most important pieces of advice comes from today’s reading, which is placed immediately before 1 Corinthians 13 - love is patient, love is kind. There will always be disagreements within faith communities, as we are each bringing with us our individual experiences, perspectives, and gifts. It is easier to find common ground and a way forward, when we remember that, first and foremost, we are one body of Christ. Paul writes: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ...God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as [God] chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members yet one body” (1 Cor 12:12,18). Just as we need our eyes, ears, hands, and feet, we need individual members of the church to bring their experiences, perspectives, and gifts to the body. We are always better when we come together as one body, in service of Christ’s mission. This fall I had the opportunity to see how people learn to work as one body at one of my kids cross country meets. While most people ran as individuals, this particular meet offered a challenge for teams to participate in - the centipede race. Each school could have four of their runners connected by rope, and they would run the entire 5k together as one body. When I saw the kids at the starting line, roped together, I was pretty surprised. It was hard to imagine being able to do that well given they don’t normally practice running as a team. This wasn’t a crew race after all. By the end of the meet, it turned out one of the centipedes fell apart, and never did finish. Another struggled, but persevered and finally made their way to the finish line towards the very end. Yet still another team figured out how to run well as a singular body, and they reached the finish line with an average time, right in the middle of the pack. Watching these teams try their best, or struggle through, was fascinating. They were a reminder of how difficult it can be to do things as one body. There’s no room for ‘my way or the highway’ attitudes, as it would lead to a disaster with everyone moving in the wrong direction. Nor can we refuse to participate, as that will prevent the body from moving at all. We have to slow down, and ground ourselves. As the Church we ground ourselves in prayer, setting our minds on Christ, and trusting the Spirit to help us run the race together. Paul emphasizes that for us to be the Church well, we need each of our many members with our individual gifts. We need people who are called to lead and heal, to teach and feed, to repair and sing. At our Vestry meeting this past week, Kathryn led us in a meditation and bible study where we explored the gifts within our parish. We reflected on how important it is that we continue to help one another see the gifts we each possess, and find ways to share those gifts. When we are able to do this, we are a stronger body. We are better prepared to follow God’s call to be the Church during uncertain times. This past week, we welcomed a new president into office, and we resumed our country’s long tradition of a peaceful transition of power. As is commonly the case, our new president signed several executive orders. No matter what political leaders are at the helm, no matter their political party, those leaders will seek to instill their values into law, setting the tone for the next four years. The challenge for us as Christians, as Christ’s one body, is that sometimes those values are deeply at odds with the values of our faith tradition. The Episcopal Church relies on scripture, tradition, and reason when making sense of how we are called to live out our faith in the here and now. It is through this practice that our church has embraced the importance of welcoming the stranger and supporting humane and reasonable policies when it comes to how we respond to the needs of immigrants, refugees, and migrants. The Christ-child and the holy family lived as refugees in a foreign land, and throughout his public ministry, Jesus routinely advocated that we welcome the stranger (Matthew 2:13-15). Likewise, it is scripture, tradition and reason that has informed our understanding of gender identity and expression, as a spectrum. As such we have supported respectful and reasonable policies that recognize the dignity of each and every person, particularly those our culture has historically placed on the margins, such as transgender and nonbinary folks. As the psalmist proclaims in psalm 139, God created us and loves us for our authentic selves, and that there is nothing that will ever change that. And of course, it is this practice that has informed our emphasis on creation care, and the importance of supporting reasonable and timely policies that help us collaborate with others around the world in addressing the climate crisis. At creation, God charged humanity to be stewards of God’s precious creation (Genesis 1:28-30). We cannot turn our backs on God, and this, the first of all our charges by God. So how do we proceed as the Church? How do we make sense of our mission and ministry as the body of Christ, as the empire we live within pursues, at least some values, that are deeply at odds with God’s values? We begin by remembering we are not alone. We are one body, with many members. While our many members may share different opinions and perspectives, we are united in our shared sense of God’s call to compassion, love, justice, and mercy. This is not easy work, as we are one body in the longest centipede race imaginable. Yet the Church, and other religious traditions, have a role to play in resisting the pervasive fear that is consuming our nation and culture’s common life. Because there is no place for fear in faith. As the prophet Isaiah once wrote, “O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength” (Isaiah 26:3; 30:15). When we come together as the body of Christ, and set aside our fears for faith, we will know perfect peace, and it will be our strength. That strength will ground us as the body of Christ. The peace and strength that comes from faith will help us to walk in Love. To help lift up our moral responsibility for compassion, love, justice, and mercy. As the body of Christ, we can do our small part, in our little corner of God’s world, to help bring about God’s dream. Our faith will guide us forward. Whatever those in power may be doing, we will persevere in Love: by welcoming the stranger; by respecting the dignity of every human being; by caring for creation; and by uniting in our common call to lift up the need for compassion, love, justice and mercy in God’s world. As we head into the coming week, I want to invite us to set aside our fear for faith, so we might persevere in Love. There are so many opportunities to try this: when we read the news, or see a strong opinion on social media, or listen to people in line at the grocery store, or get anxious texts from loved ones. Each time, let us take a breath, and set aside fear for faith, so we might persevere in love. Amen. Lectionary Readings Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:14-21 Psalm 19 * Daily Prayer for All Seasons, 54 (adapted). Original text: https://archive.org/details/benedictusdominu00bensuoft/page/52/mode/2up ** Jewish Annotated New Testament, 321.
