Listen: Christ is calling you, calling me, to follow, and our lives will be changed. That will be our witness. That will be the sign that God is in the world in love and light and hope.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, year B
Texts: Mark 1:14-20; Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

How many times had these four met Jesus before this, do you think?

It’s nearly impossible to believe this was their first encounter. A strange man, a teacher, walks up to them at their work, and says, “Follow me. I’ll teach you how to fish for people.” And off Simon and Andrew go. Then James and John, leaving Dad in the boat holding the nets.

John’s Gospel describes a previous encounter to this call. Andrew and John are disciples of the Baptizer, who points out Jesus as the Lamb of God. They start following Jesus, and Andrew runs to tell his brother Simon they’d found the Messiah.

Today’s story makes more sense if John’s story came first. Because if this is their first encounter, this is a stunningly spontaneous and even shocking thing these four men do.

It’s an important question, because it’s fair to ask how many times we’ve met Jesus, how often we’ve heard him, and whether when he calls we are ready to follow. Jonah today is easy to count: this is round two with God. Andrew and Simon, James and John, really early in their time with Jesus, drop everything to follow him. They utterly change their lives.

Why does that seem so foreign to us?

Maybe we’re a little awestruck by their changes, these Galileans and Jonah.

Jonah leaves house and home and, after running away, heads to the heart of the enemy to deliver God’s message. The four fishermen leave house and home, leave one of their fathers literally holding their business in his hands. These are dramatic life changes as a result of God’s call.

We like these kinds of stories. Some of us here have families who did the same thing: moved across the world in response to God’s call, uprooted home and family, went to strange islands or continents. These are inspiring stories.

But maybe we’re distracting ourselves from what’s important, focusing on such big-picture accounts. Most of us haven’t made changes in our lives remotely close to what our stories today tell, or what missionaries and their families can tell.

But if the only way Christ can call us to follow is by asking us to literally move our lives to another geography, then only a small number of Christ’s followers are actually called to follow.

That just doesn’t make any sense.

We’ve known Christ a long time. Some for over half a century or more.

How long do we have to know Christ before we start listening for our call to follow? Every day Christ comes to us in our home, at our work, with our hands in whatever it is we’re doing, and says, “Follow me. I’ll teach you how to fish for people.” This isn’t a call for others. It’s a call for you, for me.

We are called to reach people with God’s love in Christ, most of us – most of us – in our own worlds, homes, workplaces, not in faraway lands. But apart from the geography, our call is the same as any who packed their things and got on a boat or a plane. Once you’re where God needs you, whether Madagascar or Minnesota, the work’s the same.

We witness to God’s love in Christ by our lives that look like God’s love in the world. Created in the image of God, now in Christ the Spirit is shaping us to bear the likeness of God in the world. So our outside lives match our inside truth, our inner godliness.

Remember why God came to us in person: to make us like God, children of God.

To help us become in practice what we already are, images of God. Everything Jesus taught intends to help us find that likeness, to be like Jesus. Love as I have loved you. Forgive completely, as God forgives. Do to others what you would have them do to you. If your neighbor is hungry, feed her. If your neighbor is thirsty, give him a drink. Don’t let anger control you, but be reconciled with each other. Be careful not to look at people as objects. Don’t worry about food or drink, don’t seek wealth and riches, don’t trust in your own ability: put your lives in God’s hands.

We know all these teachings, and many more. Following Christ, dropping what we’re doing and heading up the beach with our God, is pretty simple. We just follow this way that’s summed up in love of God with all our being and love of neighbor as ourselves.

And let’s not fool ourselves: when we follow this path, walk in these teachings, everything will be changed.

Just try to do one of them every day, in every encounter, you’ll see. Just a month or so ago I was telling my spiritual director how frustrating it was to live in a self-giving way. I was trying to put my needs second to others, and in some circumstances, that meant that people were taking advantage of me. My mistake was trying to follow Christ as if that were a strategy: I’ll act this way, and then others will respond.

What he reminded me was that we don’t have a strategy when we follow Christ. Simon and Andrew, James and John, there was no master plan. They followed, and learned as they went. Jonah went with no plan. Letting go of my needs for the sake of the other, that’s the plan. Whether anyone responds in a way that I like is irrelevant. Follow me, Jesus said. Don’t worry about the rest.

