Luke 2: 1-20

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.

Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them, and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.

Sermon Text

We are here, gathered on Christmas Eve, to proclaim the presence of God in this world. When darkness fell over all the Earth, sin obscuring God’s presence in the shadow of transgression, a light burned dimly in the midst of deep darkness. Goodness, bursting out in moments of righteousness. A spark here or there, the pure ring of harmony in the midst of dissonant existence. There is chaos all over, and then, bursting out like nothing had before, a light shone out from Judea, and has never ceased to shine since.

The infinite light of God, that had always existed, was now visible. Not in the brilliance of a nova or the pomp of any worldly display, but in a birth easily lost in the midst of everything else happening in the world. War waged on and famine was still a threat. Sickness still came and went, taking with it the security and health of people all over the world. The hardships of life did not end all at once, and yet the cure to these ills had entered into the world. God, so long invisible with creation, had taken on flesh and bone, and the world would never be the same again.

In this small Child, in the person of Jesus Christ, God took on the burden of human life. Pain was now a possibility for the eternal God of the universal. The cold could nip at his tiny finger, hunger would soon call for him to cry out for food, and the threat of soldiers’ swords would soon chase the family from their homeland into a foreign place, to a kingdom not their own. God the Son, full of power and authority, the creator of all things, gave it all up to make sure that we could be saved. More than just saving us from afar, God chose to take the burden of life on alongside us, to live and love up close, and not just from afar.

Advent is a season for waiting, but Christmas is a time to take hold of what God is doing here and now. God is with us, God has come to save us, and we as God’s people get to take part in the redemption of the world. Love one another, serve one another, and proclaim hope into a  world that is in dire need of light. Jesus Christ is born today, Praise God, Hallelujah. – Amen.

Luke 2:1-14

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name; indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Sermon Text

Across this Advent, we have looked at what Christ coming into the world means. The death of the broken things in this world and the start of a world built upon grace and redemption. The work of God in this world and the next is transformative, leaving no stone unturned. Last week we was that there was redemption in this new world for all people – for the righteous and the unrighteous, for Jew and Gentile, for literally all people willing to gather together at God’s table.

The eventual reclamation by God is not something that sits fallow, waiting for the day Christ returns in final victory. It is something that actively is worked at in the here and now. The work we embark upon every time we show mercy, every time we forgive, and indeed every time we participate in something God begins, we see the Kingdom of God enter into this world – one small act of love at a time. Like a drop of dye into a sea of water, it may seem to disappear at first, but overtime the color of the sea will change as more and more dye enters into it. The Kingdom of God expands further and further with ever act of goodness we participate in.

The Kingdom breaks out on the margins, in places it is least expected to be found. When Christ was born, it was not in riches and splendor, but to a poor family who came to rest in a home for animals. When Christ ministered to the world, it was not among the well-to-do in the Temple, but to sex workers, to the poor, and to those who had been written off by the wider society. Even in the Hebrew Bible, we are told that God chose a small nation, not any great empire, but a small people in a backwater part of the continent. Even among that small group, God chose the poorest among them and decreed that they were the closest to God’s heart. The Kingdom of God is not something that breaks out in palaces and the halls of government, it breaks out in the alleyways and the bars, in mission houses and factory floors.

Before Christ was even born, we had a glimpse of what his time on Earth and his eventual reign would look like. Mary, after hearing from her relative Elizabeth that the child in her womb is really as amazing as the Angel who had foretold their birth said they would be, begins to sing. The song she sings is a promise to all generations that God is abundantly good, that God is always reaching out to restore those in need, and that God prioritizes the hungry over the full. The work of the Church flows from the promise and mission which begins in Christ’s incarnation – God is with us, and God is always asking us to turn away from the heights of beautiful, worldly abundance, and to look directly into the eyes of want and brokenness.

For Mary, her Child was themselves a sign of God’s favor. For her to become a vessel of God’s redemption was something that she saw as a sign of God’s care for those in need. Though she was born into a poor family, scarcely able to offer anything at the Temple when times of sacrifice came, she was going to be the one who brought God physically into the world. She, an unmarried, poor, pregnant woman was going to be the beginning of a universal shift, the rewriting of the history of the world to be centered on grace, mercy, love, and compassion.

Mary’s Song is uncompromising in its approach to God’s glorious work. God topples the powerful from their thrones, removing empires that threaten the good of all people. God feeds the needy and turns away the ones that stole food from them in the first place. God scatters the proud and ends their works, all so that the meek can inherit the world that was always meant for them. When Mary praises God, she praises a God who is willing to get into the messy parts of life and work to change the systems and circumstances that keep people suffering. God is inherently political in God’s work on earth, the politics are just not what we are used to. God is not a partisan player, but a principled ruler, one that promotes the good of all over the desires of the rich and the few.

God’s Justice does not have a definite start date. From the moment the consequence entered the world, when Cain killed Abel, God was working justice. His expulsion of Cain, and even his protection of the world’s first murderer, were both acts of justice. We often discuss Justice and Mercy as opposing forces, but one naturally births the other. There is a unity of the virtues that cannot be undone. In tending to the Children of Abraham, in welcoming Ruth and protecting Esther, in all places and all times, God maintained a justice that always kept the scales even through the promotion of those that the world had so long pushed to the bottom of the pile.

