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Hear a reflection on the stations here.

EPIPHANY‘09

> CALL TO WORSHIP- ISAIAH 60:1-6

ONE: Get up! Shine out! Your light has come. Look to the east, God is rising like the sun in the blackest part of the night. The Darkness has covered you in a thick icy blanket, smothering everyone everywhere; but the brightness is coming, warming every square inch of creation, every corner of your heart.

It’s brilliant!  Look, pick your chin up and look, people are drawn to this light emanating from deep within you. Look, oh look, it’s a homecoming! –Runaway sons coming home to the embrace of their fathers. Lost little girls getting swept up in their mother’s arms. Doesn’t it make your heart jump? It will be such a rich experience—everyone coming home, a true home. Everyone coming to thank God. And there will be dancing, singing, good food, good drink, and good friends all around. It will be good. It will be home.

>SONG: Arise by Restoration Project

>INTRO to Epiphany

TWO: Tonight is called epiphany.  The word itself means ‘light rising to the surface’ – and the season of epiphany is characterized by questions and by quest… Who is this child that has been born for us?
What’s God up to?  Who is all of this for?  Tonight is the first of the epiphanies:  This is a service for all questioners and for all those who quest.  Tonight we follow three wise sages traveled long distances from east of Israel, crossing deserts, rivers and mountainous regions, following the maps of the day—the
clear night sky, unsure of exactly what or who they would find—but knowing that this would change everything.  And it is the same for us tonight.

We enter this story through the window of three poets: first is Rumi, who was a 13^th

century mystical, sufi, poet from ancient Persia, also a wise man from the east. And then an American poet from the last century, T.S. Elliot, and lastly we’ll hear a creation of an early 21^st century Christian community in London called Vaux, which mixes together Rumi’s poetry and St. matthew’s second chapter.  So now as you listen and as you sing, let your heart question and let your heart quest.  God is drawing us to worship.

>POEM: WHOEVER BROUGHT ME HERE by Rumi

THREE:  All day I think about it, then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea. ?My soul is from elsewhere,

I’m sure of that,?and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,?I’ll be completely sober.

Meanwhile,?I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes?

What is the soul? ?I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.

I don’t plan it.? When I’m outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

>SONG: We Three Kings

We three kings of Orient are; Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

Field and fountain, moor and mountain, Following yonder star.

O star of wonder, star of light, Star with royal beauty bright,

Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect light.

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain Gold I bring to crown Him again,

King forever, ceasing never, Over us all to reign.

Chorus

>POEM: Journey of the Magi (pt. 1) by T.S. Elliot

FOUR: A cold coming we had of it.? Just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a long journey: ?The ways deep and the weather sharp,?the very dead of winter.?  And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,?lying down in the melting snow.?  There were times we regretted?the summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, ?and the silken girls bringing sherbet. ?Then the camel men cursing and grumbling?and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,?and the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,?and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly?and the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:?A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,?sleeping in snatches,?with the voices singing in our ears, saying?that this was all folly.

>SONG: LONG WAY AROUND THE SEA by LOW

>READING:
Faithful Wanderers (from Vaux)

ONE: Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

TWO: Where is the one who has been called King of the Jews?

THREE: We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.

FOUR: After they heard the King, they went on their way and the star they had seen in the
east went ahead of them…

THREE: Until it stopped over the place….until it stopped over the place where the
child lay.

*pause*

ONE: A vagrant wanders empty ruins. Suddenly he’s wealthy. But don’t be
satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation, so that everyone will
understand the passage – “We have opened you”.

TWO: Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

THREE: Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

FOUR: Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

*pause*

ONE: Sometimes it seems everyone else knows what they are doing here. Maybe. But my
mind burns with wondering about why I am on this path and what I have
to bring.

TWO: Everyone else know what they are doing here.

THREE: Maybe. Maybe not.

FOUR: Wondering about why I’m here and what I have to bring.

*pause*

FOUR: In deep nights I dig for you like treasure. For all I have seen that clutters the surface of my world is poor and paltry substitute for the beauty of you.

ONE: … that has not happened yet. That has not happened yet. That has not happened yet. That has not happened yet.

TWO: My hands are bloody from digging. I lift them, hold them in the wind so they can branch like a tree.

THREE: Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky as if you had shattered there, dashed yourself to pieces in some wild impatience.

FOUR: What is this I feel now, falling on this parched earth, softly, like a spring rain?

*pause*

ONE: Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

*pause*

TWO: The birth of God, captured in a star, its light penetrating earth time. The Christ
longing to be found. Distant meteor, earthdwelling babe, faithful wanderer.

THREE: ‘Faithful’ and ‘wanderer’—seeming opposites. Yet one drives the other. There’s no true faith without wandering. There’s no true wandering without faith.

ONE: ‘Wanderer’ and ‘faithful’—seeming opposites. Yet one drives the other. There’s no true wandering without faith. There’s no true faith without wandering.

FOUR: The birth of God, captured in a star, its light penetrating earth time. The Christ longing to be found. Distant meteor, earthdwelling babe, faithful wanderer.

