Adopted as children of God, inheritors of God: these are our titles, our promise, but in fact they are also our identity, our reality, and our life in Christ is the Spirit’s making the Incarnation live in us for the sake of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Second Sunday of Christmas; texts: John 1:(1-5) 10-18; Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-14

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

Though it doesn’t always happen the same way, and sometimes there are divergent behaviors and personalities, quite often it is true to say that children grow up and are imitations of their parents.  Behavior traits, patterns of thinking, even quirks of speech, children learn and copy from those who rear them, who love them, who teach them.  It’s a remarkable thing, but the more important inheritance we receive from our parents is what we learned from them, for good or for ill, and how that affects who we are in the world, far more than any material inheritance.

We sometimes seem to forget this when we consider our claim that we are children of God.  Paul, in this introduction to the letter to the Ephesians, speaks of the believers being adopted as children, receiving their inheritance in Christ, which we sometimes think of as limited to receiving life after we die.  But if we read the entirety of this letter it’s clear that the true inheritance is not as much about life after death as it is a life lived as Christ, in imitation of and filled with the Spirit of our Lord Jesus, a life which is lived now and, in Christ’s resurrection, after we die, both.  “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received,” Paul will say later.  And, “you once were darkness, now you are light in the Lord.  Walk as children of light.”

As we continue in our celebration of the birth of the Son of God, then, we are confronted by the very truth that gives us hope: we are children of God but are called to live as if that were true.  To imitate our sibling Jesus with our lives.  And when we consider what we hear today about what the coming of God into the world is supposed to do, what we claim the Triune God began in coming in this child Jesus, we also are faced with the truth that the only way that all this will be accomplished is if the rest of God’s children start living as this Child, this Son of God, showed us how.  If we start looking like our Brother.

This is pretty important, because what Jeremiah promises today about what God is doing is something we desperately need in this world.

Jeremiah’s promise here is that God will come and save.

Salvation for those in exile – the context of these words – is restoration, the gathering of the scattered.  And that’s what God promises: those scattered all over the world will be brought back from all the coastlands far away, like a shepherd gathers a flock.

Those who are not whole – from the blind to the lame, and any other pain or infirmity, physical, spiritual, emotional, any ailment we could add – will be brought back, too.  Their brokenness will not bar them from coming.  Our brokenness will not bar us from coming.

And all will walk by brooks of water for refreshment, the prophet declares, and on straight paths so they won’t stumble.  And joy will be the word of the day: celebration, feasting, merriment, dancing.  Mourning turned into joy.  Sorrow turned into comfort.  God’s people will be brought together as one, under the care of the shepherd, and all will be well.  This is the promise.

Now it’s likely that these words were chosen to be read on the Second Sunday of Christmas because they speak of the messianic reign which we see fulfilled in Jesus.  But just as we heard such promises in Advent, and realized that we haven’t seen this yet, we see that here, too.

God’s people aren’t gathered together in joy, they’re scattered.  Even if we limit that group only to Christians, which isn’t warranted at all by this text, we are as divided as a body of over a billion could be.  Though we all confess that Jesus is God’s Son, we find much to separate us.

And all the rest of God’s people, those who don’t recognize Jesus this way, but believe in God, or don’t even believe in God, well, we’re separated from them, too, barely recognizing them as sisters and brothers at times.

So the picture of God’s children gathered together in unity, walking on safe paths, fed, fulfilled, in God’s care, well, that hasn’t happened yet.

But before we complain that God hasn’t done it, or that Jesus isn’t really fulfilling it, we should look at John’s words for a moment (keeping Ephesians in mind as well).  Because there’s something important about the Word becoming flesh that we often seem to miss.

John declares that God became one of us.  But then he tells us that it’s so we, we, can become God’s children ourselves.

John says that all who receive this Word-made-flesh, who believe in him, are given power to become children of God, born not of anything but of God.  That’s amazing.  Because we haven’t always understood the Incarnation that way.

We recognize that God became one of us, dwelled among us, literally “pitched a tent” with us.  But we usually limit that to Jesus: Jesus is God-with-us, Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus is God’s answer to the world’s problems.  And that’s true.

But in the same place that John tells us that about Jesus, he says that we, too, are made children of God.  And in John’s words what is inescapable is that we are literally children of God like Jesus.  Born not of human will or flesh and blood, John says, but of God.

Now of course we’re flesh and blood.  But John also seems to be saying that because of Jesus, God-with-us, we, too, are God’s incarnation in the world ourselves.  We have the power to become children of God.  And that means we are God’s agents of promise, we are God’s hands to heal.