When we follow this way, we are dramatically changed. When we decide we will no longer justify our unkindness or selfishness or lack of love by blaming others, or saying we can’t be anything other than we are, our lives are forever different, even if we never move. When we look at today, just today, as the day we try forgiving, loving, giving of ourselves, our lives are utterly changed.

Maybe people will notice. Maybe they won’t, at least at first. Over time, there will be a witness, in our changed natures, our softening and kindness. We will look more and more like the God who loved us into this new life, more and more reflect the divine image that is already in each of us.

And let’s not be discouraged by the seeming smallness of the light we’re asked to cast in the world.

These disciples we know and remember thousands of years later, they’re like bright torches. That’s why we remember their stories thousands of years later. Our sacrifices, our changed lives, the witness you and I make, these are candles in the dark, not blazing torches. But they are the light that is needed, and they are God’s grace for our world.

It doesn’t matter if we’re each the only ones who can see how our lives are changed. The point is being ready for the change, when God calls for it, and asking the Spirit for strength to follow through.

It will be the small candle of our changed lives, our grace, our forgiveness, that witnesses to Christ, fishes for people. It will be our changed nature when dealing with others, our kindness, our love when others are unloving, that will be the flicker of light and hope that tells others God has not abandoned this world.

Maybe we’ve waited long enough. Listen: Christ is calling. Will we follow, and be changed forever?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

You are already filled with the Spirit of God, who moves in you with every breath, filling you, changing you, leading you into the life God has always wanted for you and for this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Baptism of Our Lord, year B
Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11, with references to 1 Corinthians 6 and 12

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

In the beginning, God breathed on the waters of chaos.

God’s Spirit, like wind, moved over the waters, and, as light was separated from darkness, land from waters, God opened a space for the creation.

In that beginning, God created humanity in God’s own image, and God breathed again, into these frail creatures. God’s breath filled them, and as they took breath, they breathed in God. God still breathes into the creation, into us. Our every breath breathes in God’s Spirit, exhales God’s Spirit.

When Jesus rose up out of Jordan’s waters, baptized, and saw the Holy Spirit descending, this wasn’t the Spirit’s arrival in his life. Human, like us, from his first breath he breathed God’s Spirit. Yes, Jesus was also God’s Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, one with the Father and the Spirit, yes, that, too. But in his humanity, he was filled with the Spirit. We all are.

So what happened at the Jordan? The presence of God’s Spirit was witnessed publicly. Jesus saw the Spirit, heard his Father’s voice, was confirmed as God’s beloved Son. So as Jesus headed into the desert and then his ministry, he went reassured that the Spirit was with him.

In the beginning, God breathed life into us. But that doesn’t always mean we know it.

In Acts today, Paul comes to Ephesus, and finds disciples of Jesus. But when he asks them if they received the Holy Spirit when they became believers, they say, “We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit!

Yet with every breath the Spirit of God had always moved in them. They just didn’t know it. So Paul teaches them, and baptizes them in the name of Jesus. Then, as always in Acts, after their baptism Paul lays hands on them, and the Holy Spirit fills them. As at Pentecost, they spoke in tongues, they prophesied. They knew the Spirit was in them.

But the Spirit had always been with them. Naming that, calling it out of them, opened them to see the Spirit’s presence and gifts, just like Jesus.

It isn’t just Genesis that says this about the Spirit. Paul knew it, taught it. Maybe even shared it with these disciples.

Paul told his friends at Corinth in his first letter that faith itself is evidence of the Spirit’s presence. He said no one can confess Jesus as Lord if the Holy Spirit isn’t with them. (12:3) So the fact that these Ephesian disciples believed in Jesus proved the Holy Spirit was already there.

But he also could’ve told them a deeper wonder: God is never “out there,” but within. He could have said, as he also did in that first letter to Corinth, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” (6:19)

Their very bodies are where the true God lives! That’s always been their reality. They just didn’t know it.

“We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

Is this our problem? Lutherans talk a lot about Jesus, the Christ, about the cross and resurrection. We talk about and pray to the Father and the Son a lot. But the Spirit doesn’t often get much attention from Lutherans.

