Dear Epiphany,
I would like to invite you to register for Christian RELATA in this season of Lent. This series takes place on the six Sundays of Lent (March 9, 16, 23, 30, and April 6 and 13) from 10:00 – 11:00 am in the Great Hall and it is for everyone from age 12 and up. There are activities for children (ages 2 to 11) during this time as well.
Christian RELATA is the framework in which we reflect on the stories of Jesus in the hope of seeing how his humanity is a model for how we can live our lives. Every single person is made in the image and likeness of God. The framework of religion, specifically Christianity, which is built around the personhood of Jesus, becomes the playbook through which we reveal the Kingdom of God in the activities of our lives.
For too long the myth has persisted that Jesus, the man of miracles, the son of God, who, while loving us, is beyond our capacity to emulate. And while his divinity is indisputable, it is revealed through his perfect capacity to match his actions with God’s hope for his life. Does that mean he never made a mistake? It depends on your definition of mistake. If you’re wondering if Jesus got perfect scores on every math test then the answer is “no,” he made mistakes. That’s what it means to be a learning being. Mistakes teach us how to do things, and are a part of the pattern of the Kingdom of God. In fact, to err is human, and Jesus was human, and so to err is to actually live within the patterns of God’s will for Jesus’ life, and our lives as well. What made Jesus divine was that he always loved as God loves, which is what gave him the courage to heal on the sabbath. It gave him courage to die on the cross. It is what gives us courage as well.
At Epiphany, we believe that Jesus came into the world with the very specific objective of showing us how to reveal our Imago Dei through the regular routines of our lives. He came to show us how to live the “with God” life, which is to live the “love of God” life. When we explore our lives through the lens of RELATA, we see that we are more often living within this Kingdom of God than we give ourselves credit for.
Yes, we do miss the mark. There are times when we choose our way over God’s preference for our journey. Pride, greed, fear, selfishness, anger, and other intemperate fits of our self-centeredness flare up. The old time language named these fits sin. And while that is accurate, what is also accurate is that our capacity to sin is a reflection of our Imago Dei. Sin is a sign of freedom, even the freedom to reject God’s preference for our lives, even the freedom to nail Jesus on the cross.
That is the paradox that will reveal itself in Christian RELATA: Jesus. Because we are made in the image and likeness of God we can choose our will over God’s preference, or, said another way, fear over love.
And so, Christian RELATA, through the lens of the Jesus story, is an exercise designed to reveal how we are mostly living our lives as Jesus would if he were you or me, and occasionally not so much. The hope is that the exploration of: our origin stories and the things we were born to belong to; what we seek to achieve; the relationships of love in our lives; the presence of the soul; the practices of spirituality; and the revelation of agape love allows us to see the central reality of the Kingdom of God, as well as, the times we have chosen to ignore it.
RELATA is a community spiritual exercise created by Epiphany to draw together the community (however it defines itself), not to change the world, but to reveal the world as God designed it to be. What we have learned through the RELATA experience is that when we listen to and tell stories from the heart, judgment is forestalled and love is revealed. It is by RELATA that, at Epiphany, we intend to heal this divided world, and in doing so reveal the universal, inclusive, love of God.
In Christ’s Love,
Doyt +