Dear Friends,
I came across this poem on which to meditate for this feast of Epiphany. It’s by someone we might call a contemporary Anglican poet –his name is Malcolm Guite.
What this poet captures so beautifully I think, is the good news of the birth of God’s Son who comes to make things right in this world –to undo all the wrong that we do; to restore justice; to remake us into the image of God’s love.
The poem speaks of the power of God threatening the powers and principalities of this world. It speaks of the power of love over fear, and of right over might.
And it does this, not by mentioning the picturesque bits of the Christmas story: kings and three gifts, but by centering on the difficult bits – the parts we often pass over: refugees on the run from a murderous and manipulative ruler.
And it shows where God is in this story: with the vulnerable, with the threatened, with the hungry, the poor, and the innocent. And this revealing of God’s presence –this Epiphany–shows us very clearly where we as followers of Jesus should also be. As, over the course of our lives, we learn to become more and more like Christ, it is clear that the mission of God is all about loving and protecting these little ones.
May you embrace God’s mission too –this Epiphany and always.
Faithfully,
The Right Reverend Dr. Susan J.A. Bell
Bishop of Niagara
Refugee: A Sonnet for Epiphany
We think of him as safe beneath the steeple
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower
Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled.
The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,
And death squads spread their curse across the world.
But every Herod dies, and comes alone
To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.
–Malcolm Guite(b.1957)Guite, Malcolm.”Refugee”Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year,Canterbury Press, 2012, p. 16
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