I love the cosy bits of Christmas. Candles, carols, the warmth of familiar stories. We need that.
But the more I’ve been writing week by week with the lectionary, the more I’ve noticed some of the more challenging parts of our favourite stories. The gospels don’t give us a tidy Christmas. They give us a story with hard edges – anxious rulers, fragile safety, hurried decisions, and a family forced to move.
As I was diving into the Lectionary writing my new book, it really hit me this year.
The First Sunday after Christmas Day (Year A) takes us straight into Mary and Joseph fleeing with Jesus. Not a dramatic adventure – a desperate decision for safety. Then Epiphany arrives and we often lean into the star and the gifts – but it’s also about power, fear, manipulation, and strangers who bring kindness while a palace panics.
Put those two Sundays side by side and you can feel the contrast – anxious rulers on one side, and those who have to live with the consequences on the other. And you can feel the invitation too: to become the kind of people who won’t cooperate with cruelty, and who can make sanctuary more than a word.
In the middle of all the noise right now about refugees and asylum seekers, I found myself thinking: this is already in the lectionary. Not as a slogan, not as a debate, but as gospel reality. So what would it look like to let worship be truthful about it – and to treat welcome as a justice issue, not just a nice idea?
That’s what led to Displaced Light – a shared theme for two linked Sundays, First Sunday after Christmas Day and Epiphany.
It’s a simple thread: God’s light does not stay put. Love moves. Hope finds a way. And I’ve also written a song to carry that thread across both services – Not a Story Wrapped in Comfort – alongside prayers, service ideas, sermon starters, activities and readings.
I’ve tried to make it all usable in real life – accessible language, spacious invitations, and practical next steps that don’t rely on people having endless energy or capacity. Use what helps, leave what doesn’t, and adapt it for your community.
If you’d like to explore the resources, find them on their Priming the Lectionary pages:
- First Sunday after Christmas Day – Holy flight: God on the move
- Epiphany Sunday – Another road: refusing cruelty
If you use them, I’d genuinely love to hear how it goes – what landed, what was hard, what opened up, and what your community noticed.