Epiphanytide Devotionals

We spent much time during Lent and Eastertide earlier this year reflecting together upon claiming time itself as sacred, exploring a variety of spiritual practices further aligning our daily lived experience with Christ.  The goal of every practice, every habit,...

This past week we’ve been reflecting together on who reveals God to us.  Who manifests God’s divine presence to us in those epiphanic moments of encounter?  Of course God can do that as God so wills, and we’ve explored the Trinitarian mystery of God’s...

Yes class, today we solve for church!  Yesterday I made a shocking claim, quoting Pastor Bill Hybels, that the local church is the Hope of the World.  I qualify that today to include my belief that any and all congregations in all their myriad forms compose the Body...

God loves to surprise me.  There are some life partners, some life legacies, some fellow pilgrims on life’s long and winding road we can anticipate, see and expect.  There are many we work hard to cultivate on our team because we want or need them in our lives.  But...

In an odd twist, we won’t be focusing upon today’s Feast Day in the Episcopal Church’s saint calendar, but today’s observance proffers a great launching pad!  Today we commemorate Timothy and Titus, companions and disciples to Saint Paul who both became bishops and...

One week after the first church pillar, Peter, comes the other twin Christian tower.  Today we mark the Conversion of Saint Paul the Tardy Apostle, Apostle to the Gentiles, and perhaps among the primary reasons any of us are Christian at all.  Oddly, he only has two...

Today’s Third Sunday After the Epiphany readings are brief, compressed and summary in their liturgical form but epic in inference to our lives.  Let’s take them in turn for our devotional today… I am beyond convinced the Book of Jonah is NOT a usual prophetic book. ...

Not all saints inhabit distant antiquity.  For Episcopalians, today is the Feast Day of Phillips Brooks, Priest, Bishop, Homilist and Hymnist.  Brooks belongs to the 19th century, 1835-1893, a period of sustained turbulence for mainline American Protestantism.  He was...

Elemental.  Raw.  Energetic.  God’s dynamic, energizing, and powerful presence, personal and palpable, whom scripture most often refers to as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God or simply the Spirit.  We explored a bit of the Spirit in the closing days of Eastertide,...

Oh, gwwaaaddd…if I had a dime for every time in the last six months we’ve heard that statement from a slightly frowning, forehead creased in earnest yet empathetic head-slightly-cocked leaning forward politician, we’d be rich!  I note that what usually follows that...

So there I was (this is how we start personal stories in our family) just after a very fun Christmas.  For reasons beyond the scope of this devotional space, I was full tilt towards a Personal Pity Party.  You know the PPP refrain…I’m not important to anyone, no one...

Today is the Feast Day of the Confession of Saint Peter, another of the significant saints’ days in the Incarnation cycle.  While Peter and Paul are traditionally celebrated together on June 29th, (and Paul’s Conversion is coming up in a week’s time) each receive...

הִנֵּֽנִי׃ in Hebrew (pronounced Hin-NEIGH-nee), one of the most impactful responses in scripture.  Here I am.  The root appears 318 times in the bible, this compound response about 30 times.  In variant forms Abraham, Moses, Samuel (today’s Old Testament reading),...

Once again I am enjoying daily readings from Robert Wright’s excellent Daily Office Readings from the Early Church.  I especially appreciate how different, and how erudite, the early church mothers and fathers were in explicating Christian faith to the world.  Without...

A second beloved Epiphany hymn once again hails from 19th century England…boy were they busy composing hymns then!!  Anglican priest and bishop Reginald Heber composed Brightest and Best Are the Sons of the Morning in 1811 for his parish in Shropshire, England.  The...

A more personal reflection today dear readers….since I have been living in an extended household situation, I have more flexibility to decorate your parish rectory more seasonally.  Empty nesting seems to mean I notice more and smaller things more readily than I did...

O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the Peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the...

Like Advent and Christmas, Epiphany enjoys some customary hymnody.  I am pleased to share this first significant American contribution to the classic holiday hymnody of the Episcopal Church.  Yep, We Three Kings of Orient (the hymn’s technical name) is thoroughly...

Dangit, dangit, dangit!  Why O Lord, why?!  Of all the sections of Egeria’s Journal, our almost sole, priceless 4th century AD/CE eyewitness to the creative Christian worship arising straight out of the ground in...

The First Sunday of Epiphany is anchored by the final Incarnation cycle theophany, a shockingly intimate and surprising appearance of God at the Baptism of our Lord…

Hard to fit all this consequential Epiphany material into just one day!  Magic’s just like that!  So, our Matthean magi dressed up by Christian legendariums then…

“The Magi were not kings, but kings of kings!”  I still remember that impressive claim of the Reverend Mark Link, S.J. (Society of Jesus, or Jesuit) from my 9th grade theology textbook These Stones Will Shout.  From Tampa Jesuit High School’s drab Gulf Coast concrete...

Slow and easy here….at the very heart of Epiphany, and indeed of the entire Incarnation cycle (Advent/Christmas/Epiphany) lies a complex experience theologians call theophany from the ancient Greek…

welcome to the formal close of the Christmas season (kinda) and opening of the third and final portion of the Incarnation trilogy of seasons, with a vigorous festival celebrating the 3 Magi visiting the Christ-child (mostly)…