*pause*

ONE: I would love to kiss you.

TWO: I would love to kiss you.

THREE: I would love to kiss you.

FOUR: I would love to kiss you.

ONE: The price of kissing is your life.

TWO: The price of kissing is your life.

THREE: The price of kissing is your life.

FOUR: The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life
shouting, “What a bargain, let’s buy it!”

ONE: Whoever brought me

TWO: Whoever brought me here

THREE: Whoever brought me here will have to take me

FOUR: Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

*pause*

ONE: And the story ends with these starstruck travelers, having been warned in a dream,
agreeing to go home by another route.

TWO: Take me home.

THREE: Take me home.

FOUR: Take me home.

>SONG: We three Kings

Frankincense to offer have I; Incense owns a Deity nigh;

Prayer and praising, voices raising, Worshiping God on high.

CHORUS

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume Breathes a life of gathering gloom;

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, Sealed in the stone cold tomb.

CHORUS

>POEM: Journey of the Magi (pt. 2) by T.S. Elliot

FOUR: Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,?wet, below the snowline, smelling of vegetation;?With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,?and three trees on the low
sky,?and an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. ?Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,?six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,?and feet kickingthe empty wine-skins. ?But there was no information, and so we continued?and arrived at evening, not a moment too soon.

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,?and I would do it again, but set down?this, set down?this: were we lead all that way for?Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,?we had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,?but had thought they were different; this Birth was?hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.?  We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,?but no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,?with an alien people clutching their gods. ?I should be glad of another death.

> SONG: We Three Kings

Glorious now behold Him arise; King and God and sacrifice;

Alleluia, Alleluia, Sounds through the earth and skies.

CHORUS

>FREE FORM:  Here a reflection on these stations here..

ONE:  The message of Epiphany is that all who search will be found.  We are asked to trust this. It is often hard…  Christ was offered 3 gifts by the 3 wise astrologers, we will contemplate these through 3 stations. You are invited to visit each station on the stage, starting with gold to the left, and progressing through frankincense in the center and myrrh to the right, and in so doing, meet Christ, reflecting on 3 sides of his character and 3 callings for your new year:

>OFFERINGS: Arise by Restoration Project

>COMMUNION:

RYAN: ?    A vagrant wanders empty ruins. Suddenly he is wealthy. God longs to meet us in our poverty, our uselessness, but we have sought to be rich in our competence, useful in our desire for significance. O God,

MANY:    Forgive us and bring us home

RYAN: ?    My mind burns with wondering about why I’m here and what I have to bring. God longs for us to walk towards his revelation, to journey to his mortal side, but we have doubted his interest in us and have retreated to the comfort of our soul-searching. O God,

MANY:    Forgive us and bring us home

RYAN: ?    For all I have seen that clutters the surface of my world is poor and paltry substitute for the beauty of you.  God longs to un-clutter our lives, that we might brave the desert and grasp hold of the future he has for us. O God,

MANY:    ? Forgive us and bring us home

RYAN:    The Christ, longing to be found, earth dwelling babe, faithful wanderer.  God longs for us likewise to be found, to model Christ, to be earth dwellers with divine perspective, yet we have hidden from him, preferring the comforts of politeness and mediocrity. O God,

MANY:    ? Forgive us and bring us home

RYAN:     There is no true faith without wandering. There is no true wandering without faith.?  God longs for us to know the intrigue of pilgrimage, yet we have been satisfied in the cul-de-sacs of our limitations, afraid of how poor and uncomfortable the stable to which he leads us might be. O God,

MANY:    ? Forgive us and bring us home

RYAN:    All who search will be found.  God always welcomes the gift of a soft heart.  You are already forgiven.  Find a piece of home in the presence of Christ, in the hospitality of the Eucharist.

RYAN: Tonight we have found our journey and our paths.  Lord, we commit ourselves to searching and being found.
MANY: This is home

RYAN: We have found gift, because this gift has found us.  Lord, we welcome your grace and therefore commit ourselves to giving, and being gift.
MANY:  This is home

RYAN :  We have found sacrifice.  We break the bread of your body and eat it remembering your willingness to be broken for us.
MANY:? This is home

RYAN: We have found new life, because this new life has found us. We pour out the wine of your blood and drink it remembering that in you all things are renewed.
MANY: This is home

RYAN: Holy Spirit come!  Be a guide within us. Be a presence within this bread and wine. Give us a taste of home!

> COMMUNION SONG: BLESSED by Tara Ward

>ANNOUNCEMENTS

>BLESSING

ONE: Faithful wanderers, star gazers, dreamers.

ALL: We have begun a journey to seek truth and beauty

ONE: You who have traveled far, whose hands bleed from digging

ALL: We strain our eyes for traces of God.

ONE: In meeting Christ, the journey is changed.

ALL: We do not have to re-tread old harmful ways

ONE: Go and tread a new path, and with God’s blessing, take a different journey home.

ALL: Thank you God.

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