The Rev. Arthur Halbardier
The Name of Jesus
Text: Luke 2:15-21

We heard Luke’s familiar Christmas story again, as we did on Christmas Eve, but today verse 21 is added: “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child, and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (Luke 2:21)

The birth was announced by angels, first to Mary. Young Mary was engaged to be married, and she was still a virgin. To her the angel says, “You are going to have a child – don’t ask how, and when the child is born you must name him JESUS.”

Now there’s nothing like a surprise pregnancy to complicate wedding plans! Mary must have wondered, “How do I explain this to Joseph, to my family?” But the angel’s words, and especially the child’s name convinced Mary. “This child is God’s will, God’s plan. And I am part of it.” Some time later, an angel comes to Joseph, her future husband . . . who is not happy with the awkward situation Mary has put him in. Was it the Holy Spirit, as she claims, or the product of a brief indiscretion?The angel tells him, “Joseph, you must marry her, and name the child JESUS, because this child will be the Savior of the world!” This is God’s plan, and you are also part of it.

JESUS – “Yeshua,” means “GOD SAVES.” God plans to rescue the world from the power of sin and death through this child, JESUS. Mary and Joseph joined the long line of individuals invited to participate in God’s plans for the world: Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, the boy Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zachariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist.

But could Mary and Joseph have imagined how complicated or frightening the birth might be? Caesar Augustus announced a new program for collecting taxes, which meant a risky late-pregnancy trip to Bethlehem. And that was only the beginning. I confess that, conditioned by years of participating in childhood Christmas pageants, I grew up with a mental picture of an exhausted Mary and Joseph going door to door in the city of Bethlehem, looking for a place to stay. Joseph trudging from the Holiday Inn to the Bethlehem Sheraton to the Motel 6, Mary sitting uncomfortably outside on the donkey. The desk clerk shaking his head “no” to a pleading Joseph. Every hotel and B and B in Bethlehem was sold out on this most important night.

But that’s not what St. Luke says. Luke wrote, “There was no place for them in THE INN.”

The prophet Micah declared Bethlehem to be “least among the cities of Judah.” Why Bethlehem is even called a “city” I don’t know. Bethlehem today is still a small town, fairly quiet unless there are tourists in town – what is sometimes called a “one-horse” town. Luke tells us that Bethlehem was also a “one inn” town . There is one innkeeper given the chance to have the Savior of the world born under his roof, but he was too busy.

So, as Mary’s labor began, Joseph did what homeless people still do when facing a night on the streets: He looked for a place to make a makeshift bed so Mary could give birth with a little protection from the winter cold. The couple huddled together for warmth in a dark, cold, unsanitary, smelly stable. Certainly no place to give birth to a fragile child.

Did they wonder that night, “What is God thinking?” “What kind of plan is this?”

God’s plan was to risk rejection, danger, misery – even death for us, from Day 1 of human life. Through Jesus’ life and preaching, and eventually his dying and resurrection, God announced a new world where justice, peace, and compassion ruled. For this plan, God enlisted Mary, and then Joseph to take part. And as the birth was happening, enlisted a small group of shepherds to help spread the news. Shepherds! As unlikely a group of messengers as can be imagined.

But then, shepherds are not the last unlikely messengers God would enlist. God still searches out unlikely and unreliable folk to participate in bringing about the new life of the world. Of course, almighty God could have created a new heaven and earth alone, with just a word. God did it once. Certainly recreating wouldn’t be a “heavy lift” for the almighty.

But instead, God engages unreliable humans, and still does.

In baptism, we are invited to carry God’s invitation to a lost and often hostile world. “Let your light shine before others;” to “bear God’s creative and redeeming word to all the world.” Why does God make us part of that plan? Teresa of Avila explained it this way: Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the hands through which Christ blesses all the world. You are the body of Christ.”

We are invited to join the long line of the faithful who accepted the holy challenge of making God’s new era of justice and mercy real. But what can one lone individual do to impact the massive problems of homelessness, hunger, prejudice, systemic injustice? What can one individual do to challenge entrenched corruption and rampant greed which grinds up the poor and powerless to its own advantage? What can one lone individual do to alter the values of society, get the attention of political leaders, challenge cruel immigration policies, stop the curse of drugs and gangs?

