Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Christmas to Epiphany

My former parish, Saint Luke's Episcopal Church in Darien Connecticut sent a daily e-message during the 2015 Advent season. There was one that particularly moved me. I offer this message on the Feast of the Epiphany, following the glorious Twelve Days of Christmas. Wednesday, January 6, 2016.
Even described in such general terms Christmas can only be understood as a wonder. That there is this Love of which Paul can say that it never ends, is not a known fact nor some general truth symbolically represented in the Christmas message but also recognizable elsewhere. Can it really be true: God in our world, God in our world? The facts cry out against it, for they speak of God's remoteness from the world and the world's remoteness from God. It needs a confession of faith to recognize reconciliation as truth, a confession whose strength and weakness lies in the fact that it appeals only to revelation and that it can be made and received only by faith. The Creed of the Christian Church is this confession. It appeals only to revelation, it is made only by faith, it demands and expects nothing but faith when it calls the Love which never fails, an event, saying: "He became Incarnate..."
Karl Barth, Christmas

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