Yet, as Christians, we see in Christ the culmination of God’s work. Everything that happened in creation up to Christ’s birth was prelude. When Christ entered the world, the entirety of Creation had reached its vertex, and now it was ready to expand out infinitely once again. Our duty, in Christmas and in everything, is to proclaim the goodness of our God, and to reflect that goodness in what we do. Across Advent, in each proclamation of Hope and Peace, Joy and Love, we have come back again and again to that truth. Perhaps it seems redundant, but I would say that more than that we are forgetful. It is easy to lose track in the hustle and bustle of life of this singular truth – our life belongs to God, and God asks us to live our life for other people.

The first person to embody this, in our modern Christological age, was Mary. She who received Christ within herself, who carried Christ into the world, and offered Christ up to a life and death that redeemed the world. We too are bearers of Christ, we too carry redemption into the world. God is the savior, God does the work, but we are asked to step up or step aside as we are called to. We, the people of God, must embrace an attitude like Mary’s. We must proclaim a world that is topsy turvy to the expectations of the status quo. We must be bearers of Christ, that Justice may reign in our kingdom of peace.  – Amen.

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after [the destruction of the Temple], the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven,  and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

Sermon Text

Prophecy is weird. I have no hesitation in saying that. When you look at the ancient words uttered to criticize the powerful or project what will happen in the future, you will inevitably run into some strange details. The ability to look ahead, to sometimes discern the signs that were present in the world around you, and to cast a vision for what was going to happen was not something unique to one or two persons in an era, but it was something that only a few really succeeded in. The prophets that we still discuss are the ones that said something that did actually come to pass. Moses, after all, gave his clearest instruction regarding prophets when he said, “If it comes true, that’s a good sign they’re the real deal.”

The prophet is not just a person who can predict the future though, they are someone who has to be acutely aware of the present. Abraham Joshua Heschel, philosopher of religion and general genius, wrote a huge two volume book on what it means to be a prophet. He captures, I think, something that we can see as the heart of religion itself and especially the work of the prophet. A prophet, he says, is a person who loses the concept of God as someone who interacts with the world, but the world as something that orbits, interacts with, and depends upon God.[1] The difference sounds small when we say it like that, but it is pretty revolutionary.

The prophet has to understand the event of God as much as the person of God. They understand that meeting God is always around, always active, and that we choose to cloud our vision of that reality. The Prophet does not think about God, but hears God’s thoughts, they do not “know,” except in attaining knowledge of God. Someone who fully becomes a prophetic voice is someone who is completely turned over into God’s reality that surpasses our own.

That is a bit complex of an idea though. I think that our usual language fails to capture what it means to be a prophet. Many people I know have reduced the role of prophet to someone who offers social critique and points toward an alternative possibility for their society. A prophet does this, absolutely, but they cannot be a mere political analyst. There must be a divine spark, something that hears God’s anger at injustice and captures God’s joy in goodness and righteousness. The work of a prophet is in transforming the world, through the speaking of the Spirit into it.

Christ, our Lord and Savior, is very intentionally called God’s “Word,” or in the Greek “Λογος” (Logos.) Christ was the ultimate prophet because he was God. He was the most real a person could be because he was fully invested with God’s divinity. On Earth, Christ only displayed the fullness of divinity after his resurrection, but it was always latent within him. Every action, every word, every thought of Christ was a thought of the eternal God of creation, injected into the human experience in his incarnation. The prophecy of Christ was not just in words, but in action and deed. Every movement of Jesus was a movement of the Spirit and of the Father, a perfectly coordinated dance between the person of the Trinity.

Christ came to the Mount of Olives, having come to Jerusalem to face his crucifixion and death, and he stood there as Zechariah said he would. He looked at the Temple, standing tall on a raised platform in the city, and he spoke against it. He said that it would be destroyed, that in the aftermath of its destruction his followers would be persecuted, and that when the stones of the Temple fell it meant that the countdown had really begun to the end of all things and the start of a creation made into what it was always meant to be. Christ went into that city, he died and rose again, and he ascended into Heaven. His disciples waited for the day his prophecy was fulfilled, and saw it come to pass… And then they waited.

We recently talked about the way that we all get excited at times at the prospect of Christ’s return. We eagerly await the restitution of our broken world. We look forward to the incredible signs Christ forecast, of sun and moon disappearing into sackcloth and blood, and the extinguishing of the great cosmic lanterns above us. We await this because we believe in prophecy, we believe in what Christ gave us to hope in. We know what it means to be saved, to feel Christ within us and proclaim that truth out loud. We know the Spirit’s movement deep in our hearts, the opening of a door into something new. We know so much, but we always have more to learn.

We proclaim a faith that necessitates that, someday, time will meet its end. Our proclamation is not that the world is building up toward an entropic destruction – where energy grows tired and settles into a cold cosmic soup. Instead, we proclaim a revivification of this broken world, a birth into something new. We are not like those without hope, who see the world only as the inert matter it is made of. We see beyond the dark materials of creation into the brilliant light of God’s work, of God’s beauty. We stay alive, awake, and alert as people who know our Master will be home any minute, and we do so in the joyful knowledge that what is to come is much better than what presently is.

As we enter into Advent, as we drink from the cup and eat of the bread of remembrance we call Holy Communion, let the grace of God take hold of you. Surrender completely to a world in which we do not have to be the focal point, but where we are just one thing in orbit of something far greater and more wonderful. Remember that the infinite God of all time and space, in order to bring all of time and space into harmony once again, came to live among us. As we prepare for Christ’s advent in the world today, we prepare to celebrate the time long ago he was born as a human that lived around us. Drink deep the grace of God, and find your voice. – Amen.

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Conclusions.” in The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Peabody: Mass. : Hendrickson Publishers.) 2021