Tag: magi

12 Days of Christmas: A Season

Christmas is 12 days
Because it is supposed to be an entire season
Enough time
to rest
refresh
reflect
It was never supposed to be all stuffed into one day
There was supposed to be
enough time
for journeys
getting lost
finding our way again
and then
eventually
room for
an epiphany

Christmas is
a space
a season

a journey
a wandering
a pondering

—-so if your haven’t done all of the Christmas things
Or if everything didn’t go perfectly

Remember you are in good
wizardly
some would even say
wise
company

Eyvind Earle 3 Magi (The artist for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty)

3 Crowned Men with black beards—identical, holding gifts frankincense, gold and myrrh, with black and Bluegreen cloaks trimmed in golden plants.

Offering the gifts to Mary with a baby (both with black hair) at her breast with a moon/golden plant trimmed halo around them. Mary is dressed in gold trimmed purple.

Magi, the Magical Wisdom

Magi
because
Venturing out
is Magic

Wisdom
is magic
Taking a leap of Faith
is also magic

Packing up for the Journey
Being willing to be Lost
Asking for help
and directions

Glorifying others
Going to an unknown land
Honoring a child
Listening to a woman
a mother
not having to be informed by an angel

Completing the journey
and going home
to tell to the story

Putting all the pieces together
to have a realization
of how this is going to effect
and change your own
life

having an epiphany
is what being a Magi
experiencing the magic
of Christmas
Is all about

May you follow that
Star of Faith
all year

Picture from the well beloved Wandering Wisemen Picture Ministry which is having its final year this year found https://www.facebook.com/thewanderingwisemen

(Epiphany Star Generator Link: https://perchance.org/starwords2022)

Feel free to share/adapt/use with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”

My Poem about rejecting my Star Word: https://open.substack.com/pub/katystenta/p/p-e-f-e-c-t?r=1qkzy4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true

Let’s Write Liturgy Workshop: https://open.substack.com/pub/katystenta/p/lets-write-liturgy-workshop?r=1qkzy4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true
Cost $50

Day 5 Advent Alternative: We 3 Kings

We Magi from Eastern Lands are
Following Heaven’s wisdom Afar
Valley, Fountain, Desert, Mountain
Following Yonder Star

O Star of Wonder, Star of Night
Star with Humble, Beauty Bright
Westward leading, Still Proceeding
Guide us to thy Perfect Light

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain
Gold, a crown for kin-dom come
King forever, ceasing never
Humbly born of grace

Frankincense to offer have I
Incense Trin’ty, Deity nigh
Prayer and Praising
We are raising
Worship them, God most high

Myrrh is mine
It’s bitter perfume breathes
A Life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in a stone cold tomb

Glorious, now, behold Him arise
King and God, Sav’r on High (Sacrifice)*
Alleluia, Alleluia
Heaven to earth replies

Feel free to use/share/adapt with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”

Explanations for some changes: 1. We don’t know how many “kings” there were, and if they were kings. 2. Orient is an out of date and racially charged term lumping a lot of groups together in an uneducated way. 3. Moor carries with it radicalized meanings and Valley/desert/mountain are straight out of scripture 4. I emphasized a little more of Jesus’s humble status 5. Men is changed to more inclusive language 6. God’s Trinity status and Jesus’s status in the Trinity is emphasized

*I am not sure how I feel about this line and substitutionary atonement theory. I waver, and I am definitely behind Jesus as Savior. On the other hand, we do not always have to be comfortable with everything, so I have offered two options.



Some Epiphany, isn’t it?

I wonder how the Magi felt, leaving a small baby full of beauty and hope behind to journey home.

Did they let themselves hope? How terrified were they, God, when the angel appeared to them in a dream and “warned them to go home a different way.”

Is this what Epiphany feels like God? Understanding yet standing up to the real evil that exists in the world? Did the Magi feel a weird mixture of hoping for hope, but not being able to spend time on that yet?

Is Epiphany knowing what you don’t know? Is it finding small joys in babies and families and journeys successfully completed even as Petty Rulers do every single despicable thing to keep their power not caring what innocents will suffer or die along the way?

This is some epiphany, God. Where the vaccine is found, but the virus has not yet been defeated. The Good News is real, but hasn’t been disseminated yet. Where the fullness of already but not yet of salvation and health and peace and change is imminent, but completely out of reach.

What did the Magi pray when they looked upon the star? Did they pray for wisdom? for guidance? for safety? for family and friends who were far away? For the furture that had yet to impend?

Because that’s what I’m praying for this epiphany.

