Over the last week, I have been seeing post after post on social media and article after article in news apps quoting people on the ground who confess their shock at seeing people being asked for “papers” to prove their citizenship.

Each confession goes something like, “I never thought I would see the day when someone would be asked to show their papers - not here, not in this country.”

Over and over again, people keep referencing Nazi Germany as the point of comparison - that what is happening now in places like Minnesota and Maine are on parallel with the actions and intentions of the Gestapo in the 1930s and 40s. How quick we are to forget the history of our own nation, the stories of the marginalized and oppressed right here within our borders: stories from indigenous communities whose children were ripped away from their families and communities and sent to boarder schools where they were violently forced to assimilate. Stories from black folk who bear the collective trauma of enslavement, Jim Crow laws, segregation, disproportionate police brutality and incarceration.

Over the last week, I have been seeing post after post on social media and article after article in news apps quoting people on the ground who confess their shock at seeing people being asked for “papers” to prove their citizenship.

Each confession goes something like, “I never thought I would see the day when someone would be asked to show their papers - not here, not in this country.”

Over and over again, people keep referencing Nazi Germany as the point of comparison - that what is happening now in places like Minnesota and Maine are on parallel with the actions and intentions of the Gestapo in the 1930s and 40s. How quick we are to forget the history of our own nation, the stories of the marginalized and oppressed right here within our borders: stories from indigenous communities whose children were ripped away from their families and communities and sent to boarder schools where they were violently forced to assimilate. Stories from black folk who bear the collective trauma of enslavement, Jim Crow laws, segregation, disproportionate police brutality and incarceration.

On January 7, Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of three, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. In the days since, people have gathered in prayer and protest across the nation. People in Minneapolis are organizing to be legal observers to raids and confrontations, to protect neighbors, schools, and houses of worship. Earlier this week at a vigil held in Concord New Hampshire, Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld spoke to those gathered about the “cruelty, the injustice, and the horror…unleashed in the city of Minneapolis.” He warned them that in this moment, it is likely that we are entering a “new era of martyrdom,” when many will be called on to make a stand, putting “our bodies…between the powers of the world and the most vulnerable.” Bishop Hirschfeld later clarified in an interview, after his words went viral, that he was not encouraging people to go out looking for death or inciting violence, but that the “signs of the times” that he read in what’s happening in our world today suggest that injury and death are a possibility if we follow Jesus in the business of standing up for the disinherited.

Earlier this week, we began our celebration of Epiphany. In my sermon on Tuesday night, I was explaining how the feast of the Epiphany traditionally encompasses two moments in Jesus’ life: the appearance of the wise men from the East at Jesus’ home and Jesus’ baptism. Anglican tradition, and the Gospels appointed for worship, place the emphasis of the actual feast day, January 6th, on the appearance of the wise men, and the first Sunday after the Epiphany is when we are meant to center Jesus’ baptism and perhaps highlight the Trinity because this is one of the clearest examples of the Trinity in the Gospels.

 But one of the core themes I highlighted Tuesday evening has become even more important to remember as the week continued to unfold: You do not have to be from the right group to know and be known by God. You do not have to be an insider to belong to God. You do not have to be an insider to be worthy of life. The wise men were outsiders who would have been looked upon with suspicion by the Jewish community at best, and at worst dismissed and excluded as idol worshipers.

I imagine you might be wondering what we’re doing here tonight. What are we doing gathered together, this small but mighty crowd, on a rainy Tuesday evening, pulling together a full Sunday morning expression of worship? Why are we not cozy at home?

Tonight, twelve days after Christmas, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany. We will then observe the season of Epiphany until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. The history of this feast day is a little complicated, and it serves to mark different events in the western and eastern traditions of Christianity. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this is the day that they remember the Baptism of our Lord, which represents the institution of baptism and the revelation of the Trinity. God the Father claims Jesus the Son through an act of the Holy Spirit. That’s a pretty big deal.

In many Western traditions, however, Epiphany is when the church remembers the arrival of the magi, the wise men from the East to bring gifts and worship Jesus, when Jesus was made known to the gentiles.

Nearly two months ago, I shared in a sermon a quote attributed to Karl Barth, a 20th-century theologian, and contemporary of Dietrich Boenhoeffer. He said, the people of God ought not consider themselves a religious society concerned only with certain themes, but should remember that they are in the world and therefore need both the Bible and the Newspaper. On the one hand, Barth is insisting that Christians are called to be faithful readers of Scripture, to allow the words of our Bible to penetrate our souls and open us to the truth of God. On the other hand, he is also insisting that as we do so, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening in the world around us. For Barth, Scripture is the lens through which we are called to critically engage with the news of the world’s happenings and the interpretive framework through which to understand our place in them.