The Incarnation of the Son of God seems to have been only the beginning of God’s planned restoration.  We’re the continuing of that plan, God’s Word continuing to be enfleshed in the world.

Now we say this a lot, that God works through us.  But as we celebrate the birth of the Son of God, maybe we need to use that image for ourselves more as a way really to believe what we say.

You are a child of God.  I am a child of God.  Literally.  Not figuratively.

So when God promises to heal the world, it isn’t only through Jesus.  God’s intent, God’s plan, is that all of the children of God will participate, will make things new.

And then the promises of Jeremiah start making sense.  If all God’s children are a part of the gathering of peoples in God’s love, part of the restoring of the creation, it’s almost easy to see how this new world God hopes for could come about.

Believing in the Son of God, receiving him, as John puts it, is anything but passive.  It’s never about sitting back and rejoicing at the birth of Jesus, even his life, death and resurrection, and saying, “OK, when’s this world going to be fixed?”  Even the disciples had to learn that, before the ascension.

It’s always about seeing this Son of God as the one who always turns to us and says, “Follow me,” who needs us to continue this healing, this restoration, this light in the darkness that cannot be overcome.

It’s about receiving him, literally, taking in this Word-made-flesh.  In this first chapter of John, that’s the dividing line: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him,” John says.  “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”

And as for how this happens for each of us, I believe that it’s the case that God wants us to figure some of this out ourselves, and make a difference.

God needs our ingenuity, our willingness, our hands.  To make this plan truly be what God needs it to be, not imposed from above but joined in willingly by the very people God needs to save.  The only way the restoration of the world can happen is if many are involved, and all their gifts are used.

But also by involving us in this healing and new life, it becomes how we’re going to grow and mature into the people God envisions us to be.  When we live out our true calling as children of God, we are living into the fullness of what God intended in the first place by coming in person as one of us.

And I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’ve just done the easy part.  The hard part is to come.

The easy part is to recognize who we are.  The hard part is to live it.  How do we take this from here and live it?  How do we take seriously and joyfully that we are God’s incarnate children, we are filled with God’s Spirit, we are God’s answer for the world?

I don’t have all the answers, but I have a couple thoughts.  It’s a new year, a good time to make a resolution.  Here’s what God might suggest for us: when we see a difficulty, a problem, a challenge, something we’d like to see different, something we’d like God to make right, why don’t we first ask what we can do?  What options we have, what wisdom we bring, what energy we can put to use?  We’re not doing this alone: we are God’s children, and all our gifts come from God.  God will give us all we need.  But the willing heart, the joyful “I’ll help,” that God needs from us.  So we can grow and mature.  And so it all can get done.

And second, perhaps God might suggest this: that whenever we are considering how we live, what decisions we make, how we treat others; whenever we’re dealing with other people, looking at our own successes and failures, simply living, why don’t we first always remind ourselves of our true identity?  Remind ourselves that we are in fact God’s children, not anything else, and let that profoundly shape us.

The good news is God’s got a plan.  The good news is also that we’re a part of it.  But the best news of all is that John says we’re “given the power” to become the children of God we are.  The Spirit will fill us with all we need to live in this way, learn from our brother Jesus, become what we are made to be, and so change the world.  God will help us to be the children we’re meant to be for the sake of the world, that’s a promise.

So let’s be about being who we are.  That will be our Christmas gift to the world, wherever we are planted, wherever we go.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

As our time rolls on, as we move forward, God, in the fullness of time, the right time, enters our world as a child, becoming fixed in our reality, limited as we are, in order to adopt us, redeem us, make us free children and heirs of God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, the feast of the Name of Jesus; texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Psalm 8; Luke 2:15-21

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

Well, we’ve done it again.  We’ve traveled all the way around the sun once more, and are starting another revolution today.

Obviously, we had nothing to do with this.  The earth in its course makes its own way around our sun, along with companion planets, asteroids, planetoids, and other space debris.  It takes our planet 365 and a quarter days to make this journey.  We’re just along for the ride.

And of course, it’s completely arbitrary that today is the day we say we start a new turn, a new journey.  Yesterday, or tomorrow, could just as easily be the first or the last day.  Or any day.  For the Chinese, the new year begins sometime between late January and late February on our calendar. For the Jewish people, Rosh Hashanah is a date on the Jewish calendar which moves in our fall months, and many other cultures have many other days which they’ve designated as the day the new year begins.

