Sermon | The Rev. Ian Oliver | February 1, 2026

Sermon – Trinity Epiphany Lessons and Carols – Jan. 18, 2026; postponed to February 1, 2026

Thank you to Rev. De Volder, Rev. Thorsen, Simon Lee and Trinity Church friends for the invitation to offer a brief Epiphany reflection in the midst of such beautiful music this evening.  Thank you to all the musicians and singers for all your gifts.

There are so many stories and images in this Epiphany season between the coming of the Magi on January 6th and Jesus’ Transfiguration on February 15th.   The season is full of beginnings, of invitation, of revelation and joy.   It is in this season that we meet Jesus for the first time and feel the wonder of his first miracles and proclamation.

Yet, the spiritual dilemma of Epiphany 2026 is experiencing

This season of newness and hope

Alongside the reality of chaos and oppression around us.

We hear the songs of new light going out to the world,

And yet old darkness rises.

We sing of wild bells ringing out the old and in the new

And yet the old sins of power and greed,

Will not flee away.

This evening, as we hear poetry and song

how can we claim Epiphany for 2026?

How can I place myself in the Epiphany story at a time such as this?

As I wondered, I found myself going back to the very beginning of Epiphany and the story of the Magi.

In particular, I thought of popular images of the gifts brought to the Christ child,

As created by Christina Rosetti and Katherine Kennicott Davis.

in the words of the songs: “In the Bleak Midwinter”

And “The Little Drummer Boy.”

These poems and songs somehow stuck with me this Epiphany.

There was something about that image –

Of an unnamed follower coming to the Christ Child alongside the Three Kings.

The Kings bring magnificent gifts, but, the poems ask, what do I have?

What gift do I bring to the newborn King,

The one who comes to inaugurate God’s Kingdom

on this troubled earth?

The one sent to make right what is wrong?

As the story of Jesus begins again,

With what can I welcome him, celebrate him, honor him?

As a witness to his coming and his life at a time such as this,

What gift from my life

Is worthy to lay before the newborn king?

I have three simple suggestions from the songs I mentioned.

First, perhaps the gift I can bring is my song.

Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote

(without the “Pa Rum Pum Pum Pums”)

“Little baby,

I am a poor boy too.

I have no gift to bring

That’s fit to give a King.

Shall I play for you

On my drum?”

As Christ comes to the whole world,

What can I offer?

Perhaps a song of praise,

on a drum, or in a choir,

Written by a great composer, or out of my own head.

With all my talents, or lack of talent,

Can I offer my song,

Inscribed in beautiful verse or hummed tunelessly in the shower,

 to welcome this infant King into 2026?

How can I sing his glory, his humanity,

The wonder and promise of his coming?

Can I be bold enough to offer something creative to God,

To sing or say this greatest story in my own way?

I think of a song like Southwell’s verse

Put so memorably to music in Britten’s Ceremony of Carols

That tells so beautifully the impossible possibility

Of a child come to turn the world upside down.

Southwell wrote:

“This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.”

Can I find my own song, or poem, that says what prose and politics cannot – The joy of the great reversal of the Incarnation –

Of the light shining, and the darkness’ inability to overcome it.

For second gift, I turn to Christina Rosetti, who wrote:

“What can I give Him,
  Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
  I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
  I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him,

Give my heart.”

What would it mean to give my heart as my gift in this new year?

All the love I am afraid to offer,

All the hurt and turmoil within me,

All the impossible dreams?

What would it mean to give him a heart

That grieves for Renee Good and Alex Pretti,

and rebels at masked, armed, lawless government agents on the streets?

What would it mean to truly feel everything in my own heart,

And to lay all that is in it before the child?

To let go of my fear and open myself

To truly feel the unexpected glory and power of his coming?

And to claim that power for this time?

And finally, the possibility of a third and not very nice gift for the child.

In our Gospel today, we hear John the Baptist cry out:
“Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

Perhaps this Epiphany my gift to the child can be the sin of the world.

As Andrew McGowan wrote, not our individual sins,

But the disorder of our world, its brokenness,

its cruelty, its resistance to God.

The Lamb comes as a challenge to sin writ large and systemic -

A challenge to the presumed rules of our world and the power of evil.

Perhaps as Jesus’ story begins again this Epiphany,

I can let go of the mistaken belief

That it is solely my burden to bring the light

Or fix the world.

And so, perhaps, I can take in all the brokenness around me,

And hold it,

And place it before the newborn King.

A gift, yes, but also perhaps a curse, a mission, a purpose

That only he can, and will, truly fulfill.

Epiphany means that the light of God is coming into the world.

Can I be a witness to that light?

Can I truly imagine it coming here and now?

The songs ask:  What can I give him?

Perhaps - A Song, my heart, the sin of the world.

And the faith that as he came once,

He is here now,

And he is coming again.  Amen.