That may be because the Holy Spirit is God’s wild card. The Spirit is the uncontrollable God in the world, who moves where she wants, fills whom she wants, does what she wants. The Spirit breathed over the waters of chaos at creation, and still breathes into this world, and there’s nothing we can do about it. She will fill all people, no matter what they believe, will inspire and give gifts to all people, no matter who they are.

We’ve always been a little afraid of this unpredictability of the Holy Spirit. It’s easier to nail down doctrinal truths, tighten up our theology. There you can feel a little secure.

But calling on the Holy Spirit, who can’t be controlled? You’d have to be a little reckless even to try.

But don’t you know, Paul says, that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?

How have we let that truth be buried, this astonishing, miraculous proclamation of Paul? We spend our lives looking for God. We talk about God, make theories about God, we try to get all our teachings in order.

But in our dark hours of the soul, when we’re lost and afraid and can’t see through the brambles of the woods that have overgrown our path, none of that helps at all. When you’re terrified, or despairing, or angry, or grieving, or desperately lonely, or feeling guilt, words and theories do nothing. You need to know if God is with you, and nothing more.

But don’t you know, Paul says, that God is in you already? That your body is God’s temple? There’s no place to “go” for God. The Spirit of God lives in you, Paul says. The Hebrews say, you know this in your every breath.

In the beginning of your life, God breathed into you, and you were filled with the Spirit. You became God’s house.

But no, you say, we know science. Breathing, respiration, that’s a natural function. All animals do it. You take in oxygen, it feeds your body, you exhale carbon dioxide. It’s a mechanical function of a living organism.

OK, say our Hebrew ancestors. Maybe so. But this is also true: your breath is God’s breath. Your spirit is God’s Spirit within you. God has taken up residence inside us, has always been there. There’s no other temple.

John might not have been right about his baptism.

He distinguishes between his – a symbolic washing away of sin after confession – and the baptism in Christ, which, he says, is a baptism in the Holy Spirit.

But if the Holy Spirit was in all those people who came to John at the Jordan, if she brought them there in the first place, John didn’t realize the Spirit was also in his baptism.

Our baptism, like John’s, is also a washing away of sin and evil, and every day we renew that washing, every day we seek God’s forgiveness and cleansing, we start afresh.

But unlike John, in our baptism, the Church, as in Acts, asked the Holy Spirit to come upon us. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding. The Spirit of counsel and might. The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The Spirit of joy in God’s presence.

But the Holy Spirit isn’t waiting for this asking, waiting to enter a person until the Church says so. We ask the Spirit to come knowing she’s already here, so we name that, recognize that anew. We need to hear that there is such a thing as the Holy Spirit in us, and then we are able to see what happens.

So breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe of God.

You’ve been doing it your whole life, but now, like those folks near Ephesus, you know what you’re doing. You are living in God, and God is living in you.

Your baptism was the public announcing of this grace. Your washing in the waters of God, the waters God breathes upon, wasn’t the first time you were forgiven, either. But it is your washing, your cleansing in God. Just as it’s a sign that God’s Spirit is in you.

So breathe of God. Exhale into God. You are never alone. You are God’s beloved child, and God is well pleased with you. With each breath, the Spirit is moving in you, even when you don’t know it. The Spirit’s gifts are yours, as close as your breathing and sighing.

And now, following Jesus’ steps, it’s time to move from the waters, cleansed of sin, filled with the Spirit, with God’s voice still ringing in our ears, to do our work and life as God’s beloved children.

But not alone. Never alone. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

The only time we have to live is right now, in this present moment, where God comes and fills the time with grace and love; so will we be kind, will we love, will we be Christ, today, right now?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year B
Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21-40

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. What direction are you looking?

Are you looking to the past today? It’s the day to do it. Websites, news organizations, magazines, everyone does their lists this time of year. The best and the worst of 2017 are chronicled and numbered for our entertainment, and sometimes our depression.

But are you also doing a list for 2017? Regrets, loesses, bad decisions? Remembrance of loved ones? Joys, love found, moments of happiness?

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. Are you looking forward?

That’s usually tomorrow’s job, January 1st. Are you joining millions of others making resolutions for 2018, plans for being a different person this time? Are you looking forward with dread over impending personal crises or what might happen in the world?