Still, this is the day we’ve all learned to call the first day of the year, and so it is.  We’ve made it another time around the sun, and we call it a year, and time rolls on like an ever-flowing stream.  We find so many ways to keep track of this flow, from the smallest of nanoseconds to millennia, because knowing where we are in time, what minute, what hour, what day, what month, what year has become very important to us.

So it’s interesting that in the reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians assigned for the feast of the Name of Jesus, not for New Year’s Day, Paul speaks of time, of all things.  “In the fullness of time,” Paul says, “God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, . . . that we might receive adoption as children.”   For Paul, part of the wonder of this Son of God was in fact his entry into our time, our counting, our stream.

As we begin a new year, then, it is good that we remember today that the God who stands outside our stream of time has entered it, at just the right time.

But first, let us say that there is in fact a wisdom in stopping on whatever day we call the new year, and not only celebrating that we’ve come this far, but celebrating the journey through time itself and giving thanks to God.  Most cultures do this, instinctively it seems, since such observances are found all the way back to the dawn of civilization.

So we join our many and varied ancestors in taking a moment today to look back and forward, and to ask God’s blessing in that looking.  To give thanks for another year lived in God’s grace, and to seek God’s presence and strength for the next year to come, should we all survive it.

This taking time to worship as we remember that we are in a time we do not control, a time which flowed before us and will flow beyond us, ages upon ages, is a wise practice, and deeply important to our life of faith.

As the psalmist has said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”  Teach us to recognize that our time is limited, countable, and beyond our ability to control, we pray on a day like today.  We gather here today in humility at our smallness in the vast sea of time and space, marveling at the speed at which this yearly journey seems to run the older we get, grateful for God’s ever-present help in all our days, months, years, lifetimes.

But then into this remembrance, we have this odd little eight day counting today, which on the surface might seem like nothing.  But consider what we are saying.

I’m not sure we’d be gathering to celebrate the festival of the Name of Jesus if it didn’t also happen to land on what we call New Year’s Day.  It’s a very common practice for Lutherans to worship on either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.  But as we’re considering time at this start of a new year, this other time of eight days is a pretty significant intrusion, which teaches us a great deal.

It is eight days since we celebrated the birth of the Messiah, Jesus, our Lord and Savior.  Since he was a Jewish boy, on the eighth day of his life, as Luke dutifully records for us, he was circumcised, as a mark of God’s covenant with Abraham and his family.  And at that same time, he was given his name, Jesus, “God saves.”

The Church in its wisdom has seen fit to call this a festival day, the first one counting time after his birth, but certainly not the last, as we now spend almost half the Church Year walking through the life and ministry of the Son of God.

We claim a great deal about this baby whose birth we are now celebrating, whose circumcision happened on the eighth day.  Son of God, we say.  Very God of very God, begotten, not made.  The Word of God made flesh, now living among us.

This then, is the marvel of this simple noting of eight days today: the eternal Son of the Father, present at creation, beyond all time that we can fathom, suddenly is in an earthly countdown.

Think of that.  Is there any way to count the days of the Triune God?  Annual birthdays?  Ridiculous – in the first place, God is not limited to our solar system, so a year is irrelevant.  But in the second place, the Triune God is, was, and always shall be.  So, no birthday.  How about other anniversaries?  Again, no point, with the same objection as to our solar years.

God simply exists, outside of all time and space, having created a universe that lives in its own time, marking the passage.  So while beings on other planets, should they exist, would have different years, their planets having different revolution cycles around their stars, those beings are still more like us than like God.  They’re in our time.  They’re in our space.  Their star is related to our star in some way and has its own life-cycle and time-flow.

But we gather today to say that eight days after he was born among us, the eternal Son of God was circumcised.

This is a profound mystery, if only we stop and consider it.  The God for whom time does not exist has become limited to our time, so much so that we can count the days, keep track of passing time.  The Son of God whose being is beyond understanding and transcends all dimensions has subjected himself to a surgical procedure on a human baby’s body.

Suddenly, this Son of God, existing before time, has a birthday.  Anniversaries.  Yearly celebrations.  This Son of God ages, for the first time ever.  Bleeds, for the first time, ever.  Has to light candles when the day turns to night, for the first time ever.

The God beyond all time and space is now stuck in our timeline, on our planet, along for the ride with the rest of us.  And that’s an astonishing thought to think.

So when we gather to mark a new year and give thanks to God, coinciding with this strange little remembrance, we are faced with a huge question: why would God do this?

