January 5, 2020

Second Sunday of Christmas
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 147:12-20
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
grace and peace to you from the one who created the world
 and who chose to become a part of the world. Amen
 
Merry Christmas!
I know, it may not feel like Christmas anymore,
 even though we still have them up in Church
decorations have come down many places
and in stores have already been replaced by Valentine’s hearts
 
 and we’ve done our year end retrospectives,
 this year, depending on how you count it
we’ve even looked back ten years over the past decade,
and generally things feel like they are moving forward,
we are past Christmas.
 
And yet this year the way the calendar falls
we get a second Sunday in Christmas,
 the season in the Church calendar
 runs until Epiphany on January 6th,
 that’s where we get the 12 days of Christmas.
As epiphany is not until tomorrow
this year we get one more Sunday to dwell on Christmas. 
 
So often when we think Christmas
we think of the baby in the manger
and the angels and shepherds
but today we get to focus on Christmas as the incarnation of God,
 
 God the Word becoming flesh
 and dwelling among us,
the Greek is literally translated as “pitching a tent among us”,
 
 God became one of us
and lived with us
no special treatment but the full human experience
and all that goes with it,
 including suffering and death,
things God could easily have avoided and yet didn’t.
 
 which means we have a God who knows exactly what we’re going through
 as we live out our lives
 even in those times in life where we feel that
the only ones who understand us
are the ones who have gone through what we’re going through,
 
God understands
and that is the miracle of the incarnation,
 that God loved us so much
 and wanted to be as close to us as possible
that God became one of us,
 
God is intimately concerned with our lives,
 all the more amazing
when we consider this is the same one who created the universe. 
 
And as we go through life
God seeks to remind us of this intimate relationship,
 on the last night with his disciples,
 Jesus blessed bread and wine
and told them this bread and wine is my body and blood given for you,
 
 and he commanded them to eat and drink
and to do this whenever they gathered,
so that they would know that he was with them,
a part of them.
 
 Jesus is that close to us,
 closer than we sometimes like to think of
 and if we try to figure out the how of it
we get confused very quickly
 but the how is not the point,
 if God can become human
certainly God can be bread and wine
 and that is how God has chosen to come to us
as mysterious as that may be.
 
God is mysterious to us,
 because as intimate with us as Jesus is,
 and as much as he reveals God’s will to us
 according to God’s good pleasure,
 
 at the same time God is so much bigger,
than even our wildest imaginations can comprehend.
 
John, in his description of the incarnation,
echoing the opening of Genesis,
brings us all the way back to before creation
when God the Father and God the Word and God the Spirit
 all together created the world
and set the foundations of life in motion
and had hopes and dreams and a plan for interacting with that creation,
 first through the gift of the law and then through Christ. 
That is both big and intricate planning.
 
Paul in Ephesians tells us
that God chose us in Christ
before the foundation of the world,
and we wonder at the enormity of that
as well at the intimacy of being part of God’s plan
 from even before time
 
God is bigger than we are,
bigger than all of us
 with greater understanding,
but even as God is so much bigger
God has included us
God doesn’t need us but God has made us part of the action
 
Again as Paul explains to the Ephesians “with all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, that that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.”
 
God’s will for us is abundant life,
and “us” means all creation to God,
 creation that God will gather in,
because as we are well aware,
sin has entered the world
and because of sin there is pain and suffering
but God has promised to gather us in
 
  the gathering is still in process,
and until then
our purpose is to live for the praise of God’s glory.
 
And how do we do that?
 
 We live for the praise of God’s glory
when we live in ways
 that bring more of God’s will into the world,
the will of abundant life for all,
 and that means sometimes living in ways
 counter to the way of the world.
 
 The world says there is not enough for everyone,
God’s will says that there is plenty to go around.
 
The world says that those who appear different
 are to be feared,
God’s will says that they too are children of God.
 
 The world says power is gained through shows of strength.
 God’s will says that serving your neighbor is the strongest way to live. 
 
Our purpose is to live for the praise of God’s glory,
 not the praise of the world,
and the world will push back,
it will be difficult at times
but we are able to do so
because we have been claimed by God,
 and promised that whatever the world does to us
 will not have the last say.
 
At our baptisms
God claimed us and marked us
 “with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”
 
And yet even marked with the Holy Spirit
there may be times when the enormity and mystery of God’s will
become overwhelming,
and then Jesus comes to us again,
in Word and water,
 bread and wine
reminding us that God knows exactly what we’re going through
 and that God is with us.
 
This is the miracle of the incarnation
that we celebrate at Christmas,
 the intimacy of God with us
all as part of God whose will stretches before time.
 
 Some days we need the baby in the manger,
the Word become flesh living among us,
 
 and some days we need God who is bigger than us
 with plans and understanding far beyond our measly comprehension
 but who still cares for us.
 
 At Christmas we get both
and we celebrate all the mysterious truth that comes with it
secure in the knowledge that God is bigger than we are
and that God is with us. Merry Christmas.