sermon – Page 22

And they obey . . .

January 28, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

There are real spiritual powers that are demonic, unclean, and God has come – now in you and me – to send them reeling into the abyss.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 4 B
Text: Mark 1:21-28

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

Maybe we’re too smart for our own good, too enlightened.

See, maybe you hear a story like today’s and it sounds quaint, archaic. Whatever this man suffered from, you think, he probably wasn’t possessed by unclean spirits.

Or maybe you don’t. If you thought this was a moving story of the power of God entering into our lives in the flesh, driving out a demonic strength that inhabited another human being, you’re on the right track.

Too often we dismiss these ancient writers and their “superstitions.” We don’t imagine there really are demons running around possessing people. We can think of several different mental or physical illnesses that fit the symptoms described. No need to bring the devil into all of this.

But this told Capernaum that God had come to them with power and authority.

This is a local synagogue in a small town. Maybe this man just wandered in on a Sabbath. Or maybe he was their friend and neighbor who’d come down with this possession to their great sorrow. And frustration – no one could help him, even though he came every week.

Either way, he came today, and there was someone new there. Jesus from Nazareth. That day Jesus had been teaching them so differently than what they were used to hearing the people saw deep authority in him. Then their possessed firend shouted at him, called him the Holy One of God, claimed Jesus came to destroy him.

You know the ending. Jesus tells the unclean spirit to be silent and get out of the man. And the spirit obeys. And the good people of Capernaum said, “what is this? Even the unclean spirits obey him.”

Jesus’ authority over unseen things showed he was from God.

He could drive away invisible, evil things that plagued people’s lives, could heal not just legs and backs and eyes but minds and spirits. People flocked to him – his fame spread all over Galilee.

We live in this time of amazing science and medicine where the brains and imaginations God gave us have taught so much and brought great healing, even healing of our minds. If you’re clinically depressed, suffer from debilitating anxiety, are bipolar or schizophrenic, there are medicines to help, to heal. Therapists can help with so many diseases of the mind and spirit, too. God has always used human wisdom and skill to bring healing, not just today.

But what if this story says God has more healing to do than that?

There’s a lot of suffering these days that doesn’t have neat explanations.

People today can describe their being “caught up in something” beyond their control, beyond whatever intentions they might have had. A group of people becomes a destructive mob seemingly in a moment. A political movement based on hatred and destruction is supported by millions of people calling themselves Christian. It’s more than bad choices, bad people.

Or there’s this: I’m not solely responsible for climate change. I recycle, I compost, I even walk around the church moving paper towels people have thrown into the garbage into the green compost bins. But I, and billions like me, together are destroying our planet’s ecosystem, changing the climate for the ill of all living things here. I’m part of that. What power or spirit moves such a reality that seems beyond one person’s control?

One commentator on today’s Gospel says: “We may or may not call addiction or racism or the sexual objectification of women “demons,” but they are most certainly demonic. They move through the world as though by a kind of cunning. They resist, sidestep, or co-opt our best attempts to overcome them. . . . The experience [is] like wrestling with a beast.” ¹

And the good folks at Capernaum call to you and me from over the centuries and say, “what if God is doing something about that, too?”

They see an authority in Jesus, God-with-us, that faces even those beasts that roam in our world and speaks God’s power against them.

Even breaks them. And we’ve seen it. We’ve seen evil systems fall in South Africa and East Germany through the power of prayer and the strength of people peacefully, non-violently, resisting those powers. Surely the people of South Africa saw little hope in ending something like apartheid, and yet, it was broken. The Berlin Wall was taken down by ordinary people. Great, invisible powers were dismantled.

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Hamlet says to his friend Horatio, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”² Recognizing demonic powers as true and dangerous opens us to a very real hope: maybe they can be stopped.

If you’ve ever looked at any one of the massive problems in our society and despaired that you, just one person, couldn’t make a difference anyway, this is good news for you. If you ever thought “what’s the point of hoping, things are just getting worse and worse,” this is good news for you. If you’ve ever felt trapped, oppressed, targeted by evil greater than one person or thing, this is good news for you.

