January 6, 2008
Sunday

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, known in Sweden as Trettondag, or Twelfth Day. It commemorates the day the Wise Men, or the Three Kings, or the magi, or the astrologers (whatever your translation or tradition calls them), having followed a star, or a comet, or a conjunction of planets, or maybe just their own gallivanting urges (again, your tradition should be followed), arrived in Bethlehem (or maybe some other place) to pay homage to the child they believed (having been told in dreams) would become king of the Jews. It marks the end of the Christmas season, and is the day you are supposed to rid the house of all Christmas greens, lest bad luck take up residence (this according to the Pennsylvania Germans, who brought the Christmas tree to America).

It is also, most years, a Slump Sunday in my congregation, because it so often coincides with Winterfest, an annual weekend gathering of central Pennsylvania Lutheran high school students at a hotel in Lancaster, a kind of renewal of the spirit most of them acquired at summer church camp that six months later has waned. Our pastors serve on the staff of Winterfest, so our regular Sunday service has a substitute pastor. And just like when you had a substitute teacher in school, having a substitute pastor imparts a sense of just going through the motions that makes for an unsatisfying experience.

I’d actually forgotten that this was Winterfest weekend, because Lynn doesn’t attend it anymore, and in fact doesn’t even live here anymore. When I arrived at church and saw the supply pastor I thought briefly of leaving, maybe taking a meditative walk along the river. But something in me wanted corporate worship this morning, reception of the Eucharist, a chance to stand during the prayers of the people and bring to mind the faces and the names of all those I hold dear, to pray for their well being and give thanks for their presence in my life.

An early mentor who guided me through my return to spiritual practice in the early 1980s taught me a process for addressing both scripture stories and dreams. He believed that both these kinds of narratives were ways for the divine to speak especially to artsy-weirdsy poets like me who live by metaphor and symbol. “You are every person in the story, every element of the dream is a manifestation of you,” he said. Seeing a story that way has helped me not only with dream interpretation and scripture study, but with fiction writing as well.

I started out only half listening to the substitute pastor’s sermon. The story of the visit of the wise men (as they are called in the New Revised Standard Version) is second only to the story of the woman at the well in the way it has shaped my spiritual development. It’s a story of gallivanting, going off in search of something you’re not quite sure about, finding something different from what you expected, and then going home by another route.

Where are you in this story? the minister said, and suddenly he had my attention. Are you Herod, the client king of Judea (a puppet serving at the pleasure of the Roman emperor) who so fears losing his power and control, who so fears change, that he seeks to murder the agent of the change? Are you one of the chief priests and scribes, yes-men to the puppet king who will tell him what he wants to hear in order to preserve their own status? Or are you one of the seekers, willing to walk out in faith and in hope, ready for change?

By the end of the sermon, by the time we were ready to say Lift up your hearts, I felt truly transformed. I pretty much like my life and would like to just rest in the glow of my just-concluded annus mirabilis for a while. But I know change is inevitable, and some of that change will be loss. I walk into the future, strong and loving and fearless.

And ready for the bad luck that might befall me. I was so excited about getting back my creative groove that I spent most of the afternoon writing instead of taking down the Christmas things.

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