Calling all tenors! Trinity's adult choir is in need of a couple volunteer tenors. If this might be you, please reach out to our Director of Music Meg Harper at harperm@trinityprinceton.org!
Baptism
Each year, on the Sunday after the Epiphany, we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. This year, we will have much to celebrate as we welcome two young Christians into the household of God. It will be a joyous morning, and I hope you will come!
But what is baptism for? What does it do? The Catechism in the back of the Prayer Book tells us that “Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ's Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” (BCP p. 858) Like all sacraments, it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The outward and visible sign in Baptism, of course, is the water in which we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The inward and spiritual grace is “union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God's family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit.” (BCP p. 858)
Baptism is about inclusion in the household of God, to be sure. It’s about God accepting us and about our accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior. But there are also things to be rejected: the powers of death, the forces that draw us from the love of God, all those things that corrupt the creatures of God. In baptism, we say no to death and yes to life, passing by God’s grace through death to life in Jesus’ cross and resurrection. This no and yes is the ground of our Christian lives.
The 20th century Episcopal lay theologian William Stringfellow wrote that “the vocation of the baptized person is a simple thing: it is to live from day to day, whatever the day brings, in this extraordinary unity, in this reconciliation with all people and all things, in this knowledge that death has no more power, in this truth of the resurrection….What matters is that whatever one does is done in honor of one’s own life, given to one by God and restored to one in Christ, and in honor of the life into which all humans and all things are called. The only thing that really matters to live in Christ instead of death.” (Instead of Death, p. 112) In the end, this radical re-orientation from death to life is what this Sunday is about. It’s also what every Sunday, and every day of our lives as Christians, is about. Won’t you join me in this holy adventure?
Yours in Christ, and Christ alone,
Kara+
The Blessing of the Plough
The Blessing of the Plough with songs and molly dances by Handsome Molly to mark the occasion will take place on Plough Monday, 13 January 2025, 6:30 pm, at the front entrance of the church. Plough Monday is the first Monday after Epiphany. In medieval times, the ploughboys were to return to work on this day to start the new ploughing season, but the day provided one last day of festivity as the ploughboys would disguise themselves and go from house to house threatening to plough up the yard if the landowners did not provide them food and drink. Trinity Church has been marking this day for many years now. Seminary Intern Richard Pryor will serve as Officiant. We warmly invite you to join us.
Mark your calendars: Oregon Trailblazers "Generic Potluck" on Saturday, January 18
January is boring and we are too! "Vaguely middle-aged" people are warmly invited to join us for a potluck on Saturday, January 18 at 5:30 PM in Pierce-Bishop Hall. Childcare will be provided.
Epiphany Service and Burning of the Greens
Join us at 5 PM on Monday, january 6, for a choral Eucharist on the Feast of the Epiphany. The music will feature Renaissance polyphony. Bring some greenery from your tree to burn as we celebrate the revelation of Jesus Christ as the light to the Gentiles. Kids are also invited to bring some pieces of greenery to present at the Offertory on Sunday at the 10:30 service. (If you don't have any, we'll give you some!)
20's-30's Fellowship Pre-pihany Party
20's-30's Fellowship members and guests are invited to a "Pre-piphany party" on Sunday, January 5, after the 10:30 service. We will get Indian takeout, but we need to know how many people are coming! RSVP here so we can count you in!
Forum Series: Saints of the New Deal with Donn Mitchell
Our own Donn Mitchell is an expert on the influence of the Episcopal Church and faith in Christ on some of the major figrues of the 1930's and 1940's, including Frances Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt. Come out and learn about faith and public life in this pivotal period in American history.
Epiphany
It has been a glorious Christmastide for me, and I hope it’s been wonderful for you as well. We have been blessed with beautiful worship services through Advent, on Christmas Eve, and at Lessons and Carols. I am tremendously grateful to our music program and to all the volunteers throughout all our ministry areas who put in long hours to help us worship the newborn King. THANK YOU for all you do.
We’re almost ready to turn from feasting to what’s next. But at Epiphany we stand in awe before “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things” (Ephesians 3:9) Epiphany is a day of encounter, when we recall three visitors from far away, coming to a place they had never been, not entirely sure what would happen next. The wise men knew that they were being led to something important, to the child born king of the Jews. But until they met Jesus, they wouldn’t truly understand what any of this really meant. Until they met Jesus, they had no idea of how their lives were about to change.
We are called to look for the newborn Jesus, to look for the light to the gentiles, to look for God’s incarnate grace, in the circumstances of our own lives. We’re called to look for him at work, at the grocery store, at home with our families and friends, in fellowship shared, and in our church. These are the places where God presents himself to us, the places where God's truth is revealed. These are all places where we may bring our gifts to the King and cast them before his throne. These are the places where we bring our gifts to the giver.
And what happens when we do just that? What happens when we meet Jesus? Scripture tells us that the wise men were warned not to return to Herod, and so they went home by another road. Once you meet Jesus, there's no going back. The old certainties, everything we thought most reliable, we find them vanishing like smoke. All we thought was the solid world melts into air. But what replaces it is built on solid rock. What replaces it is the path of love, of life, and of light.
We truly have had a wonderful season of Christmas here at Trinity Church. Having met the Christ child, we stand at a fork in the road. Will we try to go back the way we came? Or will we live as people who have seen the one who is the Way the Truth, and the Life face to face?
Yours in Christ, and in Christ alone,
Kara