Epiphany & the Gift We Carry Forward

Dear friends,

Epiphany is a season of light that moves. It does not stay still. It begins with travelers, with wise ones who notice a brightness they cannot explain and choose to follow it anyway. They arrive not empty-handed, but bearing gifts, laying before a child what they have carried across long distances, trusting that their offering belongs, somehow, to this strange and holy moment.

As we move through Epiphany together, I want to let you know about a small but meaningful practice we will be returning to in our worship: during the Offertory, we will once again bring the offering plate forward together as we sing the Doxology.

This is not something new we are inventing. It is something All Souls practiced before I arrived, and something that, like many embodied rituals, was gently and unintentionally set aside during the long disruptions of Covid. Returning to it now feels fitting, not as nostalgia, but as attentiveness. Epiphany has a way of inviting us to recover practices that tell the truth with our bodies, not just our words.

Growing up, bringing the offering forward was part of nearly every church I knew. I remember it not as a transaction, but as a procession, ordinary and reverent. People stood. People moved. Something we had carried into the room was carried a little farther, toward the table where bread and wine would soon be lifted and blessed. Even then, I think I knew, without being able to say it, that this was not a pause in worship. It was part of it.

The Offertory is often misunderstood. It can feel like a practical interruption, a moment when worship seems to slow so that something necessary but ordinary can happen. But the Offertory is not a pause in prayer. It is one of the places where prayer becomes embodied and truthful.

In the Offertory, God’s people offer their lives back to the One who gave them life. Not as an idea held at a distance, but through something that reaches into our everyday decisions and habits. Money is never just money. It carries with it the hours of our work, the shape of our days, the quiet hopes we protect, and the fears we would rather not name. When we bring it forward, we are offering a sign of ourselves.

Jesus does not speak about wealth in order to shame or condemn. His invitation is always toward freedom. He loosens the grip of anything that claims to define us or promise a safety it cannot finally give. The Offertory trains us in that freedom, not all at once, but patiently. It teaches us to stop trusting our resources as if they were saviors. They cannot carry that burden. They were never meant to.

This is why the Church treats the Offertory as sacramental. What is placed on the altar is not a payment or a contribution made to keep things running. It is a life being returned to God in a form we can touch and carry. That offering is gathered into Christ’s own self-giving, and drawn toward the table where bread and wine will soon be blessed and broken. The movement matters. Standing, walking, placing what we have carried into another’s hands. Even the singing matters. Our bodies learn what our hearts are still learning.

The Offertory also tells the truth about us. The Church, like every human community, is vulnerable to believing that what we possess will sustain us. Over time, we can begin to lean on what we have rather than on grace. The Offertory gently interrupts that habit. It invites us, again and again, back into the posture of open hands.

And this offering does not end at the altar. What we enact in worship is meant to shape the rest of our lives. Generosity becomes a way of being rather than an occasional act. It is participation in Christ’s own self-giving love, a life given so that others might live.

In every Eucharist, the Offertory invites us to say with our bodies what we confess with our mouths: All things come from you, O Lord, and of your own have we given you.

This is the heart of the Offertory. It is not obligation but belonging. Not loss but release. Not interruption but a deeper participation in Christ’s offering for the life of the world.

To be clear, none of this is about pressure or performance. It is about formation. Week by week, the Offertory teaches us to stand with open hands before God. And what we practice in worship is meant to echo beyond these walls, shaping how we spend, how we give, how we share our time and energy for the sake of others. Christian generosity is not simply charity. It is participation in Christ’s own self-giving love for the life of the world.

So, in this season of light and movement, we will walk a few more steps together. We will carry forward what we have been given. And we will trust, again, that in offering our lives back to God, we are being drawn more deeply into the freedom and joy of God’s abundance.

With gratitude for you all, and with hope for what this simple practice will continue to teach us,

Bliss +