If you’ve ever dared hope that this world could be healed, this is good news for you.

Jesus stands in the way of the demonic and says, “no further. Be silent. Get out.”

And then turns to the people around him and says, “follow me.” Follow me to the cross. Come with me into the shadows, into the evil, with the love and grace of God that will break these things apart. Put your lives and hearts on the line. These are powers beyond you, and it’s like wrestling a beast. But I am with you, and will empower you to stand in the heart of the storm and make a difference.

If millions of people are so called and shaped by the Spirit, and stand together, a whole different power emerges. A power of love that cannot be stopped, that breaks down walls, deconstructs systems of oppression and evil, brings life and wholeness to the world.

You’re not the only one Jesus needs. But you are the one Jesus needs.

Maybe you can find hope in those first disciples.

Last week four decided to follow Jesus, leaving their boats and families behind. And in Mark’s Gospel, these four, along with lots more, struggle with what it means to follow, to be anointed as God’s power in an evil world. By the end of the Gospel, most of these disciples seem to have failed.

But Mark knows that these disciples, these men and women who stumbled mightily at first, all ended up faithful. By the time he documented their failure in this Gospel, they’d all gone out into the world as part of the Christ mission against evil and oppression. Some had already died for their witness.

Maybe Mark tells their faulty beginnings to give you hope. These women and men weren’t heroes or special in any way. But filled with the Spirit they told of the coming of God in Christ into the world, and embodied that coming, signaling the end of all demonic powers and evil.

And so can you. So will you, with God’s help.

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

^{1 https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-epiphany-week-4}
^{2 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, scene 5.}

God Calls Twice

January 21, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

God calls us twice, with patient urgency, into the reign of God.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 3 B
Texts: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20; John 21:1-19

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is an urgency in all of the texts for this week.

“The time is fulfilled!” Jesus says – his first words in Mark’s gospel.

“The appointed time has grown short,” Paul writes to the Corinthians.

“Get up and go,” God says to Jonah.

There is something pressing about the message of all these writers, and it reminded me of something my mom used to say: “If it’s urgent, call twice.”

That was the instruction she always left for us when we were kids, in the days before texting, on any occasion when we might need to talk to her while she was gone. “I might not answer the first time,” she’d say. “But if you call back right away, if you call twice, I’ll know it’s urgent and I’ll answer.” That was her promise to us and to this day I know that if I call twice, my mom will drop everything and answer. She’ll know it’s urgent.

In these texts, something urgent is happening. So God calls twice.

“God has spoken once, twice have I heard it,” the Psalmist sings. God calls twice.

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.” God called Jonah twice. Because it was very urgent. The situation was dire. God describes Nineveh as a place with more than one hundred and twenty thousand people who don’t know their right hand from their left. Whose wickedness, especially their violence, had risen up before God.

Jonah’s work is urgent. There are people, thousands of them, who must be reached, who must be stopped, the violence must stop. For the sake of the people that the Ninevites were hurting, and for the sake of the Ninevites themselves. God calls Jonah twice, because the need was urgent. It was time for a better way.

This is the same urgency that drives Jesus. “The reign of God has come near,” he proclaims, and he pairs with an urgent call “Repent and believe the good news.” As if he were saying: All you people who don’t know your right hand from your left. It’s time for the reign of God! It’s time for a better way.

It’s the same urgency that still drives prophets who speak and spread the reign of God today.

This past Monday we celebrated perhaps our greatest modern prophet in the United States, Dr. King. Dr. King understood the urgency of the reign of God. He dreamed of a better way. And he knew the reign of God meant love and power.

The Psalmist knew it too: “God has spoken once, twice have I heard it, that power belongs to God. Steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.”

Power and love belong to God. That is the recipe for meeting the urgent needs of the people, so urgent that God calls twice. But power doesn’t work on its own. Love doesn’t even work on its own. That’s the crucial insight that Dr. King understood.

