WEEK SIX INTRODUCTION 
TITLE: PART THREE--HYMNS OF THANKSGIVING
January 3 - January 6

In the West, Epiphany or Three King’s Day is celebrated this coming Wednesday, January 6th. On the same day in the East, Christians celebrate the Baptism of Christ by John in the Jordan River. This festival is often referred to as Theophany. What both celebrations have in common is a focus on the revelation of God to man. Both Epiphany and Theophany draw us to a place of deep thanksgiving and worship. Gentile Magi led by a star “fell down, and worshipped him” (Matthew 2:11), when they found the infant. And when Jesus came up out of the water, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). What should our response be if not to echo the refrain of the familiar Christmas carol, “O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.” It is reported that during the writing of Messiah, especially the Hallelujah Chorus Handel is famously quoted as saying, “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.” This is reminiscent of St. Paul who reports on someone who was similarly caught up into heaven. Paul writes, “Whether in the body, or out of the body I know not. God knows” (I Corinthians 12:2-3). The final solos and choruses of Messiah move us ever upward and onward as we are transported into a rapturous space. “Worthy is the Lamb” who was born, slain, resurrected, and now sits at the right hand of the Father interceding there for us. To him alone be “power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!” The subject matter and music of the concluding portion of Messiah is a profound opportunity for us to join Handel in glorifying Christ for all that he is, all that he accomplished when he became man, all that he is currently doing, and will one day do for his beloved. Someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess him to be “King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
Amen and Amen!

Day 36 - Sunday, January 3
Title: WE SHALL ALL BE CHANGED
Scripture: I Corinthians 15: 51-53
Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.

Poetry: 
Parkinson’s Disease 
by Galway Kinnell

While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
or rather lets it rest on top of his,
which is permanently clenched shut.
When he turns his head away, she reaches
around and puts in the spoonful blind.
He will not accept the next morsel
until he has completely chewed this one.
His bright squint tells her he finds
the shrimp she has just put in delicious.
She strokes his head very slowly, as if |
to cheer up each hair sticking up
from its root in his stricken brain.
Standing behind him, she presses
her cheek to his, kisses his jowl,
and his eyes seem to stop seeing
and do nothing but emit light.
Could heaven be a time, after we are dead,
of remembering the knowledge
flesh had from flesh? The flesh
of his face is hard, perhaps
from years spent facing down others
until they fell back, and harder
from years of being himself faced down
and falling back, and harder still
from all the while frowning
and beaming and worrying and shouting
and probably letting go in rages.
His face softens into a kind
of quizzical wince, as if one
of the other animals were working at
getting the knack of the human smile.
When picking up a cookie he uses
both thumbtips to grip it
and push it against an index finger
to secure it so that he can lift it.
She takes him then to the bathroom,
and when they come out, she is facing him,
walking backwards in front of him
and holding his hands, pulling him
when he stops, reminding him to step
when he forgets and starts to pitch forward.
She is leading her old father into the future
as far as they can go, and she is walking
him back into her childhood, where she stood
in bare feet on the toes of his shoes
and they foxtrotted on this same rug.
I watch them closely: she could be teaching him   
the last steps that one day she may teach me.
At this moment, he glints and shines,
as if it will be only a small dislocation
for him to pass from this paradise into the next.

WE SHALL ALL BE CHANGED

 This holiday season has had a more charged and anxious kind of waiting. Weary, restless, and absent of calm. In other words, it’s exactly the right time to be reminded that in a moment everything can change. Moreover, everything will change.

In 1 Corinthians 15, we find the Apostle perfectly adamant about the imminent potential of this heavenly interruption. I imagine Paul searching for the right words to tell his hearers how dramatic the change will be. Needed is something beyond the understated poignancy of Jesus: “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” (Luke 8:17, 12:2). No, Paul demands a more startling and poetic image, words that portend the sudden translation of one reality to the next by the “revealer of mysteries.” (Daniel 2:28-30). Hence, he adds, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” This florid expression is the only time the word ‘twinkling’ appears in the Bible, but its broader literary use evokes the force of a strong wind, the rush of fire, or the flapping of wings. Such a pregnant expression should certainly startle us out of our complacent routines and shallow fears.

Grateful as we are for the wake-up call, how do we, then, carry around with us this mysterious seed of promise, trusting that a magnificent transformation awaits us and all things? How do we hold onto this hope, perhaps especially amid the sort of unhallowed trials described in Galway Kinnell’s poem?

In this respect, we find direction from today’s visual art. Aaron Douglas became the leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance by skillfully blending the most stirring images of biblical history with a keen sense of the social struggles of the day.  The balance proved both effective and striking. These visual forms of resistance recover the figural images of African art that had been looted by European modernists like Picasso in order to generate indelible visions of Douglas’ own distinctly modern sensibilities. Consider his black Gabriel from The Judgment Day, standing astride sea and land with both trumpet and key. Douglas’ works, thus, offer a prototype of contemporary Afrofuturism (a diverse artistic and aesthetic movement described by the theorist Kodwo Eshun as a “program for recovering the histories of counter-futures”) for the exceptional way in which they bind together history and hope.

Let’s recall, then, that nothing is lost or wasted in God’s economy (1 Cor. 15:58). The fullest expression of hope - like we see in Douglas’ work—is to take the real stuff of our really broken world and bring it together with the fantastic potentiality of God’s transformative promise. So, keep hope. Imagine change. Embrace the mystery that Christ is making all things new.

Prayer:
Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.
Amen.
--- adapted from a prayer by Desmond Tutu
     Orignally attributed to Sir Francis Drake

Taylor Worley
Associate Vice President of Spiritual Life and University Ministries
Affiliate Professor of Pastoral Theology
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Trinity International University
Deerfield, Illinois

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.