Noting our time as it passes actually helps lift up how remarkable it is that God has entered it.  The appointed psalm for today, the familiar eighth psalm, says it so well: when we consider the vastness of the creation, of time and space, it’s beyond our comprehension that the God who made all this cares for us.

This is not human arrogance, this psalm, assuming we are the crown of all things.  This is humility in seeing how tiny we are in the massive expanse of God’s creation and wondering at God’s attention and love.

When we mark a new year, gathering here to pray for the one to come, we remind ourselves how limited we are, how bound to time we are.  That we also mark this very human event in the life of the Son of God irrevocably reminds us of the mind-bending truth that God actually did come to be with us.  That God has willingly accepted all sorts of limitations for the sake of being with us.

And it is Paul who gives us the amazing answer to “why”: that we might ourselves become children of God.  God enters our time to live with us, be on this ride of time with us, that we might in turn be heirs of God, living with God.

There was no way for us to comprehend the Triune God if God remained outside our time.  By being limited in our time, in our body, in our world, the Son of God could make himself known to us, and likewise all of who God is.  And then in adopting us as children, invite us into the life that is God’s that transcends all time.

Now we belong to Christ, and this life of God’s is ours.  Now, though we still live and know time in this limited, human way, we are joined to the life of God which lives and moves beyond time.  We know God, because God became stuck with us in the fullness of time.  And that’s our joy today.

So we look to 2014, what we call a new year, with hope and promise.

Not just because we find ourselves still alive on this January 1, and not just because we’ve arbitrarily decided it was time to recognize our yearly revolution around the sun.  Though it is good and wise for us to give thanks to God for this.

But chiefly because in this child born to the world God has entered our time and become known to us, and we have found light in the darkness, hope in the despair, and joy in the sorrow of this time-bound world.  We have been joined in Christ’s death and resurrection to eternal life, life beyond time, and so we now are living as people in time and out of it.  People bound to this stream and joined to a deeper, richer, life-giving stream of God’s eternal time.

And now we continue in our time as children of the God of eternal time, and in us God’s involvement with our world, God’s connection and grace and light for our world continues.  God continues to be stuck with this world, in this time, through us.

So perhaps it’s about time, perhaps it’s now the fullness of time, that we got about our business as God’s children.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

In the midst of the horror of the massacre of the holy innocents, God is at work to save all the world from precisely this evil. God does not do this by destroying or overpowering evil, but by entering into the very heart of suffering and pain in order to bring healing and a new future.

Vicar Emily Beckering, First Sunday of Christmas, year A; texts: Matthew 13:13-23; Isaiah 63:7-9 (added Jeremiah 31:15-17 as well)

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

How horrific it is that in the wake of the birth of our savior, so much evil and death follows.

And yet, it also makes sense. It makes sense because we know from our own lives that we live in a cruel and dangerous world. We know that atrocities like the death of the baby boys of Bethlehem continue to happen in our own time.

All we have to do to be reminded of this is to turn on the TV, open a newspaper, or log in and read our news feed.  We live in a broken world where suffering is widespread and where evil still runs rampant.

The birth story of Jesus does not pretend that the world is any different.

It is not a magical story where God comes to us in the form of a baby and suddenly everything is sunshine and roses. That is not the story of the nativity because that story would in no way address the harsh realities of life lived in this world.

Instead, God comes to us and to the world by entering into the very worst that it has to offer: into a world that does not recognize him or relish in the goodness that he brings, but instead pursues him and attempts to wipe him from the face of the earth.

In Herod’s attempt to destroy his Messiah, he destroys the lives of the children of Bethlehem and their families. We need to be clear about one thing: the death of these children was not God’s will. God did not orchestrate their murder as a part of God’s plan. The slaughter of the innocents did not happen in order to fulfill God’s Word spoken to the prophets.

The fulfilled prophecies show us that in Jesus Christ, God is doing what God promised to Israel by coming as their Messiah to deliver them and give life. God the Father provides carefully for Jesus, the Son, so that this mission might be lived out.

God is at work in this story to bring life, not death, for God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

The violent death of these children depicts the polar opposite of God. Their deaths result from evil, brought about by human fear and anger. Their deaths are Herod’s desperate and disturbing attempt to hold onto his power and position at all costs. These children are destroyed because they resemble Christ. They are persecuted because they match the description of the expected Messiah: a male child born within the time frame of the appearance of the star. The church has traditionally named these children as the first martyrs because they are murdered in Jesus’ name: they are sought out and destroyed because they reflect Christ.

Their martyrdom, however, is not to be celebrated. Those who are left behind in Bethlehem bring their grief in lament before God “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” This is a direct quotation from Jeremiah 31:15, which voices the cries of Israel, exiled into Assyria.