Lord, keep us wondering and wandering in the right direction I pray.

Amen.

Magi from Armenia manuscript of John
Malkon, Gaspar and Baghghazar

Magi & Epiphanies

cross posted on revgalblogpals.org

Its one of those rare Sundays when Narrative Lectionary and RCL mirror one another, and we all pause to celebrate Epiphany. Epiphany is a funny concept. We think of it as a sudden burst of inspiration, but experience is that it is more gradual, like the journey of the magi. Whether the magi come a few days after the birth of Jesus or when he was a toddler or preschooler, the magi are unique because they come after the fact. This gives me comfort, that perhaps its not too late to have an epiphany. Perhaps the window for learning and brilliant inspiration is not so tight as we would make it out to be.

Hook

This would make sense to me because humans need time to adjust. Maybe this is why Jesus grows into adulthood like an other human being. We need time to adjust–Mary and Joseph lost Jesus for 3 days and sort of forgot he was God during that time so there’s another story where adjustment is made manifest. We need time to get used to Jesus, we need time to get to know him. As Christians sometimes the question is asked, when did you first know Jesus? A seemingly innocuous query, I’m not sure that there is a clear answer. Maybe you can point to when your sense of Jesus started to develop but our relationship with God is ongoing and grows and changes with our sense of self.

I often think of how my sense of self grows and changes with time. How the moment of “Happy New Year” is just the beginning. Because even though I theoretically know its 2019, It will be weeks before I start putting the correct date on checks and papers. It will be month before the year gains some kind of shape and meaning and the realization that it actually is a new year will strike me again, and again until it becomes habit.

Knowing Jesus is like this for me, which is why I need the practice, even though I have had 30+ years of practicing the birth of Jesus Christ, its a slow, life-long realization that Christ was born on earth its a struggle to remember that Jesus was fully human like me and that God is somehow enfleshed deity  at the same time that he is human.

Its a journey. Like your career and your relationships. You might be a mother, daughter, wife but what that means grows and changes as a result. I wonder how the magi were changed after their journey. Did they become a family that reunion-ed with one another every year? Did they get so sick and tired of each other that they seldom met after that? Did they become the local storytellers, each telling a different and unique journey under the star to see Jesus?

Funny how the Magi all went on the same journey, but probably learned different things.  Funny how there are four different gospels in the Bible and each choose to focus on a different part of the nativity story. Funny that Matthew even knew about the Magi. Was he there? Did he sit in Mary’s kitchen and hear the story? Was it common knowledge in Bethlehem and Nazareth that these strangers made this journey?

Where do you find the epiphany in the text this week?

Let us know where you are finding God and Epiphany during this Holy Christmas Season.

#magi & #cupcakes

Instead of doing the Kings at the end of Epiphany, we are joining them at the beginning of their journey this year.

I’m going with the idea that the wise men saw the star and actually made it to Bethlehem when Jesus was a baby (there is an idea floating 0ut there that the “three kings” came later, when Jesus was a toddler).

stars

This is an interesting story to be included in the narrative. We are given even less specifics than usual.

Some Magi, more than one, maybe men, maybe women, saw a star and traveled to find a baby in the manger. If they really began their journey in time to see Jesus as a baby, then they were the first ones to hear about Jesus (besides Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth)…weren’t Jewish, they weren’t even local. They were probably African.

The message then, is clear that Jesus has come for all people, for the different ones.

And I, for one, am amazed that this story made it to the birth narrative, because its about some strangers. However, those who were finally getting around to writing it down they included this.

It reminds me of the cupcake story From Jan Edminston (see her blog here https://achurchforstarvingartists.wordpress.com/!). She said one day her church handed out cupcakes, just to share some joy. They weren’t advertising, and if asked they said we are from the church over there and waved vaguely down the way.

It had an impact, because years later, people still remember when that church handed out cupcakes?

Who are your magi? What are your cupcakes.

New Covenant did a flash survey (one day, just whoever was there) and we filled out how we serve God in the community (please write down things that are not directly connected to the church) through prayer, goods, money, talent and time. Keep in mind that attendance maxes out at about 40 adults, and this was not a full Sunday

We support 40 different community charitable organizations through goods and money (and some organizations had multiple donors on top of that!)

We give time and talent to 20 separate community needs!

Prayer is utilized in 17 discrete situations.

These are our cupcakes, these are our magi. This teeny tiny church is nourished and supported and so we go out and make a HUGE difference.

And it doesn’t matter which church over there is the center for all this, but that we have been and will continue to be lead by God to extend love and BUILD THE COMMUNITY!