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Dear St. Christopher’s Family,
Being a part of a church like ours can invite some suspicion from those outside. One of the most common criticisms I hear is that we as Episcopalians really don’t know or understand the Bible. By some measures, this is true. We don’t place a very high value on memorizing a lot of verses, or being able to use the Bible to cut short any debate that isn’t going our way by an appeal to one verse or another. But knowing the Bible is more than this. We have the Bible to remind us of the stories of God and of his People. It is easy to overlook them, especially when we’ve heard them over and over our whole lives. Somehow they become background noise. If we are new to the Church, it’s likely we came to know God not through the Bible, but through the people we are sitting near to. This is a great experience, but it doesn’t do much to help bring us up to speed on the plot points of a story we’ve come to be a part of.
These Sundays after Epiphany are a crash course in figuring out who Jesus is. For the next five weeks, we’re going to hear stories about how Jesus introduces himself, first to his disciples as a teacher, then to the people he grew up with as a healer (one of the functions of a priest at the time), and finally, in the last Sunday after Epiphany, by being transfigured on Mt. Tabor, as everything a Messiah can stand for, being anointed as Priest, Prophet, and King. The stories are familiar, but that may be why we need to listen to them over and over again. The invitation to Andrew and Peter is the same on being offered to you this season. When we want to know more about Jesus, the best way to do that is to “Come and See.”
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