Or are you looking forward in hope? Are there things planned you can’t wait for, coming events that will bring you joy?

Time is tricky.

We think we live time in one direction, past to present to future. But often we get trapped outside of our present moment. We linger on the past, or dwell on the future, and don’t live in our present. So on this arbitrary day that someone decided ended our 365 day trip around the sun, we’re either focused backward or forward. But it’s often how we live our whole lives.

What if we learned to really live in the present?

In the fullness of time, Paul says, God was born among us.

Actually, Paul says “When the fullness of time had come,” so he’s saying the birth of Jesus happened at just the right time in world history, when everything was ready, at exactly the right moment for God’s Incarnation among us.

But maybe there’s more we can see here. Maybe “the fullness of time” isn’t just a question of a moment in history.

What if Paul is saying that God fills time by coming? That is, the timeless God from before even the birth of the universe enters our time, our history, in this moment, and fills it with God?

Time itself would be transformed. There’d be no past, no future, there’d just be now, filled with God.

We know a little about this, because we find that fullness here.

There is a mystery about our worship here. Externally, there’s a certain amount of time it takes. We rarely finish Eucharist before one hour and fifteen minutes. This is longer than a lot of other Christians, and some wonder why we do this.

Because: when we’re in here we lose track of time. That is, we lose track of the chronology of time. In this place, we live in time that is filled with God, and we don’t perceive how the clock is running. We don’t check our watches, we don’t drum our fingers on the pews. (Well, maybe once in a while some of us do; we’re human.)

But in this place when we worship, we are here. We’re not living in the past. We’re not living in the future. In this moment we are simply here.

In this place, for this time, we are filled with God. It is the fullness of time here. It is all the time we need. It is outside of chronological time. And in this space, opened up by God in our midst, we meet God’s fullness. God is born among us. We receive God Incarnate in Word and Meal, in each other, in prayer and song. We are filled.

But if God comes to us in the fullness of time here, could we experience this outside of these walls, too? Simeon must have.

Simeon lived with a promise that transformed every moment of his life.

However old he was when he heard it, he lived confident that he would not die until he saw God’s Messiah.

Think of that. Every day might be the day. For however many years, however many decades, this day might be the one. Every day he’d look into each face, treat everyone with grace and compassion because, who knows, this could be the Messiah.

Imagine what a full life that would be for us!

Every day you get up with joy, because this could be the day. Every person you see, you love and respect, because this could be the one. Every moment you are aware of who you are, where you are, what you are, because you don’t want to miss the coming of God’s Christ in the world.

There’s no time to regret the past. No time to worry about the future. Just the joy of being in a world where God is coming to bring life and love, and knowing you’ve been promised to see that coming.

What do we miss when we don’t live such a life?

If we spend our days living in the past, dwelling on past losses or victories, fretting about past actions or missed opportunities, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we actually are living in?

If we spend our days anxious about what is to come, or anticipating a good thing, or wishing we could become someone we aren’t, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we are actually living in?

If we spend our days in a present that isn’t really present, distracted by entertainment or news or whatever else we’re chasing, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we are actually living in?

And not just what. Who are we missing? Who are we not listening to, or loving, or being kind to, or simply being with, when we’re not “here” in our present? Are we missing Christ?

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. Today, right now, is the fullness of time.

And we are promised what Simeon was, that we will see God-with-us.

Today, right now, this is the day that the Lord has made. In this moment, in this fullness of time, God is here, blessing us with hope and life and light.

The past can teach. We learn from mistakes, remember loved ones, recall graces. But we can’t live there. The future can direct. We hope for good, plan to grow and change, look forward to what God is doing. We can’t live there, either.

But we can be Simeon today, right now, and watch every moment for Christ’s coming. We can be love right now. We can show compassion and do kindness, right now. We can look in every face for the face of God’s Christ, right now.

Today, in the fullness of time, is all the time we know we have. And here, filled with God, right now, is the only time we can really know what it is to live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

When we open the door of our heart to God, we make an opening in the world for God’s light; we also are changed forever.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord (Christmas Day)
Texts: John 1:1-14 (adding 15-18), with reference to Luke 9:58

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“Mary’s consent opens the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God,” Thomas Merton writes. [1]

God’s Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth, because Mary opened the door. The light shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome, because Mary said “yes.” Her son Jesus, the Word of God from before time itself, “was in the world” because of Mary.

