Third after Epiphany, Year C

Musical Reflection
Isaiah 45:23 by Mountain Goats

Invocation

God of freedom,

you break the seals

and let the Spirit flow:

make us impatient to greet

the time fulfilled,

the poor lifted up,

the oppressed set free,
and your love made manifest

in Jesus Christ, the Anointed Servant.

Amen.

First Reading
Advice to a Prophet
by Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,

The long numbers that rocket the mind;

Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,

Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.

How should we dream of this place without us?—

The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,

A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive

Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost

How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,

How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip

Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,

The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,

The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn

As Xanthus once, its gliding trout

Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without

The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?

Ask us, prophet, how we shall call

Our natures forth when that live tongue is all

Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean

Horse of our courage, in which beheld

The singing locust of the soul unshelled,

And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose

Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding

Whether there shall be lofty or long standing

When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

Second Reading
What’s Written on the Body
by Peter Pereira

He will not light long enough

for the interpreter to gather

the tatters of his speech.

But the longer we listen

the calmer he becomes.

He shows me the place where his daughter

has rubbed with a coin, violaceous streaks

raising a skeletal pattern on his chest.

He thinks he’s been hit by the wind.

He’s worried it will become pneumonia.

In Cambodia, he’d be given

a special tea, a prescriptive sacrifice,

the right chants to say. But I

know nothing of Chi, of Karma,

and ask him to lift the back of his shirt,

so I may listen to his breathing.

Holding the stethoscope’s bell I’m stunned

by the whirl of icons and script

tattooed across his back, their teal green color

the outline of a map which looks

like Cambodia, perhaps his village, a lake,

then a scroll of letters in a watery signature.

I ask the interpreter what it means.

It’s a spell, asking his ancestors

to protect him from evil spirits—

she is tracing the lines with her fingers—

and those who meet him for kindness.

The old man waves his arms and a staccato

of diphthongs and nasals fills the room.

He believes these words will lead his spirit

back to Cambodia after he dies.

I see, I say, and rest my hand on his shoulder.

He takes full deep breaths and I listen,

touching down with the stethoscope

from his back to his front. He watches me

with anticipation—as if awaiting a verdict.

His lungs are clear. You’ll be fine,

I tell him. It’s not your time to die.

His shoulders relax and he folds his hands

above his head as if in blessing.

Ar-kon, he says. All better now.

Gospel Reading
Luke 4:14-21

Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news about him spread throughout the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me.
The Lord has sent me to preach good news to the poor,
    to proclaim release to the prisoners
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
    to liberate the oppressed,
    and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.”

Musical Reflection
Writer in the Dark by Lorde

Prayer
by Edwin Hatch, adapted

Breathe on us, Breath of God,
Fill us with life anew,
That we may love what thou dost love,
And do what thou dost do.

Breathe on us, Breath of God,
Until our hearts are pure;
Until with thee we will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on us, Breath of God,
Till we are wholly thine;
Until this earthly part of us
Glows with thy fire divine.

Breathe on us, Breath of God,
So shall we never die,
But live with thee the perfect life
Of thine eternity.

Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

O Silent Sound,
whose shimmering music pulsates
at the heart of each and all,
Clear a space in us where thy melody
may be perceived in its purity.
Let the rhythm of thy counsel reverberate through our lives,
so that we move to the beat of justice, love, and peace.
Then, our whole being at one with thy song,
grant that the earth may be filled
with the beauty of thy voice.
Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share
what each being needs to grow and flourish,
And give us courage to embrace our shadow with emptiness,
as we embrace others in their darkness.
But let us not be captive to uncertainty,
nor cling to fruitless pursuits.
For from thee springs forth
the rhythm, the melody, and the harmony,
which restores all to balance, again and again. Ameyn.

Musical Reflection
Read Your Book by Sóley

Blessing

Blessing and laughter and loving be ours,
the love of a great God
who names us
and holds us
while the earth turns and flowers grow
this day
this night
this moment
and forever.

May the blessing of God – the Giver, the Gift, and the Giving,
be with us and remain with us always. Amen.