There are things we can do. We can advocate, vote, campaign, contribute to organizations that support our values – and we must do those things. We can pray for the sick, the unemployed, the hungry – and don’t ever underrate the power of those prayers. Stacked against the weighty issues of our world, it’s hard to feel our individual efforts are more than small drops in a very large bucket.

God doesn’t call us to single-handedly create a new heaven and new earth. God has already accomplished that in Jesus Christ. But God does invite us to be faithful to making this a better world for someone. We can face with honesty the influence of our prejudices and behavior on others. We can discern in ourselves the fears and excuses that keep us at a distance from others. And consider how on a person to person level we can participate in God’s work of recreating this world. Remember the strong words of Teresa of Avila: Christ has no hands, no feet on earth but yours. You and I can put flesh and blood to the love of Christ for others.

During Advent, I read some devotions by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and these sentences of his have stuck with me these past weeks:

“God comes in the form of the beggar, of the dissolute human child in ragged clothes, asking for help. God confronts you in every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor.”

I’m privileged to be part of this community. Here, at Mount Olive I’m inspired by the witness of dozens of bold yet humble individuals. For months, Heather and Thomas have been a fixture on 31st street with their signs. I was deeply touched several times recently to see either Heather or Thomas in our East assembly room. Invited by one of you for a warm beverage, a snack – and to sit with you as you listened to their stories. I saw the words of Bonhoeffer acted out over a mug of coffee and a snack. Christ was there. For Heather, for Thomas, and for those who invited and sat with them.

I’m inspired by those who keep in ongoing contact with those who are sick or grieving. By those who faithfully give rides to others to church, to doctor visits, who visit in hospitals. Who write notes of encouragement and thanks, often to people they hardly know. These people encourage me. And they challenge me. If you shop in this neighborhood, it’s not unusual that someone outside the grocery store will approach you for help. “I’m hungry. I don’t have money to buy food?” I know of one person here who frequently will invite that person to come into the store to shop with her. They share a shopping cart, walk the aisles of the store together, discuss the foods they like. My friend will help her new friend select items, at the end she pays the bill for both of them. Christ is present there, also. For both persons, in that moment.

In our liturgy, we frequently have brief rituals when people take on a responsibility. They state their intent to do their best, saying “I will, and I ask God to help and guide me.” God invites each of us to be part of the holy task of bringing about a new world of compassion, love and care for others. What invitation may Christ be holding out to you? As Bonhoeffer wrote, Christ confronts me (and you) in every person that we meet. It’s a daunting notion, that God looks to us for a part in God’s holy work. Daunting to say “yes” to God. But this is certain: God will indeed help and guide us.

Christmas isn’t the same as when we were little. And that’s a blessing, a joy, as we grow ever more deeply aware of and living in God’s coming into our broken world.

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

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

Christmas isn’t the same as when I was a child.

Tonight was magic: dinner at Grandpa and Grandma’s after the church Christmas program, opening presents after waiting what seemed like hours for the grownups to wash the dishes, the drive home, the falling asleep in anticipation. The magic was darkness and music, waiting, family, a paper bag with peanuts and candy and an orange from the church, driving home and looking at Christmas lights.

It’s not like that anymore. Grandma, who lovingly made the meals, is gone; so is Grandpa. Uncle Ray and my mother, who made the night so magical, are gone. The house belongs to someone else. I don’t know who has the dining room table, or the hutch I always sat in front of. Even driving and looking at lights doesn’t have the wonder it did as a child.

Christmas just isn’t the same.

And you know what? That’s a good thing.

The magical Christmas I knew as a child wasn’t big enough to deal with the world as it is.

My parents protected me from a hard world, where many suffered and struggled. Now, my mother organized a distribution of boxes of groceries for a Christmas feast those who were needy in our town, and I helped, putting frozen turkeys in every box in the hall, distributing the abundance of donated food into each as well. I’d ride along with our mother to deliver boxes to those who couldn’t come in person.

But I knew little about war, true poverty, oppression, racism. I didn’t understand my privilege I hold in so many ways that others do not enjoy. I knew little about the evils people do to each other. I didn’t yet know the grief of the death of loved ones. The idea that God needed to enter this broken, hurtful, killing world to change it, to heal it, to bring all humanity back into God’s love, wasn’t part of the magic then.

