Epiphanytide and livestreaming equipment upgrade - Rector's Rambling for January 9, 2022

     Today we are in a new church season called Epiphanytide.  Depending on when Easter is celebrated (which is based on a lunar calendar), Epiphanytide can be as long as six Sundays, and as short as just one before we switch into the purple of the pre-Lenten season, known as the gesima Sundays.  This year we have 5 Epiphany Sundays, which after this week will be celebrated in green.  Ash Wednesday is March 2nd, and Easter is April 17 this year.  The announcement of the Moveable Feast dates for 2022 is in the teaching notes on 4.

Today, the First Sunday after Epiphany (The Feast of the Epiphany was last Thursday, January 6th) has as the Gospel Lesson the finding of Jesus in the Temple at the age of 12.  Between the visit of the Magi (wise men) and the subsequent flight into Egypt by the Holy Family to avoid Herod’s wrath and then their return, we have nothing else recorded about the life of Jesus growing up in Nazareth.  We can assume he grew up a normal boy in every other way but sin, learning to read and write, to practice the religion of the people of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and learning a trade from his step-father Joseph.  It would be another 18 years before his public ministry would begin.

The season of the Epiphany is about God’s manifestation of himself to all mankind by the 2nd Person of the Trinity in human flesh.

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Last week we inaugurated the use of our new livestreaming system with a camera given in memory of Chris Sayers.  The new system allows for us to broadcast from the church combined with the audio system instead of a camera an microphone far off on my cellphone as we have been doing previously.  The system still needs some tweaking with camera presets and the like, but it is already a noticeable difference in the broadcast quality.

We began posting sermons online in 2001, podcasting them in 2002, posting video of the service/music/sermons on YouTube in 2006, and then livesteaming weekday services via facebook and twitter in 2017 when their technology became available.  This upgrade helps us to continue this part of the ministry which has become so important since the pandemic!