“Power without love,” he said, “is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”¹

This is the reign of God- power and love, at their best, implementing justice.

God called Jonah twice because it was time to implement justice. With both power and love, God saved them all. God saved the victims and God saved the oppressors. Justice and Mercy, Power and Love correcting everything that stood against love.

This is the reign of God. It’s what God calls each and every one of us into it. It’s incredibly urgent. And it’s why God calls twice.

But it’s not the only reason.

Because God could have called somebody else, when God called the second time, right? Jonah did not want to do this job, he made that very clear. If you don’t remember the story, the first time Jonah was called to Nineveh, he hopped in a boat and sailed the opposite direction as fast as he could. That’s how he ended up in the belly of that big fish. Which spewed him up right back on land so that the word of God could come to him a second time.

God calls twice because God is incredibly patient with us.

God was certainly patient with Jonah. Jonah ran away from the first call, because he knew God would be merciful. He knew that God would respond not only with power, but also with love, and he just couldn’t stand it. And in the end the only one who isn’t saved, the only one who isn’t part of the reign of God, is Jonah. He is left looking down at the city in resentment, telling God he is “angry enough to die!” And the book ends with God patiently loving him too, calling him, yet again, into the reign of God.

Because it is urgent, God is patient.

God was also patient with those fishers in the gospel for today. Andrew and Simon Peter and John and James. Now, it’s true in this story, they don’t seem to need to be called twice. “Immediately” they leave their nets and their boats. James and John up and leave their father in the boat and they don’t even seem to look back. All four of them are caught up right away in the promise of God’s power and love implementing justice, ushering in the reign of God.

But we know that they don’t really understand the reign of God yet. Most of the rest of the gospel of Mark will show how they really don’t get it. And even these men who seemed so eager to leave their nets, will end up back in their boats. On another lake shore. At the end of another gospel. Lost and despairing because they really didn’t think that God’s love and power in action would look like God dying on a cross.

But Jesus will call them again.

He will call these same followers again from their boats. He will tell them to cast their nets on the other side. He will tell Simon Peter to feed God’s lambs and tend God’s sheep. And he will say, for the second time, follow me.

Jesus called these fishers twice, in almost the same way. Because God was patient with them, even though they didn’t understand.

And with this patient urgency, God has called you too.

Even when you, like these fishers, just don’t get it, don’t understand the fullness of the reign of power and love and justice you are being called into. Even when you, like Jonah, don’t like it, when the love of God makes you angry enough to die. God is patient. God calls twice.

Or three times or four times, or too many times to count!

God has called you into the reign of God. Maybe you heard God’s voice, saying “Get up and go!” Or maybe you felt an urge, a stirring from the Holy Spirit that you couldn’t quite explain, maybe you feel it right now, calling you into urgent work. Maybe you heard the words of a prophet with a message as simple as “Repent and Believe.” Or another way you could translate it: “Turn and Trust.”

Turn away from standing against love. Turn away from the ways you hurt others and hurt yourself. Turn away from this present world and follow Christ into the new creation.

Turn and Trust.

Trust that power belongs to God. Trust that steadfast love belongs to God. Trust that God is calling you and will not abandon you. That God will call twice. Again and again and as many times as it takes.

The reign of God has come near. It’s urgent. Turn and Trust.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

_{1. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Where do we go from here?” Speech. 15 August 1967. Transcript available at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here. Hear the quoted excerpt from the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsvSq5_vbL4&t=1s}

What’s In a Name?

January 1, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Be Christ Jesus, share the same mind and heart, because you share the same name.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Name of Jesus
Texts: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21

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

My parents disagreed about whom I was named for.

One said it was for the husband of Mary. The other – and I never remember which said which – said I was named for the son of Jacob. I wasn’t happy with the ambiguity.

But as an adult I realized I was deeply drawn to a third Joseph, the man from Arimathea, who takes the body of Jesus and, with the help of Nicodemus, buries Christ in his own tomb. So awhile ago I decided Joseph of Arimathea was the saint whose name I carried.