These words from Jeremiah are our entrance into this story.

We may be left feeling like Israel, exiled to Assyria. We may look around us and see all the evil and suffering: the violence of wars, the destruction caused by hurricanes and tornadoes, the murder of children, or the horror of a slave industry that still holds millions captive and be left feeling like this depiction of Rachel: weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled.

We may find ourselves refusing to be consoled, refusing to be comforted by this birth of Jesus if it means that innocent babies will die, that the Herod’s of the world will still win, and that evil gets to go unchecked.

We hear the cry of Rachel, the cry of Israel in exile, but because Matthew takes this prophetic word out of Jeremiah without giving us the context, we do not hear God’s response to Israel’s refusal to be consoled. This is what follows the cry of Rachel in verses 16 and 17: “Thus says the LORD: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the LORD: they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future, says the LORD; your children shall come back to their own country.” God promises Israel that exile is not the end because God is still at work for them to bring them into a new future, a future filled with hope and the presence of their God.

This is also the promise that we find in the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem. God says to Israel and to us: we do not need to remain inconsolable in our grief, in our suffering, or in response to the world’s condition because what we think is the end, is not in fact the final end.

Israel is told that they will return home because God will bring them home. And though all that the people of Bethlehem might have been able to feel at the terrifying, horrendous slaughter of their children was inconsolable loss and abandonment, they were not, in fact, abandoned! God was at work for them, in the very midst of their terror, bringing to them a savior, working out God’s plan to free them from such forces of evil.

There was hope yet for them, and hope yet for us.

The hope is this: that in the person of Jesus Christ, God experiences the depths of our fear and our suffering and we do not face them alone.

This is precisely why Jesus Christ came!

He came because we are broken people who live in a broken world: a world where kings are able to wipe out the offspring of an entire village in order to maintain power, a world where children are gunned down in elementary schools, bought and sold as slaves and starve to death, a world where neighbors kill neighbors with machetes and where 11 million people are systematically destroyed because of their ethnicity.

In this baby, God enters into the very midst of that brokenness, is born into the same terror, and lives under the same threats to which we are vulnerable.

On the cross, God does not send an army of angels to overpower the Romans and prevent the crucifixion. This is not God’s way. We see this not only at Jesus’ death, but from the very onset of his birth. God does not destroy evil with fire, use angels to overpower Herod, or retaliate Herod’s evil with punishment by death.

God is not like Herod.

In Jesus, we meet a very different kind of king.

Instead, our Lord Jesus Christ enters into the danger himself: into the heart of the evil and destruction and pain in order to heal us from the inside out. And in the face of such horror, God is carefully and intimately involved in order to fulfill the promises made and to bring about a new future.

So what shall our witness and our response to this story be? When we look at the world and see only death, and it seems that evil has the upper hand and is winning, our confession is that this is not the whole story. God is still at work in this world and in our own lives.

 God is with us in the very midst of our pain and our suffering and our fear, working to bring life and healing on the other side of it.

We are to live knowing this is true. We are not to live as Herod, making decisions out of fear, or anger, or self-preservation. Because when we do, we wreak havoc and cause terrible suffering for those around us. Instead, we are to be the people who trust that God is at work. We are to be the people who look for where God is working and ask God how we can be a part of it.

We need not be paralyzed in the face of suffering, or attempt to take matters into our own hands because our hope is that our God is still at work.

Our hope is that though the children of God will experience suffering as a consequence for resembling Christ in the world, the most vicious plots of Herod or Pontius Pilate or even our own hearts cannot prevent God from reaching God’s children, healing us and bringing us new life.

Even when all we can see is darkness and all lights seem snuffed out, when we are surrounded by suffering and death and all seems lost, we confess in the presence of one another and of a hurting world that this darkness and suffering are not the ultimate realities and will not have the final word. God is still at work and God is still in our very midst, coming with healing in God’s wings, working to bring about a new future for all.

In the end, the story of the massacre of the Holy Innocents is the same story that we heard today in Isaiah: “God became their savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them.”

The children of Bethlehem were not saved by an angel or a messenger, but by God himself who came in full presence to save them and all of Israel, us and the entire world. God became our savior in all of our distress. It is God’s very presence that we are promised, and this presence by which we are saved.

Amen.

Jesus Christ, our true light, makes God’s home among us, leads us out of our darkness, and enlightens us to testify to his saving light. 

