January 18, 2026
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
Have you ever wondered what it really means to be “Church”? Not in the abstract, but in a way that gives weight to why we have gathered here this morning—why prayer, Scripture, sacrament, and fellowship matter at all. If the Church is merely a human institution, then what we do risks becoming little more than habit or sentiment. But if the Church is something God brings into being—something alive in Christ—then our gathering has eternal significance.
This morning’s Gospel from John takes us back to the very beginnings of the Church, before buildings, hierarchies, or denominational divisions. We see simple encounters: testimony, invitation, recognition, and response. John the Baptist points to Jesus. Andrew follows. Andrew brings Simon. And Jesus gives Simon a new name: Cephas—Peter, the rock.
That naming has echoed through Christian history. Peter’s new name signals stability, responsibility, and vocation. It points forward to the Church taking shape, stone by stone, through human lives called and transformed by Christ. Yet from this moment has also flowed deep disagreement about what the Church is meant to be and how it is to be held together.
Christians have long differed over whether Jesus intended, in naming Peter, to establish a concrete and enduring structure of authority in the world, or whether he was pointing more fundamentally to a spiritual reality that transcends any one institution. Roman Catholic theology sees in Peter’s naming the seed of a visible,
January 11, 2026
1st Sunday after the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
Today is the First Sunday after Epiphany, the season of the Church Year that celebrates the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Appropriately, that ministry begins not with a sermon or a miracle, but with Jesus standing in the Jordan River, submitting to baptism by John. Yet for many people, today’s Gospel reading can be confusing. On the one hand, the surrounding verses in Matthew chapter 3, as well as the witness of the other Gospels, make it clear that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, intended for the cleansing of sins. On the other hand, Scripture also clearly affirms that Jesus was without sin. As Paul writes, “For our sake God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, RSV). So what is going on here? Was Jesus submitting to something that did not apply to him? Were the Gospel writers—or Paul—simply confused? I want to suggest that three things are happening in Jesus’ baptism that help us understand not only his baptism, but our own.
First, Jesus’ baptism is proleptic. In Scripture, there are moments when one event foreshadows another. Scholars describe such passages as proleptic. Jesus’ baptism is a clear example of this. The Gospels tell the story of his baptism in a way that points beyond the Jordan River to his death at the end of the Gospel narrative.
January 6, 2025
Feast of the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
There are a lot of popular misconceptions surrounding the wise men we celebrate this evening in the Christmas story. One of the most persistent is the assumption that they were kings. The biblical text, unlike our lovely opening hymn, never calls them kings. Matthew refers to them as magoi, or magi. While magi is often translated as “wise men,” there is no linguistic or historical basis for believing they were royalty. Rather, the magi were a caste of shamanic or priestly sages from Persia. Because they were experts in astrology and the interpretation of dreams, they were frequently sought out as advisors to pagan kings, but that does not make them kings themselves.
Another widespread assumption concerns the number of wise men. Scripture makes no reference at all to how many people were in their traveling entourage. The gospel tells us only that three gifts were presented to the Christ child. Over time, the church assumed that each visitor would have brought a gift, and since three gifts are listed, there must have been three wise men. In fact, the Eastern Church traditionally held that as many as nine wise men visited Jesus. The reality is that no one knows how many magi made the journey.
A third misconception is that the wise men visited Jesus in the manger on the night of his birth. Matthew’s account tells us that the star “went before them,
January 4, 2026
Christmas 2A – Mark S. Winward
Happy New Year! I wonder how many of you were at some sort of New Year’s festivity this year? Well, whether or not you attended a party, unless you went to sleep before midnight you probably heard the famous ballad “Auld Lang Syne.” And if you’re like me, you’ve probably sung it dozens of times without really knowing what it means. The song was a popular Scottish bar song recorded by the poet Robert Burns in 1788. The words go like this:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne? (old long ago)
Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
In essence, “Auld Lang Syne” is meant to be a toast that says, “Here’s to old times.” The advent of a new year is a time when many people reassess their lives. It is a natural season for looking both backward to the past and forward to the future. That linking of the old and the new is precisely what today’s Gospel is about.
Scholars tell us that Matthew was writing primarily to Jews in the first century. To reach them, Matthew took great care to link Moses—the deliverer of Israel—with Jesus—the deliverer of all humanity.