Names matter. Maybe you carry the name of your parent or grandparent. Maybe your parent gave you a biblical name, or a famous one. Maybe you even identify with that person for whom you are named. But they do matter.

Today we celebrate an important day for Jesus.

On the eighth day of his life he was circumcised, according to the law. On this day he joined the covenant of Israel, was bound in his own blood to the covenant promise God made with the chosen people. This is very like our baptism, where we are joined in water and the Spirit to the covenant promise of God in Christ.

And it was also the day he got his name. Jesus, in Greek. Yeshua in Aramaic. He was named after the successor to Moses, Joshua. “I-Am-Who-I-Am saves” is what the name means. A powerful name for the One who is God-with-us, the One who actually will bring about the healing and salvation of all things.

But lots of little boys got that name. It was and is a pretty popular biblical name. For this little baby, the name was important, but it was only a sign of something greater. And that something is the most important thing.

That’s Paul’s point to the Philippians.

He says that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. It’s why many here bow their heads every time the name of Jesus is spoken in liturgy.

But it’s not Paul’s main point. The name Jesus carries – “I-Am-Who-I-Am saves” – is a sign pointing to who Jesus actually is, what Jesus will actually do, that Jesus is God-with-us, the salvation of the Triune God in this world.

It’s not the name itself that matters. It’s how Jesus lives into this name.

And today Paul invites you to live into the name Jesus.

To become part of God’s saving. “Let the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul says. Become like Jesus, the eternal Son of God, one of the Three in the Trinity, who let go of it all to become human among us, to lead us back into the arms of God, into the dance of the Trinity, into the love that holds the universe together.

Have the same mind as that, Paul says, the same mind as Christ. The same heart as Christ. The same self-giving love as Christ. The same life as Christ. That’s Paul’s invitation on this day.

To take the path this child walked, a path that was signaled by this name.

Be who you are named after. That’s the call.

It’s why I chose Joseph of Arimathea. What drew me to him was that he was a person of privilege, wealthy by the world’s standards, who kept his faith private, to himself. But he learned he needed to become open in his life about his faith. So he risked exposure and ostracism from his peers to openly declare his allegiance to this Jesus of Nazareth, and offered his own place of burial for him.

I need to be challenged to risk my privilege and what I have to step out publicly and be the love of God in the world. And so Joseph points me to Paul, who says, “have the same mind and heart as Christ.”

Bowing your head when the name of Jesus is spoken is a holy and good devotion.

But living your life as Christ is far more what Paul hopes you’ll take from his words.

In the end, the reason the angels told Mary and Joseph to name him Yeshua, “I-Am-Who-I-Am saves,” is because this child was God and would save all things.

But that’s why you bear the name of Christ Jesus, too. Because through you, and me, and all who bear this name, this heart and life of the Triune God, God will bring healing and life to all things. It’s what you were named to be.

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

Seeing Salvation

December 31, 2023 By Vicar at Mount Olive

In this passage the Temple is functioning the way it was supposed to and God’s salvation is seen in many different dimensions.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
First Sunday of Christmas, year B
Texts: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Luke 2:22-40

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When we think of Jesus in the Temple, we often think of flipping tables.

All four gospels include an account of the “Cleansing of the Temple,” when Jesus drove out the money changers and the merchants. Mark and Matthew include the detail of overturning the tables and in John’s gospel Jesus even has a whip! This encounter lives large in our imaginations and it means that the Temple in Jerusalem, the very center of Jewish faith and religious practice, is primarily associated with Jesus’ righteous fury. Often we only think of it as a place of exploitation and consumerism and corruption.

But in our gospel passage today, we see the Temple in a very different light.

This encounter, like so much of the Nativity story, is only included in Luke’s gospel. And it is a very different account of Jesus in the Temple. There are no whips, no overturned tables, no mention of money-changers. Instead, we see the Temple functioning beautifully, the way it was supposed to.

You can see it with the prophet Anna.