But ponder this troubling thought: Mary opens the door. And we slam it shut.

Merton’s poem continues: “Mary sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth as poor and helpless . . . A vagrant, a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without identification, without even a number, a frail expendable exile.” [2]

John says, “The world came into being through this Word, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own did not accept him.” Jesus said: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58)

God-with-us, Emmanuel, for whose coming just yesterday morning we sang our longing, does come to ransom captive Israel. Does come to join life with all peoples and tribes. Does come to restore the whole creation by entering into it in person. Does come to reveal God’s eternal love for the creation and for all creatures in it.

But this timeless Word of God arrives and walks down a dusty road homeless, without identification or papers, “a frail expendable exile.” And this homeless God is sent to a cross.

For two thousand years, people have claimed to receive God’s Word-made-flesh. But for two thousand years the Church has also done many horrible things, caused pain and suffering. For two thousand years, people have claimed to follow this Christ, but have done wickedness and evil in that name.

For two thousand years, people have claimed to accept God-with-us, but have lived lives of selfishness and neglect, have oppressed and harmed others, have tried to hold salvation as our possession, not live into it as a new way of life. For two thousand years, Christ’s followers have not followed Christ. We recognize this in ourselves, too.

The Word came to what was his own, and his own did not accept him.

This is the paradox of the Incarnation and of this day: we want God with us. But we’re not prepared to accept God with us.

John declares that in Jesus of Nazareth we see the face of God, the Son who reveals God’s heart to us. God’s Word, God’s Logos, God’s Blueprint for the whole universe, present at the creation itself, the Son of God, one with the Spirit and the Father, this “infinitely Rich and Powerful One,” now enters our life as a poor and helpless baby of a poor and willing young mother.

When we see who this baby becomes, hear him proclaim God’s love and God’s reign, hear him invite us to follow his path, when we see him die and then rise from the dead, we know John speaks truth. Jesus is God-with-us, the face of the Triune God for us, a face that radiates undying love. In Jesus we see the heart of God we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see.

But accepting God’s Word, receiving Jesus as God-with-us, means being changed. And that’s where we hesitate.

Too often we act as if faith is just thinking and believing the right things.

We tend to keep faith in our heads, a matter of right teachings, because that keeps God at arm’s length. Talking about God, talking about doctrine, talking about faith, as if they’re objects for our consideration. Then we don’t have to be changed.

“Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of God has no place to lay his head.” When faith doesn’t reach the heart, when we shut that door to God’s making a home in us, that’s when believers do horrible things. That’s when we kill, and when we persecute those who disagree. That’s when we ignore the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying. That’s when we don’t live lives shaped by God’s love. That’s when we become a force of darkness instead of light. And God remains homeless.

“Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of God has no place to lay his head.” When we want God-with-us only on our terms, standing in the background like a good butler until we need something, and then send God back into the shadows, God remains homeless.

We keep God at arm’s length because John this morning promises a great but terrifying wonder: “To all who received this Word, who believed in his name, the Word gave power to become children of God, who were born not of human things, not of flesh, but of God.”

That’s why we intellectualize our faith, keep God on the sidelines of our lives. Because the alternative is standing in front of Gabriel like Mary, in that heartbeat where we have to decide: do I let God into my life and be changed forever? The alternative is God growing inside us, like Mary. The alternative is God taking the Blueprint of the universe enfleshed in Jesus and re-writing us to that Blueprint, making us children of God who look like God.

All who receive Christ are given power to become new beings. Children of God.

Mary’s whole life is transformed. She becomes the one who embraces, loves, shapes, and nurtures God in the world. Family, disciples, friends, many who meet Jesus also receive him into their lives. It takes time for some of them, but they are transformed, too.

And as much as we can see when Christians have not received Christ and have done evil, as much as we see where we have failed, John’s truth is also visible throughout these two thousand years: year after year, century after century, people’s receiving Christ into their lives transformed them into Christ in the world, children of God who, knowing the heart of God in Jesus, became that heart in the world.

For century after century, year after year, people’s consent opened the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God, to God’s Blueprint, and they were changed into Christ in the world, children of God who, seeing the face of God in Jesus, became that face in the world.

