Revealing the Way: Trusting the Word 

Here in the heart of winter, everything feels a little more brittle. We continue to enter another week of Epiphany asking how God’s way is being revealed among us. 

Next Sunday’s readings are from John 4 and John 5. They offer us two healing stories. In the first, a desperate parent begs Jesus to heal his son. Jesus never goes to the bedside. He simply speaks a word, and the man has to decide whether to trust it enough to walk home. The healing is revealed along the road, through obedience, through movement, through belief before proof. Love leads the way, but it does not remove the risk of faith. 

In the second story, Jesus encounters a man who has been ill for decades, stuck beside a pool that promises healing but rarely delivers it. Jesus asks a piercing question: Do you want to be made well? Then he tells the man to stand up and walk on the Sabbath. What follows is not celebration, but outrage. This healing exposes how easily systems meant to protect can become systems that control. It reminds me of stories like The Hunger Games, where a rigid system insists suffering is necessary for order. That is until small, human acts of love expose that the rules themselves are the problem. 

That tension matters for us right now. We live in a world where clinging to authority is growing louder and becoming more normalized. Where fear is leveraged, boundaries are tightened, and compassion is treated as weakness. Naming this reality is part of telling the truth. Suffering thrives when people stop paying attention to who is being left behind at the pool and who is being told to wait their turn forever. 

In Epiphany, we do not avert our attention. We follow Christ’s love as it reveals the way, sometimes quietly, sometimes disruptively, always toward life. Love leads us to act, to move, to stand up when it costs something. 

As your pastor, I want to be clear: this is a season for courage, clarity, and direction. We are not called to freeze in place, spiritually or morally. Even in winter. Even when the way feels uncertain. Christ is still revealing the path through healing, truth-telling, and love that refuses to stay put. 

Come ready to listen. Come ready to move. The way is being revealed. 

Peace, 
Pastor Katie