Dear People of God,

Many of you have begun to realize that there is struggle going on over what it means to be Christian. This is happening not only in the Episcopal Church but all across Christianity. Such struggles are not new. We even find them within the pages of the New Testament. As Paul remarks in Galatians, “when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face.”

A reading from Matthew gives us a clue. “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, [the wise men] left for their own country by another road.”

Herod’s world view was being challenged. When new learning, new ways of understanding come into our experience, we can either reexamine our relation with Jesus, or we can seek to destroy the new understanding.

When Herod was confronted by new understandings, he sought to destroy the child. So when Copernicus and Galileo suggested that the sun and stars do not rotate around the earth, they were threatened with burning. When Luther, Cramner, or Calvin challenged the authority of the Roman Bishops, they were threatened with excommunication.

Today we are living in a similar shift in the way people view the world, and therefore view Christianity. For increasing numbers of people the old way just does not work, either intellectually or functionally.

We are often aware of the surface issues: the role of women in the church and society; gays and lesbians, can they be Christian; and is Christianity the only true religion. Yet far deeper than any of these issues are the basic issues of how the Bible speaks authoritatively and what does it mean to have faith and to believe the creeds.

A poll in 1963 in the U.S. had 65% agree with this statement: “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.” In 2001 the result had dropped to 27%. Trinity Church is surrounded by neighbors for whom the old way does not connect with their daily lives. Trinity and the Episcopal Church can be a community of faith that can reconnect them to Jesus in a new way that can make sense to them.

I think Matthew was suggesting that both sides of the interchange, Herod and the magi, came away poorer than if they had been able to share their mutual insights. So let us all be prepared to share our gifts and receive what the other has to offer. We who journey with Jesus are invited to understand that journey from a new perspective, or as the story put it, to be willing to come home by another road.

Blessings for this New Year of Grace,

Lloyd Winter, Interim Rector