Now we hear Gabriel’s invitation ourselves.

To accept this Word among us, to receive this God-with-us as our own. We need to be as aware as Mary was of what this will mean for us. We will be changed. We will let go of lots of things we cling to. We will start on a new path, where we are God’s children, made in God’s image, where our lives no longer are our own.

But when we do, when we’re made into the pattern of God’s divine Blueprint, what happened with Mary will also happen with us. Others will meet God through us. Others will find hope through us. Others will see God’s glory, full of grace and truth, through us. Others will know the heart of God’s love, through us.

Mary’s consent opens the door to the Word of God. Our consent keeps it open, so that God’s Word can keep creating life and justice and light in this world that so desperately needs it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia: IV. Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina”, from In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, (New Directions Publishing Corp, New York, 2005), p. 71

[2] Merton, ibid

 

It is in the ordinary, tired, everyday life of this world – even this child we celebrate tonight – that God is truly found. And God’s transforming light and life finds room in everything ordinary, even us. Until all is made new.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Texts: Luke 2:1-20

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“Let’s go to Bethlehem now and see this thing that’s happened, which the Lord told us about.”

This is pretty remarkable, actually. Whatever they saw and heard on that Bethlehem hillside, afterward the shepherds didn’t shrug it off as a dream. They didn’t stay frozen in fear. They looked at each other and said, “Let’s go see.”

But what did they see when they got there? We know what Christmas cards and movies and carols say. They found a barn or cave, a soft light rising up from a manger. Cow and donkey placidly lie on either side. A holy couple sits demurely beside the glow, and a silent, beatific God-child looks up in wisdom and peace. Soft heavenly background music completes the scene.

But that’s nothing like what greeted the shepherds when they got to town.

We tend to take this moment of God’s coming into the world and wash it in sentiment and light.

We clean the whole picture up so it looks like it’s supposed to. All is calm, all is bright round yon virgin. The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. Love’s pure light, radiant, beams from the child’s holy face. Beautiful.

Many of our carols go this way, and we’re good with that. We love this irenic picture to complete a night of perfection in a world of brokenness and pain. On my vicar year, the high school shop teacher helped me build a stable for our Nativity figures. It’s beautiful. Since then I’ve often dreamed about figuring out a way of installing a warm spotlight on the ceiling that would wash the manger in a glow, only the manger. Because no matter where we put candles, Jesus is always in the dark.

But that perfect scene isn’t what the shepherds saw. And as long as we insist on perfection tonight – in our Nativity scenes, in our carols, even in our families – as long as we insist on bathing everything in a warm glow, we miss what’s really important. What the shepherds actually saw is what gives us life. Gives us hope that cannot be quenched, even by imperfection, suffering, pain, loss, or whatever else we try to shoehorn out of this night.

Seeing Jesus in the dark, that’s what we need to see. That’s what the shepherds help us see.

Because what the shepherds saw was utterly ordinary.

They didn’t find a barn, or a cave. Luke says there was a manger. But Luke’s Greek is good, and he never says there was no room in the “inn.” He uses the Greek word for “inn” in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here he uses a word better translated “guest room.”

In a culture of hospitality, it’s unthinkable that this couple would have been turned away, especially by relatives. But if cousin Betty and her whole family were already in the one upper room on the roof, Joseph and Mary would have been welcomed into the main room where everyone else slept. Including one or two animals the house owned, brought inside for the evening for warmth and security. Put the baby in the manger so he doesn’t roll around on the floor with the others.

So in a dark house lighted by a couple oil lamps, the shepherds see an exhausted mother, without a chance to freshen up, a tiny baby wrapped in cloth, sometimes screaming like all babies do. An extended group of folks hovering around. A family probably short on patience, now greeting a bunch of rubes from the hills.

So how did these shepherds believe this was the Messiah the angels told them about? A newborn is beautiful, even miraculous. But also ordinary. Without the spotlight and background music and beatific mother and child, what did they see in this utterly ordinary scene?

When we start asking this, we realize it’s always the question with Jesus.

We imagine a practically perfect Jesus as a boy, but Mary must have had hundreds of ordinary moments with a boy who sometimes smelled bad, who skinned his knee, who had to learn to behave. How did she see God’s Son in this ordinary kid?