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![]() By Charlie Houghton, Lay Preacher Lord, please open our hearts and minds to your presence as we seek to better understand your good news. Amen. Please be seated. Epiphany and many of the Sundays that follow Christmas are some of my favorites. The gospels are filled with wonderful stories, and this Sunday is no exception. It is the story of a wonderful celebration; a wedding feast. A wedding deserves a great celebration. While marriage is a legal contract between two people being married, Christian marriage is more than just a legal contract. It is a covenant between two persons in the presence of God and the community. It is important and it is sacred. Let’s consider this gospel in the context of the time in which it occurs. Mary, and the brothers of Jesus are guests at a wedding in Cana. Soon Jesus, also an invited guest, and his earliest apostles arrive as well. It is likely that the bride or groom is related to the family. In these times, Jewish weddings frequently lasted for a week or longer. Hospitality was extremely important, with plenty of food and wine for the duration of the celebration. In this time and culture, poor hospitality was a serious affront, and running out of wine would have been the epitome of poor hospitality. The gospel begins, “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.” (John 2:1) And so it was that the first miracle of Jesus’ ministry occurred at a wedding where the groom’s family ran out of wine well before the guests ran out of thirst. While from this point forward, miracles will be quite public, this first miracle is witnessed only by Jesus’ apostles, his mother, and the servants. It is important, however, to think about the last verse of this Gospel: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” When Mary notices that the wine is running low she brings her concerns to her son. Jesus answers, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Some scholars have suggested that Jesus’ answer to his mother was not particularly respectful, which seems unlikely. Interestingly, the New International Version adds the word “dear” before woman. His mother is clearly not concerned about his answer, however, and overrides him by simply saying to the servants “Do whatever he tells you”. With that simple statement, Mary orchestrates her son’s entry into his public life – his ministry. Mary is a woman of strength and heart. Her initial conversation with Jesus is quiet and without fuss. While he seems to believe that it is not the time to begin his public life, Mary is completely sure that it is time. Once Jesus changes the water to wine and sends it to the host to taste, the bridegroom gets credit for the excellent wine, while Jesus remains in the background. In the miracles that follow this one, it is clear that these wonders are the work of Jesus. They are witnessed by many people, sometimes into the thousands. So why not this miracle? Some scholars think it is because this miracle is meant to prevent the bridegroom’s embarrassment. Others have offered the explanation that Jesus was still a bit on the fence about beginning his public life. And still others have suggested that this is a moment of creating for the joy of creating. This is a celebration, filled with joy and community. And what should we learn from this? I guess we could learn that moms are generally right and should be listened to. Actually, I do believe that Mary has much to teach us in this gospel. Mary’s concern for the young couple is an act of love. She is not concerned with what she can gain from asking Jesus to help them. She also has enormous trust in Jesus, that he will do the right thing. Mary is a woman of courage and faith. She does not have to know where this is going to follow her heart, to allow her faith to guide her. And what is faith? The closest the Bible comes to defining faith is Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” There is so much in scripture that speaks of faith. When I looked to find a scriptural definition of faith, there were so many citations that I quickly became overwhelmed. Finally, taking pieces of different readings and a little of my own twist, I finally came up with this: Faith is much more than intellectual agreement; it means putting your trust in God and having confidence that God will fulfill God’s promises. I sometimes feel like I am stuck in pea soup fog on my faith journey. I can get stuck in fear when I cannot seem to see the way forward. My prayer at these times is a simple plea to help me find the path I should be following. I am reminded of a story from Francis Murphy, a Presbyterian minister. He writes: “A house caught fire one night and a young boy was forced to climb on to the roof to escape. His father stood on the ground below with outstretched arms, calling to his son, "Jump! I’ll catch you." He knew the boy had to jump to save his life. All the boy could see, however, was flames, smoke, and blackness. As you can imagine, he was afraid to leave the roof, but his father kept yelling: "Jump! I will catch you." But the boy shouted back, "Daddy, I can’t see you." Then the father replied, "But I can see you and that’s all that matters.” Just as Christ sees us, and that’s all that matters. Know that is good to be seen. When we are seen, we are not alone. Mary understood this as she encouraged Jesus to fix the wine problem. Mary knew that not seeing God definitely did not equal not being seen by God. Her faith allowed her to move forward even if she wasn’t sure exactly where the path would lead. Five words. “Do whatever he tells you.” This simple yet powerful statement still resonates with us centuries later. Just as she got the attention of the servants at the wedding, I believe Mary is hoping to get our attention now. I can almost see her standing near me today and quietly directing me toward Jesus and softly saying, “Do whatever he tells you.” Amen ![]() By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector We are in the season after the Epiphany, where we celebrate the many ways God is revealed in the life of Jesus. We affirm that God’s revelation is not just meant for a select group of people. Rather, these revelations are meant for all people, at all times, and in all places.