We don’t know much about her, we don’t even get to hear her speak, but we know that she was a widow and that she had lived for a long time without a husband to provide for her. For decades and decades. And we are told that she “never left the Temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” Which prompts the question, who was taking care of her? Who was making sure she had what she needed and was holding her in love and respect? In the Temple the answer must be: her neighbors.

Because the Temple was supposed to be the place where the two Great Commandments – to love God and love your neighbor, were fully in effect. Where you could expect the laws commanding care for orphans and foreigners and widows were followed. And where Anna could deliver her prophetic words of critique and comfort and be fed and sheltered. That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And you can see it in how the young family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, are welcomed.

They enter the Temple as strangers in Jerusalem, following the law, and presenting their firstborn son to God. They are too poor to offer a lamb, so Mary and Joseph bring a pair of birds to sacrifice, the most they could afford. Yet they are welcomed. Simeon and Anna rejoice over their baby. And their family is held not only in joy, but in pain as well, when Simeon acknowledges Mary’s coming grief, the sword that will pierce her soul. Just as they are, they are seen and embraced.

The Temple was supposed to be a place where everyone could come as they are. Elders and babies, rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, gathering at the Temple to rejoice or fast or pray or wait or make an offering or receive a blessing. That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And you can see with Simeon.

Simeon is promised that he “will not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” And when the time comes, the Holy Spirit guides him to the Temple. I imagine that the Spirit could have led Simeon to any place to meet Jesus. But Simeon is guided to the Temple.

Because most of all, the Temple was supposed to be a place to have encounters with God, a place where people were expecting God to show up. And when God showed up as the Messiah, not in the shape of a warrior, but incredibly in the shape of a child, Simeon saw! Simeon and Anna were looking for God and they found Jesus. And then they told everyone who would listen, everyone who was looking for God, everyone who was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. “Look! God is here!” That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And here’s the point. When the Temple is what it should be – salvation is seen!

Simeon sees. “My eyes have seen your salvation,” he says, and in the context of this encounter in the Temple (with the Temple functioning the way it’s supposed to) we see it too. We see God’s salvation – and in many different dimensions.

We see the cosmic and eternal dimension of salvation.

Simeon is holding God in his arms! God, enfleshed and alive! Simeon recognizes God-with-us in this baby, who has come to reach us, to be made known to us, to love us, to suffer with us, to forgive us, and to save us. So that our broken selves won’t be this way forever, but instead every tear will be wiped away and every child of God will be restored to glory. This is God’s redeeming work to reconcile with humanity, to make all things new forever and always, and bring us into eternal life in the Spirit. And Simeon saw it face to face.

And this salvation is multidimensional!

Not only personal and eternal, but collective and immediate. Not just for you singular sometime in the future, but for you plural, now.

Jesus, destined to cause “the falling and rising of many,” flipped the tables that needed flipping. When the Temple wasn’t functioning like it was supposed to, Jesus brought salvation, driving out all who oppressed and exploited. So that there might be salvation for the poor – like Mary and Joseph, and salvation for the desperate – like Simeon, for the lonely and dependent – like Anna, and salvation for the outsiders – like the Gentiles that Simon sings of. This is the salvation which topples tyrants and lifts up the lowly, and tears down the barriers between us.

And this is the quiet and ordinary salvation of flourishing and abundant life. The kind of salvation that Simeon might have seen in the Temple that day even if Jesus hadn’t been there. But it was there, when Simeon was holding a child from a poor family, who were just going about their ordinary business of loving God and loving their neighbors, there he saw salvation.

This is why we gather, not anymore at the Temple, but as the church, week after week.

So that like Simeon, we can see all these many different dimensions of God’s salvation. Salvation on the scale of the universe, and on the scale of your own heart. And everything in between. At all scales, God is at work. Salvation is happening everywhere all the time. And we gather so that we can see it. So we can tell each other about what we have seen.

Isaiah imagined God’s salvation shining out like the dawn or like a burning torch so that the nations could see. But the dawn can be easy to miss. If you aren’t looking for it, you probably won’t see it. But God wants to be seen. God wants you to see salvation. God wants to guide you right to it. God wants you to hold Jesus in your arms.

