Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, First Sunday after Epiphany
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the First Sunday after Epiphany.
Day: January 11, 2026
Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany
“They went up to Jerusalem”
Epiphany marks the transition from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. They are the two centers, as in an ellipse, to use a mathematical and astronomical image, around which the Christian understanding constantly revolves. The mystery of Christmas is thus not simply eclipsed, past and gone with the event of Epiphany. Kepler’s use of the ellipse to explain planetary motion was probably the greater revolution so-called in terms of early modern natural philosophy, far more significant than Copernicus and Galileo. For it broke the dominance of the distinction between terrestrial or rectilinear motion and circular motion, and especially the hold that circular motion had for more than a thousand years. Yet it didn’t mean that the beauty of the idea of circular motion was lost from thought, particularly theological thinking about God and about the journey of our minds to God and with God.
Likewise Bethlehem remains constantly with us in the journey to Jerusalem just as Jerusalem is a constant presence in the Christmas story. The wise men, the Magoi from Anatolia, come to Bethlehem, after all, by way of Jerusalem. With their coming to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, for all people; thus there is the continuation of Christmas, of Bethlehem, with us. The gifts they bring inaugurate the idea of gift-giving at Christmas and inform the essential meaning of Epiphany not just as event but as teaching. The gifts teach and thus belong to the manifestation, the making known of the essential divinity of Jesus Christ; the main theme of the Epiphany season.
The readings on The First Sunday after Epiphany within The Octave of the Epiphany signal this new and different focus that belongs to Epiphany. There is a turn, as Bishop John Cosin (17th c. Durham) puts it, from “His coming in the flesh that was God” to “His being God that was come in the flesh”; a shift in focus and emphasis in our thinking, namely, “to turn ourselves from his humanity below to his divinity above.”
Month at a Glance, January – February 2026
Sunday, January 11th, Epiphany I
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, January 13th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Sunday, January 18th, Epiphany II
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, January 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Steven Shapin’s Eating and Being: A History of Ideas about Our Food and Ourselves
Sunday, January 25, Conversion of St. Paul / Epiphany III
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, February 1st, Candlemas/ Septuagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, February 3rd
7:00pm Discussion Group: ‘Classical Anglicanism & The Consensus Fidelium’
Sunday, February 8th, Sexagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, February 15th, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion (followed by Pot-luck Luncheon & Annual Parish Meeting)
Wednesday, February 18th, Ash Wednesday
12noon Ashes & Communion
7:00pm Ashes & Communion
The First Sunday After The Epiphany
The collect for today, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Romans 12:1-5
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:41-52
Artwork: Tintoretto, Jesus Disputing with the Doctors in the Temple, c. 1545-46. Oil on canvas, Museo del Duomo di Milano, Milan.