* In story after story, we discover people who encounter Jesus and walk away with an overwhelming sense that they have just experienced the divine.** At his birth, wise religious leaders of a different faith tradition, followed a star to come and pay their respects to the Christ-child. At his presentation in the temple, Simeon and Anna recognize Jesus, the infant of an impoverished couple, as the Messiah. At his baptism, the heavens open up before a crowd of the newly baptized, only to reveal Jesus as God’s beloved child. People from all walks of life encountered Jesus and were changed. Before Jesus began public ministry, John the Baptist was preparing the way for him. This ministry was so successful that it led some to be ‘filled with expectation… questioning in their hearts’ whether John might be the Holy One.*** In keeping with a true prophet, John knew that he was not the end game. Rather his life’s work was to communicate God’s vision with the people, and help hold the space for God to be at work in the world through Jesus. John spoke plainly to his followers: "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming.…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”*** Immediately after this, John is imprisoned for speaking out against Herod and a group of people, which includes Jesus, are baptized. Since John is in prison, it’s unclear who led these baptisms. That said - these are not the details that matter to Luke. Luke wants us to know that right after being baptized, Jesus is praying. It is only then that the heavens are opened, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove, while a voice from heaven proclaims, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."*** It’s important to note that for Luke, the Holy Spirit doesn’t simply show up on the Day of Pentecost. She is a vital part of both his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. She shows up before his birth when Mary is filled with the Holy Spirit; she rests on Simeon when the infant Jesus was presented at the temple; she descends like a dove at his baptism; and she leads Jesus into the wilderness right before he begins his public ministry.**** Jesus tends to his relationships with Creator and Spirit through prayer. He is deeply focused on prayer, and in Luke’s gospel, we see him pray more than anywhere else. The act of praying is his primary way of communicating in the two most important relationships in his life - Creator and Spirit. Jesus prays at every pivotal moment in his faith journey - from baptism to the transfiguration, to the cross and the grave.***** During his public ministry, Jesus grounds his work in prayer by going off by himself to pray. Prayer guides his relationship with the disciples - as he chooses whom to call, as he helps them to understand who he truly is, and even before predicting Peter’s denial. He spends a great deal of time teaching his disciples how to pray and encouraging them to be people of prayer. Luke’s gospel features parables about prayer that are only found in Luke. Luke wants us to understand how important prayer is to Jesus. Prayer is how we communicate with our heavenly Parent, Christ, and Spirit. Prayer grounds and guides our work and our play; our relationships with others and our relationship with ourselves. Prayer is at our beginning and at our end. Prayer is in our common life and in our private life. For many of us, we may know intellectually that prayer is essential to our life of faith. Yet we may find it challenging to engage in prayer beyond our common life of community worship. It would be tempting to tell ourselves praying together once a week is enough. But that is a bit like eating one really beautiful and healthy meal that has been lovingly prepared each week, only to graze on whatever snacks we might find available in the cupboard, in the fridge, or at the gas station check-out line. One is done with great intention and care, while the other is mindless. Writer Flora Slosson Wuellner once wrote: “Most of our problems with prayer arise from our tendency to turn spiritual growing into a set of laws or a gymnastic exercise. I have seen great inner struggle, fatigue, and guilt result when we treat prayer like a discipline… When we pray we are relating to Somebody - the supreme Somebody. But as with any healthy relationship, it can’t be turned into a set of laws, even good laws. Any relationship that remains whole is based on a commitment of ongoing trust, which expresses itself in varying and growing ways all our lives. It is best to have some form of deliberate opening to God each day, but we need not be troubled if the form and expression change. That is as it should be. God’s love is a growing personal relatedness in which we are loved and challenged to love without limit. This transforming friendship always nurtures before it challenges as well as during the challenge.”