Vicar Emily Beckering, The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day; text: John 1:1-14

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Not long ago, two of my friends went on a spontaneous hiking trip in the remote wilderness of Colorado. Things began well: the sun was shining, it was a balmy 50 degrees, they had snacks packed, and plans for an enjoyable hike. As they climbed higher, however, they lost track of time. Night began to fall, and their situation changed drastically.

It began to snow unexpectedly, and with the disappearance of the sun over the horizon, the temperature dropped 25 degrees. They found themselves unprepared with clothes ill-fit for this sudden winter onset. What is more, they had forgotten their flashlight in the car at the base of the trail. It was a night without a moon, and without a flashlight, it was soon impossible to see where they were going. The snow began to cover up the hiking paths so that they could neither go forward, nor follow their tracks back down the mountain. The two lit a fire, but the snow was coming down so fast, it soon snuffed out the flame.

Shivering in the cold, wet from the snow, and nothing but darkness all around them, the direness of their situation soon set in. They were lost, tired of wandering through the darkness, and with the threat of hypothermia looming, they were afraid that they might not make it out of the woods.

Lost and afraid: these are feelings familiar to us. We, too, are a people who insist on walking in darkness. Intent on going our own way, living life as we please, how quickly we, too, become lost. We are unable to find our way home and incapable of loving the God who has created us. We are unable to leave the darkness of our fear and our doubt and our despair, and so instead cling tightly to these things in attempt to have some control.

In response to our dire predicament, God, out of the fierce love with which God loves us, decided that enough was enough. Enough of darkness, of fear, and of a world that did not and could not know the God who loved them. We needed a new beginning: a beginning that only God could bring.

We were in darkness, so light came down.

We were trapped in death, so life came down.

We did not know God, so God came to us.

God came: not in fire or in an earthquake or in some other mighty display of power, as we might have expected, but came as a baby, in human flesh, into all of our weakness and limitations. As we heard last night, by coming to live and to die among us, God became vulnerable. This, however, is a risk that God was willing to take because of what was at stake: us. God refused to be separated from us. God refused to lose us or to leave us in any form of darkness.  Jesus came for us and for all people, in order that we might know the depth of God’s love for us and be children of God who have life in Jesus’ name.

Now that God in the person of Jesus Christ has come, and died, and risen again, there is no darkness too deep where God cannot reach us. God is not far off in heaven, but here, among us. The Word became flesh and lived among us, literally, God dwelled, set up camp, tented with, made God’s home among us.

If you have ever been to summer camp, lived on campus in college, or had a roommate, then you know all about setting up a home with someone. You know that you never really get to know someone like you do when you live with them. You know that people who do not know one another before living together are not strangers for long, and those who thought that they knew each other before moving in together are often surprised to see one another in a whole new light.

Living together makes us know one another in a deeper way than we could before. When you live with someone else, there is no more hiding because everything is out there in the open to see: our habits, personality, even our flaws. We expose ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t have to if we chose to live by ourselves. If we have any say in the matter, then those whom we choose to live with, whom we make our home with and call are own, are the ones whom we long to be with and love.

The same is true for God.

For God so loved the world and longed to be with us all in a relationship, that God came to live with us. When God in Jesus Christ came to dwell, to set up tent among us, we came to know God in a way that was not possible before. But unlike us, God makes a home with those who reject him and deny him. In order to make God and God’s love known, Jesus exposed himself to ridicule, to rejection, and to death on a cross at the hands of those to whom he had come. That was the risk that our Lord was willing to take to reach us, to give us life, and to reveal his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son. Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection all reveal that glory: the splendor and the radiance of the love of the One true God.

By coming this way, God fulfilled the promises spoken through the prophets Ezekiel and Zechariah: that God’s dwelling place would be with people, that God would be their God, and that the people would belong to God. As we hear in Revelation: “The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.” Jesus in the flesh is God for you! Here is our God! Today! With us, for us, among us, in us.

In this presence of God, something happens to us.

When Jesus comes to us, he, “the true light, which enlightens everyone” enlightens us. We are brought from darkness into light, for we are made to know our God and the depth of the love that God has for us.

But “being enlightened” does not just mean that we are given knowledge or understanding. To be “enlightened” is literally to be filled with light, to be lit up. When the resurrected Jesus enlightens us, he bathes us in his light, lights us up, illuminates us. Like a lantern, we are illuminated in order that we might reflect that light, and testify to it. We become witnesses who point to the true light, Jesus Christ, who offers this light and a life to live as a Child of God to all people.