We gather not in the Temple, but as the Temple, so that all are loved and welcomed and cared for, so that we can encounter God and see salvation. The way it’s supposed to be.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Made Known

December 25, 2023 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

The Light has come and has shown you God’s heart: that you share that heart and bear the Light into the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord
Text: John 1:1-14, add 18

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

The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness can’t understand it, John says.

But can you? Do you?

God’s Light, through whom all things came into being, entered our world as a human, but the world did not know him, John says. The Light came to his own people, whom he made, and they did not accept him.

Do you?

We have a problem with our vision and understanding, John says, when it comes to God. Everything we are and have is of God’s Light, made and graced by the Triune God.

But we struggle to see. To understand. To know. We want God’s light to shine on the shadows of evil in this world, to restore the creation, to bring all into the light of God’s loving embrace. We want what John today says about the Light of the World, about Christ.

But can you see it? Do you understand it?

The problem might be that we don’t appear to hope for the answer God is bringing.

When you imagine God solving the problem of world hunger, what do you imagine? A miraculous intervention changing all the deserts into fertile land? A power move overturning corrupt governments that deprive their people of needed resources?

When you imagine God stopping evil in this world, what do you imagine? God intervening with power in every terrorist act? God destroying those who live their lives to harm others? God going into Gaza or the Ukraine and taking away all the weapons and bombs?

That’s what we really want to see. But it’s not the way God works. And if you are devastated by the carnage and destruction that is happening in this world, know that God is even more. But God still is going to bring healing and wholeness another way.

This Child who is born shows you and the world the heart of God.

This Light of the World, this Word-made-flesh, John says, gives us inside knowledge of God’s true heart for the world. “No one has ever seen God,” John says. “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.”

Because of Jesus the world no longer needs to speculate as to the nature of God, the heart of God. We never have to look at a natural disaster again and wonder, “was God angry with those people?” We never have to face a tragedy of evil and ask if it was punishment from God. We never can claim violence and killing as the way of God. Because now we’ve seen God’s heart in the face of Christ Jesus. The heart of the Triune God is and always will be love.

But God’s answer for the pain of this world is and always will be love, too. It’s the only way to stop the evil and insanity.

This is the only true light that can end the darkness.

Coming in person revealed God’s heart as love, and, because the shadows of evil rose up against Christ Jesus, hanging him on a cross, this in-person love also showed the power of God in losing, the strength of God in self-giving. Rather than fight the shadows of this world by destruction and force, the Triune God entered the shadows to transform them from within.

God said, “I’ll open myself up to evil and it will do all it can to me, and light will still win.” When God doesn’t fight evil but stands in its way on our behalf, stands even in our way as we make evil, God brings a light that darkness cannot understand or overcome.

But the plan was never meant to stop with Jesus.

From the beginning of creation God’s plan has always been to care for the world through the children of God. So, to those who see this Light of the World, who trust in Christ, John says, God gives power to become children of God themselves.

God’s solution to everything that ails this planet, everything we wish God would fix, everything wicked and ruined and oppressive, all comes down to this. God will bring healing through you, through me, through all God’s children, across this globe.

We are children of God; so we, like Jesus, bear God’s heart in the world. We, like Jesus, become people who are always love, all the time. We, like Jesus, become people who stand as light in darkness not with power but with a willingness to lose, like God.

Even divine power able to create universes couldn’t fix God’s greatest pain about this world: the hearts of God’s children were cold and selfish, the root of all that is wrong in this world.

Change the hearts and you’ve got something, God thought. You’ve got changed people. And then a changed world, because these people are going to go out there and make a new creation with God’s Spirit giving them grace to do it.

In the coming of this Child, now you can see the truth clearly, and trust it.

Jesus, the Light of the World, the Word made flesh, has made God’s heart known to you. Now you, a child of God yourself, get to reveal that same heart, that same love, to the world, and see God’s healing begin.

And God’s light will shine in you. And no shadows, no darkness, will be able to stop it.

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