Christmas is a time of tradition – traditions we keep and traditions we make. When I was growing up, one of our family traditions was watching some version of Charles Dickons’ classic, “A Christmas Carol.” It is a story of profound redemption and transformation. A story of how one man is brought face to face with the stories of his past that shaped who he became, the stories of his present that tugged on his heart strings and opened space for empathy to grow, and the story of his future in which his own mortality shatters his self-perception and false sense of security. The visitations he received from the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future were intrusive and disruptive, drawing him into a web of time that blurred the lines between the life he had lived and the life that he could still live. At the heart of this story lies the conviction that hope is never lost, that faith in love being born anew is never misplaced.

            The prophets of ancient Israel held a similar conviction. Dispersed and traumatized through military conquest and exile, the people of ancient Israel were confronted by stories of their past, their present, and their future. The prophets were masters at reading the signs of the times, of seeing in the nation’s present circumstances the root causes of past actions and inactions, naming in the present a reality that challenged the privileged and comforted the disinherited, and pointing to a future guaranteed by divine promise and faithfulness. This conviction lived on in the hearts and words of our Gospel writers, whose hope was bolstered by the prophetic visions of the past and provided an interpretive framework for understanding what they saw unfold in the person of Jesus and the implications for his life and the witness he bore in his ministry.

Growing up, I was the only one of my friends who actually liked my name. McKenzi Jo Roberson, shortened to Kenzi when I was a kid because it was two less letters to write in what felt like a long name and cheekily remaining as Kenzi when I learned for a school project that the traditional Scottish family name MacKenzie means “descendant of wise leader,” so just Kenzi would mean my name was wise leader. I even liked my name so well that when I went through my phase of wanting to be an author and needed a pen name I settled on Jo MacKenzie.

Names are important. Across many cultures of folklore, you do not want to give your name to magical beings, because giving them your name is giving them immeasurable power over you. Names create the reality we live in, both giving shape to people and places and such, and names making meaning of it all. Names are relational, something given and something received. They hold stories and memories as well as hopes and dreams.

The words of judgement in Matthew are quite striking. I can see it so clearly, the feet of the judge firmly planted on the ground, the axe in their hand sharp and glinting in the sun, ready to swing the moment they notice the lack of good fruit. And when I hear of the fire I think of the Epiphany bonfires my grad school would throw, where people would bring their Christmas trees to Golden Gardens and burn them in the fire rings. Those trees would burn, the flames reaching fifteen feet high. It was a fearsome thing, Lord knows I wasn’t going to be the one to start those fires. And to imagine a fire like that but unquenchable? I couldn’t tell you if I start sweating from the anxiety or the imagined heat.

Today, we enter the holy season of Advent. For many of us, this season is a time to hear once again the stories of our faith that announce the promise of God’s salvation and anticipate the fulfillment of that promise in the birth of Jesus. Culturally, Advent is the long season that leads finally to Christmas day. But this season is not just about looking back. This season also bids us to look forward, to a final day of judgment, to the culmination of God’s day of salvation when the fullness of God’s reign will be established.

We’ve made it! It’s the last Sunday of ordinary time! The interminable green season has found its terminus. The liturgical new year, Advent 1, happens just next week! All of which means, in some corners of the Church, that today is the feast of Christ the King.

Karl Barth, a prominent 20th-century theologian who wrote at the height of Nazi nationalism and counted himself part of the “confessing church” alongside others like Deitrich Boenhoffer, is often credited with saying that the people of God ought not consider themselves a religious society concerned only with certain themes, but should remember that they are in the world and therefore need both the Bible and the Newspaper.

Christians have always been story tellers. Of course we have, we have an incredible story to tell! God became human. What a premise. And this God lived a fully human life, bringing God-sanctioned dignity to all that we experience. Then this God died. What grief and sorrow. What despair. But then! In the denouement to end them all, through dying this God has defeated death and been resurrected, opening the door to new life and the fullness of love and justice and liberation.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

We hear these words repeated throughout our reading from Jeremiah, this morning. For many of us, I suspect that the promised coming days and new covenant bring to mind a particularly Christian reading of this passage. We think about Jesus, about the Christian scriptures, about the Church. In doing so, we tend to lose the connection between the promises proclaimed in this passage and the experience of those to whom these promises were first uttered. In order to understand the “days that are coming,” we need to first understand the days in which these promises were made.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

We hear these words repeated throughout our reading from Jeremiah, this morning. For many of us, I suspect that the promised coming days and new covenant bring to mind a particularly Christian reading of this passage. We think about Jesus, about the Christian scriptures, about the Church. In doing so, we tend to lose the connection between the promises proclaimed in this passage and the experience of those to whom these promises were first uttered. In order to understand the “days that are coming,” we need to first understand the days in which these promises were made.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

We hear these words repeated throughout our reading from Jeremiah, this morning. For many of us, I suspect that the promised coming days and new covenant bring to mind a particularly Christian reading of this passage. We think about Jesus, about the Christian scriptures, about the Church. In doing so, we tend to lose the connection between the promises proclaimed in this passage and the experience of those to whom these promises were first uttered. In order to understand the “days that are coming,” we need to first understand the days in which these promises were made.