This “being enlightened” is not always something we are aware of or even feel because we do not become enlightened by our own will—the will of the flesh or of the will of people—but by the will of God. We are made into witnesses because that is the will and work of God: that is what happens when the Triune God encounters us.

And what happened to my friends on the hiking trip? They were brought from near death into life again by the light of the next morning, which led them safely from the woods to the path back home.

They were saved by light, and so are we.

Jesus Christ, the true light, who enlightens all people, has come into the world. God’s answer to our darkness is to bring light. God’s answer to our being lost is to come in flesh and blood and find us, to set up camp with us, to remain with us through the night until we are no longer afraid, and then be the light who leads us out of the woods.

Arise! Shine! For our light has come and made a home with us. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

This birth is first understood from the hill of the cross, and the vulnerability of God revealed on that hill now is more fully understood in God’s coming to us as a child, risking all to love us back, risking all that we, too, might risk transforming love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Eve; text: 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

This is not a safe world.  Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it is.  That we gather ourselves tonight in a safe cocoon of warmth and light only points out that there is darkness and cold in this world that we are trying to keep out.  You don’t light a candle in full sunlight.  You don’t put on an extra blanket in the middle of summer.

This is not a safe world.  Let’s not pretend that it is.  That we gather ourselves tonight to celebrate the coming of God into the world to save us, to save all, only points out that there is something we need saving from, that there is something wrong that only God can heal.  Jesus himself reminded us that only sick people need doctors, not well people.

This is not a safe world.  Let’s not forget that is true.  That we gather ourselves tonight to sing “all is calm, all is bright,” and “glory to the newborn King” only points out that there is much that is not calm, not bright, not filled with glory.  There is nothing remarkable about a silent night unless the world is cacophony and somehow we find a silent moment in the midst of that.

It is good, though, very good, that we’ve gathered ourselves together here tonight.  That we’ve found some warmth and light, that we remember God’s healing is come, that we claim an island of calm and glory in the presence of God.

But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that this is not a safe world precisely because not only can we not stay here indefinitely, God also needs to be in that world as it is, not this place as we have made it.  In all our celebrations of this birth of our Lord Christ, we dare not mistake this place, this moment, for the place of God’s working in the world.  God is here, God comes to us here, we meet the Incarnate One here, yes.

But only that we might be able to recognize the Incarnate God out there, in the unsafe world.  Only that we might be able to hear the same Incarnate One calling us out into the darkness and cold, into the noise and fear, into the sickness and pain.  In this calm, light, warm, glory-filled place of healing we take rest, we open our eyes to God’s light, we are filled with a vision of what this world can be in God’s love.

But the One whose birth we’ve come to celebrate is in that unsafe world.  So ultimately, that’s where we need to be, if we want to be with him.

Here is how we know this to be true: we do not come to this manger as our first sight.  We come to this manger from our sight of the crucified Jesus.

It’s hard to remember this, since we live time in a straight line – pregnancy, birth, life, death – but seeing what was happening in Bethlehem came after seeing what happened on a hill outside Jerusalem.

Sometimes we’re told that we look at the manger and we see the cross.  In fact, our vision comes from the other direction, from the cross to the manger.  It’s not likely that while Jesus was teaching, healing, gathering disciples much attention was paid to where he had come from.  There are some mentions of contact between Jesus and his family, even locals in his hometown calling him “Joseph’s son”, but people followed Jesus because of who he was as they met him.  They learned to trust him, or not, to follow him, or not, based on what they knew of him as he was as an adult, not based on any stories of his birth.

But after the cross, and then his resurrection, things changed.  His disciples became believers that he was in fact the Son of God, that he was God.  The group of followers was filled with the Holy Spirit and became a thing called the Church.

And in the reflections of those early believers, they started to look backward.  If Jesus is truly the risen Son of God, then what does that mean about where he came from?  And that was where the wonder of this night came to be found: in realizing that the God who risked all in dying on the cross was risking all from the very beginning.  Listening to the stories of his birth from his mother, from those who knew them, the believers began to realize how profoundly vulnerable God had been from the beginning, and how important that was.

So Mark tells his story just from the standpoint of the adult Jesus, through death and resurrection.  But Matthew and Luke, coming later, reflect on the meaning of his origins, and feel a need to tell that part of the story as well.  The beginning of the story.  And then John tells us a wonder, that even this birth isn’t the beginning of the story of God’s involvement with us, that this coming of God into the world was in plan from the very beginning of time.  That God, the creator of this world, chose to come into the heart of the danger and pain to make things right.

Which is where we find ourselves tonight.