****** Prayer is our primary way of engaging in our relationship with the Holy One throughout our faith journey. We can anticipate that our prayer life is going to look different during varying seasons of our lives. When we are young, prayer may look more like sending God a mental text of our essential needs or wants. I bet I’m not the only one whose parent taught them the prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep… For most of my childhood I offered this brief prayer before sleep, which would always conclude with a list that featured my mom, our cats, and others. As a young teenager, this list became quite long, as I discovered the complexities of relationships. This form of prayer which had always worked for me, started to feel ineffective. Not because God wasn’t hearing me anymore, but rather because I knew I needed something more of God, and that God wanted more of me. I started to pay attention to other ways of praying, and my prayer life evolved. As we grow and mature in faith, this will happen dozens of more times. Our prayer life is always shifting and evolving. Yet the Holy One remains constant in their desire to be our most dear companion. Ready to journey with us and hold our struggles, grief, and worries; to explore the questions that rest on our hearts; to celebrate the joy of our lives; to help us see all there is to give thanks for; to be in the stillness and silence with us. Ready to be the balm to any loneliness our souls may feel; to hold the cares and concerns of the human family and the senselessness we so often face. As we grow and mature in our faith, we come to appreciate that nothing is off limits in our prayer life with the Holy One. That we can make use of different kinds of prayer when we need to have different kinds of conversations. That listening may be as important as anything we might ever say. The particulars of how, when, where we pray are going to be different at different chapters of our lives - and that’s as it should be. What matters is showing up and engaging in our relationship with our heavenly Parent, Christ, and Spirit. Prayer is how we cope with a challenging world. And maybe most importantly, it’s how we hold onto and learn to embody HOPE in a way that is modeled after Christ. That lifts up God’s dream for this world above all else. This year we will be spending a lot of time with Luke's gospel. We will read and hear more stories where Jesus models a healthy prayer life and where he teaches his followers how to pray. This is an invitation for us to reflect on and possibly deepen our prayer life. Whatever that looks like at this juncture in our life. In the end, there is no right or wrong way to pray and engage in our relationship with the Holy One. What matters is that we show up to be an equal partner in the relationship, and engage with great intention and care. As we head back into the world this week, I would invite each of us to reflect on our prayer life.
Lectionary Readings:
Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22; Psalm 29 * Daily Prayer for All Seasons, p. 41. ** Matthew 2:1-12 NRSV; Luke 2:22-40 NRSV; Luke 3:21-22 NRSV *** Luke 3:15-22 NRSV **** Luke 1:15; 2:22-40; 3:16; 4:1 ***** Mark Allan Powell, Introduction to the New Testament, p.172. ****** Flora Slosson Wuellner, Prayer, Stress, and our Inner Wounds, 18-19. ![]() by lay preacher, Will Harron All rulers shall bow down before him, and all the nations do him service. For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress and the oppressed who has no helper. Amen Good morning saints! In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. So begins today’s gospel passage, the story of the three wise men, sometimes kings, sometimes Magi. These mysterious figures travel from the east to find a King they scried in the stars and encounter Jesus. Not minding the lowliness of his appearance, they bestow gifts on him from their treasure chest - gold and the sacred anointing spices of frankincense and myrrh, before travelling back to their homeland - and outfoxing Herod the schemer king in the bargain. This is such a great story, and it bookends a season of story. Christmas is a twelve-day-long feast, beginning in the evening of Christmas Eve and ending on the eve of Epiphany, the Twelfth-night. January sixth marks the formal Feast of the Epiphany, and the start of the Epiphany season between Christmas and Lent, a brief return to the regular weekly cycle of Christian life. But all throughout the twelve days and Epiphany, we are treated to the vivid stories of the birth and first days of Jesus. Christmas Eve and Christmas give us the stories of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter and finding it in a barn and the angels appearing to the shepherds announcing glad tidings. Holy Innocents tells the shocking story of the aftermath of the Wise Men’s visit, and the precarity of life amidst the brutal paranoia of empire. Holy Name enfolds Jesus into the Jewish life of his family. And at the Epiphany, we have this story of kingship, of mystery, and of wisdom. What are we to make of all of this? I think this set of stories is so striking partially because it is only through Matthew and Luke’s gospels that we get them. The literary quality of Mark is so striking in part because of its insistent pacing, opening with an adult Jesus beginning his ministry, and the style of John is expressed by opening with the creation of the Universe, and Jesus’s place in it. Luke and Matthew have different but often similar stylistic goals in their telling of the gospel. They both build richer settings, embellishing the spare stories told in Mark with additional details, settings, and explanations. Luke and Matthew feel more story-like, in part because they