From The Rector
Dear friends and members,
As my household said farewell to the old year we shared a bottle of Newport Vineyard's wine with a label that read, "Kick 2020 to the Curb." This made us laugh as we turned our attention toward a better year we hope is on the way. I'm guessing that all of us symbolically turned the pages on our calendars from 2020 to 2021 with similar hope and anticipation.
The first week of the new year has surely been chaotic and troubling as we have watched the crisis unfolding in Washington D.C. There remain many uncertainties as we wait for transitions, healing, justice and stability. In Rhode Island as in many places, the pandemic has never been more serious. We have hit new records for infections again and again in recent days. Still, I encourage us to hold onto hope that better days are coming. God is being revealed. This is the time to bear witness to the hope of the world as revealed in Jesus Christ.
This is the season after the Epiphany, which we marked on January 6. This year the feast coicided with the insurrection in our nation's capital. Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of the Christ to the nations as we recall the three wise men who followed a star to the place where the child was. The wise men encountered the Christ after following a star that led them to the place where the child lay. Along the way, they also encountered the tyrant, King Herod, who sought to destroy the infant Jesus. Of course he had wanted to destroy the child, because this messiah, this child bore a love more powerful than anything on earth, more powerful than any human king or any destructive mob that Herod could ever incite. Herod was afraid of the power of this loving messiah and so he stoked fear and violence. And still that messiah's love prevailed. It prevails still. God is revealing the truth to us. Watch for it. Listen to it.
These are difficult and confusing days, to be sure. Let us look for what God is revealing in the midst of it all. We are in transition. Our nation is in transition. Perhaps the whole creation is in transition. We are not able to see fully what is taking place. Know that God is present and is revealing the truth to us and in us. Our task is to see, hear, and know that God is being made known as we walk in the way of love.
My sermon this week will consider how God's Word reveals patterns of truth about the creation and about our identity.
Faithfully yours, Jennifer+
A Video from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry
Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry offers important teaching for all of us at this moment of national crisis. I invite you to watch and listen to his witness here.