As an adult, Jesus was a gifted teacher, and attracted followers. But it’s pretty clear from the Gospels that they saw him in mostly human terms, until the end.

And the end: that’s the big question, isn’t it? How did they look at a man hanging on a cross, humiliated as a criminal, and say, “Yes, there’s God-with-us. That’s the one.”

We start asking the question tonight, with the shepherds, because this question’s never going away. How do we see God in this ordinary baby? In Jesus, who looks like us, talks like us, is like us?

Luke says we hear as well as see. That helps.

The shepherds left the family apparently satisfied they’d seen what was advertised. But what they went and proclaimed was “what had been told them about this child,” the same thing that led them to the baby.

Mary “treasured all these words” she heard from the shepherds, and “pondered them in her heart.”

The disciples heard Jesus speak about God’s reign, about God’s love, heard his invitation to follow in God’s way. Slowly they figured out who he was. The acts of power helped, but what they heard opened them to see what they needed to see.

And they probably didn’t see God on that cross. Only failure and disaster and the end of all their hopes. But then they saw Jesus alive on Sunday, and heard, heard, him say “Peace be with you,” and, “woman, why are you weeping?,” and they could see. When he broke the ordinary bread in that ordinary little house in Emmaus, and spoke, their eyes were opened.

When we strip away the sentimentality to see the ordinariness of this birth, we might be afraid we can’t see God on this night anymore.

But the opposite is true. Like the shepherds, and Mary, and the disciples, we, too, have heard. And we need to see what God’s doing as clearly as we can if we’re going to find God’s life in this child, whom we’ve been told is God’s Son.

When we look with clear and open eyes what we see is this wonder: God comes into human life in the most ordinary of ways. In a simple, ordinary birth of a child. In the growing life of a young boy. In the teaching life of an obscure rabbi. Isaiah says, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2)

But in this ordinary life, in an ordinary world, God has come. Into an ordinary baby, born in difficult, harsh, threatening times. Just like every baby born tonight in hospitals or shacks all over this difficult, harsh, threatening planet. This we have heard, and this we now see. God has come to restore all the creation by imbuing God’s own self into the creation.

We’ve already known this, already heard this, if we’ve forgotten.

Tonight we will gather once again at the Table this ordinary rabbi sets before us, and eat a small piece of bread, sip a little wine. But in this ordinary bread, in this ordinary wine, grown from the earth itself, made into nourishment in the same way for thousands of years, we have heard, yes, we have even seen for ourselves, God is present. We taste the death and resurrection of this ordinary one, this Jesus, in this ordinary meal. And we know Christ has come to us.

And if Christ can inhabit ordinary bread and wine, can inhabit this ordinary baby born long ago, then here is our Christmas wonder:
Christ can inhabit us.

Because there’s nothing more ordinary than we who are gathered here. We know our failures and flaws, our weaknesses and doubts, our brokenness and pain. If God can only be seen in the perfection of a photo-shopped picture, there’s no room for us in God, and no room in us for God. If God can only come into a perfect family, perfect relationships, a Christmas out of the storybooks, then how could God come to us?

But the shepherds heard and saw and proclaimed God in the ordinary of this world, bringing healing and restoration from within. We might not be much to look at, either. But in us, as in the whole of this ordinary world, God is transforming the whole creation.

So let’s go to Bethlehem now and see this thing that’s happened, which God told us about.

There is no place in the whole creation where God is not, so all the creation will be healed. That’s what we see on this holy night.

There’s nothing so ordinary that God is not there, so everywhere God makes newness of life. That’s what we see on this holy night.

An ordinary baby. A tired set of parents. Strange shepherds. A humiliating death. See, God is there! And God’s life cannot be stopped.

A morsel of bread. A sip of wine. Ordinary people trying their best but feeling that’s not enough. See, God is here! And God’s life cannot be stopped.

It’s a lot to process. So let’s not only go see. Let’s also take a seat beside Mary and ponder in our heart these things we’ve seen and heard. Until we can see God and God’s healing in all things, making ordinary extraordinary, making wholeness out of brokenness, even life out of death.

Good news of great joy indeed!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen