The Second-to-Last Sunday of Epiphany

The Second-to-Last Sunday of Epiphany occupies a distinctive place in the Anglican liturgical year. It is not a Principal Feast and not a Red-Letter Holy Day. It is a Sunday within the Season of Epiphany, and it has a name: World Mission Sunday. The BCP 2019 appoints a collect on page 604 and lectionary readings on page 720 for this Sunday, and notes with a rubric that the collect, psalm, and lessons appointed for this day may be substituted for any Sunday of Epiphany except the First or the Last. This provision is unique in the Epiphany season and gives World Mission Sunday a flexibility that no other named Sunday in the calendar possesses.

World Mission Sunday falls one Sunday before the Last Sunday of Epiphany — one week before Transfiguration Sunday, and therefore one week before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. It arrives at the moment the Epiphany season is drawing to its close, after the long unfolding of Christ’s identity through his ministry, and before the great disclosure of the Transfiguration. Its placement is fitting: the season of manifestation has been building the Church’s understanding of who Christ is, and World Mission Sunday presses that understanding outward — asking what it means that the one who has been manifested through the season must be made known to every race and nation.

The Missionary Character of Epiphany

The Season of Epiphany has always been a missionary season. The feast that opens it — the Epiphany of January 6 — commemorates the Magi’s arrival from the East: the first Gentiles to worship the child, the firstfruits of the nations coming to the brightness of his rising. Isaiah’s vision had promised it: “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.” (Isaiah 60:3, ESV) The whole season unfolds in the light of that promise. The manifestation of Christ is not for Israel alone. It is for every race and nation — for the ends of the earth.

World Mission Sunday gathers this theme explicitly and places it at the season’s penultimate Sunday. The Epiphany season has been asking: who is this? World Mission Sunday asks the next question: since we know who this is, what are we doing about it? The Season of Epiphany moves from the light received — the Baptism, the ministry, the healings, the teaching — to the light given. World Mission Sunday is the Sunday on which that movement reaches its most explicit expression.

The Appointed Readings

The lectionary readings for World Mission Sunday are found on page 720 of the BCP 2019. The BCP appoints three sets of readings for this Sunday, one for each year of the lectionary cycle, each carrying a distinct missionary emphasis. The rubric beneath them states explicitly that any of these sets may be substituted for any Sunday of Epiphany except the First and Last — meaning that whichever year’s readings a parish chooses, they carry the full authority of the World Mission Sunday propers and may be used whenever in the season the missionary emphasis is most fitting.

Year A appoints Isaiah 49:1–7, Psalm 67, Acts 1:1–8, and Matthew 9:35–38. Isaiah 49 is the Second Servant Song, in which the Servant’s mission is extended beyond Israel to the nations: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6, ESV) Acts 1:1–8 records the risen Christ’s final commission before the Ascension: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8, ESV) And Matthew 9:35–38 is Jesus’ great lament over the crowds — harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd — and his missionary summons: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37–38, ESV) Year A presses the question of the laborers: who will go?

Year B appoints Genesis 12:1–3, Psalm 86:8–13, Revelation 7:9–17, and Matthew 28:16–20. Genesis 12 is the Abrahamic covenant — “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3, ESV) — the original missionary promise, the ground on which the whole biblical theology of mission stands. Revelation 7:9–17 is the eschatological fulfillment: a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. And Matthew 28:16–20 is the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19, ESV) Year B frames mission as the arc from Abraham’s calling to the multitude before the throne: the whole of Scripture as one missionary story.

Year C appoints Isaiah 61:1–4, Psalm 96, Romans 10:9–17, and John 20:19–31. Isaiah 61 is the passage Jesus reads in the Nazareth synagogue and declares fulfilled in their hearing: the Spirit of the Lord upon him, good news to the poor, liberty to the captives. Romans 10:9–17 is Paul’s great missionary logic: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14, ESV) And John 20:19–31 is the resurrection appearance in which Jesus breathes on the disciples and commissions them: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:21, ESV) Year C grounds mission in the sending of the Son and the breathing of the Spirit: the mission of the Church is the extension of the mission of the Trinity.

The BCP 2019 Collect and Preface

The BCP 2019 appoints the following collect for World Mission Sunday on page 604: “Almighty God, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation: Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the Gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” The collect is structured as a prayer of precedent and petition. The precedent: through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation. This has happened. The Spirit has been poured out, the Gospel has gone out, the nations have received it. The petition: pour out this gift anew. Not for the first time — anew. The Church is not praying for something that has never happened but for the renewal of something that has already begun and must continue until the salvation of God reaches to the ends of the earth.

The collect’s final phrase — in the unity of the Holy Spirit — is the collect’s missionary ecclesiology in miniature. The Spirit who goes out to the nations is the Spirit who holds the Church together in its going. Mission is not the project of individual energy but the work of the Spirit in whom the Church lives and by whom it is sent. The Church does not generate its own missionary impulse. It asks for the Spirit to be poured out again, trusting that the same Spirit who crossed every border at Pentecost is still able and willing to do so.

The Preface of the Epiphany, found on page 153 of the BCP 2019, governs the Eucharist on World Mission Sunday: “Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who took on our mortal flesh to reveal his glory; that he might bring us out of darkness and into his own glorious light.” (BCP 2019, p. 153) The preface names the movement that World Mission Sunday is commissioned to extend. He brought us out of darkness and into his glorious light. The Church that has been brought into the light is the Church that carries the light to those still in darkness. The Epiphany preface is the missionary preface: the manifestation that has been received must be sent.

The Flexible Rubric

The BCP 2019’s provision that the World Mission Sunday collect, psalm, and lessons may be substituted for any Sunday of Epiphany except the First or the Last is a practical expression of the season’s missionary character. Any Sunday of the Epiphany season — from the Second through the Second-to-Last — can bear the World Mission Sunday emphasis. This is not a concession to institutional programming but a recognition that the Epiphany season as a whole is a missionary season, and that the explicit missionary emphasis of World Mission Sunday is not foreign to any Sunday within it.

In practice, parishes may observe World Mission Sunday on its appointed Sunday or may choose a Sunday when the missionary theme is particularly apt — when a missionary is visiting, when the congregation is being asked to engage with a particular aspect of the Church’s global mission, or when the appointed lectionary for the season would benefit from the explicit missionary framing the World Mission Sunday readings provide. The rubric trusts the parish to make this judgment wisely.

World Mission Sunday in Anglican Worship

Green vestments are worn on World Mission Sunday, as throughout the Season of Epiphany after the First Sunday. The First and Last Sundays of Epiphany — the Baptism of Our Lord and Transfiguration Sunday — both call for white, given their festal character as Sundays of divine declaration. World Mission Sunday, falling between them, wears the green of the season’s ordinary and purposeful growth. The day provides a natural occasion for the congregation to hear from missionaries, to give for the support of mission work, to pray specifically for the unreached peoples of the world, and to renew its own sense of participation in the Church’s global commission. The Great Commission of Matthew 28, appointed for Year B, and the Romans 10 logic of Year C, and the Isaiah 49 light-to-the-nations vision of Year A — each gives the Sunday’s preaching a clear direction: the Gospel must go out, the laborers must be sent, the nations must hear.

The collect’s petition — pour out this gift anew — is the right prayer for a congregation that may have grown comfortable in its received faith and needs to be reminded that the Spirit who brought the Gospel to them was not poured out for their benefit alone. World Mission Sunday presses the Epiphany season’s light outward: what has been revealed through these weeks of ministry and manifestation is not for the Church to keep but to send.

Observing This Sunday

World Mission Sunday falls on the Second-to-Last Sunday of Epiphany — the Sunday before Transfiguration Sunday and two Sundays before Ash Wednesday. The collect is on page 604 of the BCP 2019 and the lectionary readings are on page 720. As the rubric notes, the readings may be used on any Sunday of Epiphany except the First and Last.

To observe this Sunday: pray the collect from BCP 2019, p. 604 — and pray it with the weight of the petition it carries: pour out this gift anew. Read the appointed Gospel for the year and let its missionary summons be specific. In Year A, hear Jesus’ lament over the harassed and helpless crowds and pray earnestly for laborers to be sent. In Year B, stand at the shore in Galilee with the eleven and receive the Great Commission as addressed to the Church in its present moment. In Year C, hear the risen Christ say: as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you — and ask honestly where that sending leads.

Consider using this Sunday to bring the congregation’s missionary commitments before the altar: pray by name for missionaries supported by the parish, for unreached people groups, for the Church in places of persecution, for those being sent out for the first time. The collect asks God to pour out the Spirit anew. The congregation that prays it should be ready to be among those through whom the Spirit is poured.

Conclusion

World Mission Sunday is the Epiphany season pressing its light outward. The season has been manifesting Christ — declaring his identity, tracing his ministry, building the Church’s understanding of who he is. World Mission Sunday asks what the Church will do with what it has been given. The collect answers: ask for the Spirit to be poured out again. The readings answer: go, send, preach, pray for laborers, trust the Spirit who crosses every border. The season of light does not end in contemplation. It ends in commission.

“Almighty God, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation: Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the Gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (BCP 2019, p. 604)