are aware of and playing into tropes - both in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Greek society they are enmeshed in. They are telling stories that their listeners are primed to hear, and understand. I think this is especially present in Matthew’s story of the Epiphany. His Gospel begins by situating Jesus in the genealogy of David, claiming Jesus’s kingship by tying it to the power of David’s special relationship with God. Matthew then tells of Jesus’s conception and birth by situating Jesus as the answer to prophetic riddles and cyphers about the continuation of Israel after the exile to Babylon and the destruction of the ancient kingdoms of David - another sign of Jesus being the long-promised king, right down to being born in Bethlehem, the ancient city of David. But the story of the Epiphany uses a different set of literary allusions. Wise men from the east - Magi, a word that in Greek derives from the Zoroastrian priests of the ancient Persian Empire, have arrived in Jerusalem. Practicing the arcane and scientific craft of astrology, which requires precise knowledge about the movement of the stars and the meanings of each possible configuration, these mysterious foreigners have determined that a King of the Jews has been born, and they have arrived, inexplicably and with no warning or expectation or further explanation, to give him homage. This isn’t like any other story in the bible. This is a set of tropes out of Greek literature, sounding more like Herotodus or Xenophon than Moses or Jeremiah. But it fits the setting - the Greek-speaking Hellenistic culture overlaid on the region by the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors, even more than the Roman occupation, have deeply shaped the Judaea of this time. And even if Matthew is writing to an audience further afield, Hellenistic Greek culture and literature dominates the Eastern Mediterranean. Even with this shift in literary genre, Matthew continues to underscore his theme - Jesus is the promised King. The heavens and earth are bending themselves to proclaim it - a universal kingship that is both enmeshed in and greater than any previous understanding of kingship. Imagine the story set today, using some of our current frames of reference: Headline: Nuclear scientists from Los Alamos have just arrived in Jerusalem looking for the next President, because their isotopes have determined that he will be born in the West Bank. This reflects some of the strangeness of this story - and also the authority that the Magi have to make their particular claim, finding meaning in the unfathomable makings of the universe. I think another retelling, using a different set of modern literary references, can give us insight from a different angle. In ancient days, three wizards arrived at the great city in search of the promised king. The usurping lord of the city sought to turn the encounter to his advantage, but the wizards evaded the evil lord and made their way to the most unlikely place, to the most unlikely boy, in a humble village. Bowing to him, they offered him three gifts to use on his quest to kingship: Gold, frankincense and myrrh. They then disappeared, returning to their homeland and confusing the evil lord, who struck out in anger. The mythical, mystical dimensions of the Epiphany are apparent in this retelling. The echos of the hero’s journey, one of our current cultural tropes, give us places to anchor ourselves in the story. We know the child faces a long journey, that the visit of these wizards will send him far from his home, and that even when he triumphs at the end, there will be a bittersweet note to that ending. We can guess that these gifts will have some place in the real or symbolic ending of the story. And we can cheer the fall of the evil lord, whose power seems so real and tangible at the beginning. All of these stories, and all of our Christmas stories, and the Epiphany itself - teach us to pay attention. The Advent imperative to keep awake is redoubled. Incredible things are afoot - the powers of princes and potentates are of no account to the order of the universe, which is bending towards one born in the most lowly and unlikely of places. At the rising of his star, Jesus is born and the world takes notice - even Herod is forced to pay attention, and his cruellest orders are unable to halt the progress of the King of Kings. And this infant grows up, and just as we’ve heard this story before, we’ve heard the story of his ministry, his journey towards Jerusalem, and his kingship, which does not lead where the tropes, ancient and modern, lead us to look, leading conquering armies, being sworn into earthly office, being crowned and anointed atop glittering palaces - but instead leads to something more horrible and more amazing - the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the full re-ordering of life over death, the deliverance from the triumph of evil and the horror of death. This re-ordering is ongoing amidst us to this day. Even amidst the deaths of Holy Innocents, the journey of refugee families fleeing oppression and war, the forces of Empire rampant and rampaging in all of their power and paranoia - there is a star rising, a hope among us, and a child, a king, a promise, that shows us where God is: For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress and the oppressed who has no helper. He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; he shall preserve the lives of the needy. He shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence, and dear shall their blood be in his sight Amen |
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