The birth of this child, this God-With-Us, is all about God’s willingness to risk everything.  That’s what the cross teaches us about tonight.

God enters an unsafe, dark, cold, hateful, sick, broken world to transform it from within.

This is not a story that begins tonight in beauty, seemingly ends badly in death, and then finishes triumphant on Easter.  This is a story from the beginning of creation, a story of the eternal God who desperately loves this world he has made but is pained beyond belief at the destruction we, God’s own children, have made of it.  A story of a world of light brought into darkness by our own actions, our own lives, a world which is not as God made it to be.

From the point of choosing Abraham and Sarah, this manger, this cross, this empty tomb, all these things were possible.  Because this plan from the beginning involved God’s risking all.  Which means that we never see Almighty God as a hapless victim, not at the cross, not at the manger.  This is the Triune God’s choice of how to deal with this unsafe world.  To become completely vulnerable to it, rather than destroy it.  To put himself in our hands, in hopes that we might thereby learn to love.

When we look at the manger from the hill of the cross we see that in this birth amongst the lowly creatures of this world God was saying, “I will come to you without any power or might, so that you can hear me, know me, love me.  Follow me.”  “Or,” as was always the possibility, “kill me.  But I will come to you in this way.  It’s the only way to life for this world.”

When we hear Herod’s reaction next Sunday to this coming of God, destroying the children of Bethlehem, we see fully the risk involved, as fully as we see it on that hill outside Jerusalem: Babies are born without power and protection, born into warmth and light sometimes, but often into darkness and cold.  And always, always, at risk from any number of dangers.

This baby, born into a world which already had no room for him, was at risk from the moment of his conception, through his birth and early childhood.  That he willingly chose to face the cross as he struggled in Gethsemane is only the continuing of the Son of God’s willingness to let us do anything to him, in hopes that we would in fact learn to love him.

Which means this: on this holy night, in our warm, light, space we have made in the midst of a cold, dark world, we are faced with a decision.

What will we do with this baby?

We can love the story, love the idea of a baby in a manger, and pretend that this is all sweetness and light.  But then we’d go out into that unsafe world with little more than a lie.  If this beauty, this quiet, this peace in here has nothing to do with reality out there, what is the point?  If God is actually doing something about this unsafe world in this birth, just loving this story isn’t getting that point.

If, however, we see that this vulnerability, this risk of God is the whole point, then this baby becomes very important.  Then this baby becomes the beginning of God’s answer to this broken, dark, cold, unsafe world.

It’s the difference between seeing this beauty, then looking at the ministry of Jesus, and then saying, “Isn’t it a shame that everything went so badly, but at least he rose from the dead,” and seeing this birth for what it is, a huge risk that inevitably led to a cross, a gamble with death, with us, in a world where so many things go badly, for the very purpose of changing that world.

Without power, without weapons, without defenses; without strategy, without plan of attack, without manipulation; this is how God enters the pain of this world.  And so that is also our path.

The wisdom of the Triune God is at once astounding and troubling, that this was the only way to bring the world back.  It was all about risk, always about risk.  The only way to make this world safe and whole was to risk being broken and unsafe, even though God has the power to make and unmake universes.

So this is our invitation: to see this as our way in the world as well.  We have none of the power of the Triune God, so in one sense, it’s far easier for us to go into this world powerless and defenseless.  We feel that way often enough already.  But we have enough that we cling to our self-built protections, we build barriers, we try to pretend we’re safe.  Enough that we need to hear what our Lord Jesus taught us not just in words but in these actions, this birth, that death.

The only way to healing, to light, to warmth, to wholeness, to peace, is to enter the pain, the darkness, the cold, the brokenness, the struggle and be willing to put ourselves wholly into it.

In that risking, the world will be healed.  That’s what our God has shown us.  In that risking, light will come into darkness, warmth into cold, peace into fighting.  It’s the only way for God.  So it can be the only way for us.

This is not a safe world.  We don’t want to forget that.

And the only way to face that is to go out into that world with our lives, our hearts, our whole being, risking all.  It’s more than a little frightening to consider.

So let’s keep our eyes on this baby who is the God of all creation, heaven and earth contained in such a little space, such a vulnerable place.  Our way is the way our God has already walked, and if we are with such a God, then we are also given the courage to risk as God has risked.

It’s not a safe world.  But we are not in it alone; that’s what we learn tonight.  If our path leads into darkness and cold, into dangerous wilds, it is also the only path where we know the Triune God has gone, and where we know we will never be alone.  And that, my friends, is truly tidings of comfort and joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen