Pastors Message

  Pastor David Hackmann’s 
February 2012

 

                          Dear Members and Friends of Prince of Peace:

      Grace and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

    

As the secular calendar turns from January to February, the sacred calendar stays fairly steady for most of the twenty-nine days we get from this month in 2012.

We are in the “Sundays after Epiphany” until Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is the 22nd of February this year. 

     The English word “Epiphany” comes to us from the Greek word meaning “to show forth” or “to reveal.”  The liturgical color for these Sundays after Epiphany is green, which symbolizes growth, reminding us of how we constantly grow in our understanding of our Lord’s revelation of himself as Son of God and Son of Man.

     The season begins twelve days after Christmas, on January 6^th, which we call the Day of the Epiphany.  As Matthew tells us in his gospel, the young child in Bethlehem is worshipped by visitors from the East with their gifts of gold, revealing his kingship, and frankincense, revealing his divinity, and myrrh, revealing his death.  The season continues with the Baptism of our Lord, celebrated on the Sunday after January 6^th, as we see with our spiritual eyes the Spirit of God descend dove-like on the now grown man named Jesus, and we hear with our spiritual ears the Father’s pronouncement of this Jesus as his beloved Son. Still wet with the waters of the Jordan River, Jesus -- true man -- is revealed as true God.

     From his first miracle of changing water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee, to his healing the sick and the blind, to his feeding the multitudes, to his raising the dead, to his proclaiming “release to the captives and good news to the poor,” Jesus revealed himself as true God and true man in everything he said and did. 

     This season of Sundays after Epiphany is a good one for us to tune our spiritual ears to hear and focus our spiritual eyes to see how this gracious God of ours continues to reveal himself in you and in me, his baptized sons and daughters of 2012.  This is what our Sunday worship is intended to do, no matter what the season of the Church Year, so I will see you in church these February Sundays after Epiphany as we marvel at this God who reveals himself in so many loving and surprising ways – even in you and me!

 

 

 

 

 

Yours in Christ,
     Pastor Dave