It is now. It’s not the joy I remember. It’s better joy. Deeper magic. As I got older, and saw more, and experienced joy and sorrow, understood more pain and suffering of my neighbor, I also grasped more and more the wonder of the holy and Triune God entering into our world to bring peace and healing and hope.

I wonder if remembering this day changed for those who were there.

Can you imagine the shepherds going back to their work after this? It was a night of being stunned, overwhelmed, excited, confused. But what about years later? Did they still hold this hope that God had come? Did they let it go over their hard lives? Were they changed?

Luke says Mary pondered all these things in her heart. Imagine just how her understanding changed in the first nine months. And there was more to come – a beautiful but ominous blessing by Simeon in the temple, an escape into Egypt. The life this child led, his ministry. And the horror of the cross, the wonder of Easter, the inrushing joy of Pentecost. Mary’s grasp of what her son’s birth meant changed dramatically as she walked her journey. And that changed her.

If Christmas is going to make any difference to you, it has to change, too.

So many of us have people we love who will not be with us at Christmas. We can’t go back in time. That magic can’t be recreated. And that’s true of all memories of Christmases past. If we bask in nostalgia and try to remake what we think we remember, we’ll just be disappointed and sad.

So if celebrating God coming to you as one of us will mean anything to you and your life, to this world and its pain, it needs to be big enough to handle your grief. Your loss. Your loneliness. Your confusion. Your fear. Your pain. It needs to be able to embrace all the pain and suffering of this world, and bring a healing hope to that. Christmas needs to be that big, or it needs to change.

Pondering this birth in your heart, as Mary did, letting it grow, deepen, sit with you over the years, will change Christmas for you. And that will change you as well.

Because you’ll learn what God’s coming really means.

You’ll remember this baby was threatened from the beginning, and, after teaching of God’s love, healing, drawing people into God’s reign, was executed. God’s coming as a vulnerable child became God-with-us vulnerably offering his life. Embrace this baby tonight and remember to touch the wounded hands and side, and you won’t be the same. You’ll learn God’s wounded answer to the world’s suffering and pain is hope and life for all.

And you’ll remember when this baby was grown, he said that you, and I, and all God’s children, were bearers of God in this world. That God’s Spirit that filled him would be in you, and me. So that we could bear the same vulnerable love into a world of pain and sadness and oppression and violence, and make a difference, even in our small circles. Your grace to that grieving person this Christmas is God’s grace. Your acting in justice and mercy in your life and your voting and your care for your neighbor is God acting in this world for healing.

When you remember that each year as you walk your journey, Christmas will change.

And with God’s grace, you’ll be changed to even more deeply recognize the need for God to come to this world in our human body, including your human body and mine. With God’s grace, you’ll be changed to appreciate more and more how God’s coming actually can bring peace to you and to a world longing so deeply for it. With God’s grace, you’ll rejoice more and more with each passing year that God continues to work in you and me and so many, and we can see it sometimes, feel it, know it.

Christmas just isn’t the same as it used to be. But neither are you. And neither am I. Thank God for that. Thank God for coming to us in this child. And thank God for coming in you and me and all God’s children, so we can embrace God as God really is, be God’s love even as we receive God’s love, and be the miracle, the magic, of God’s coming wherever we are.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

When the Triune God enters the world to bring healing and life, it’s inconvenient, it’s unexpected, it looks foolishly weak, it stirs up our lives. But it is still God with us, and it is our life.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, year A
Text: Matthew 1:18-25

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

Be careful what you pray for. You might get it.

Each week in Advent we’ve prayed for God to stir up things (God’s power, our hearts, our wills), and come to us, that, as we prayed today, we might be freed from the sin that hinders our trust, or, as we prayed another day, that we might walk in God’s way, the way of God’s healing.

But what if God answers our prayer? Are you ready for that? For God to be with us? With you?

God’s coming inconveniently changes lives. It’s unexpected. Looks weak. And depends on us.

We want God to be the Great Fixer, cutting through all red tape and making things right. We may not admit it, but part of that hope is that we don’t have to do anything to make a difference, we’re off the hook.

Unfortunately, God’s plan is very different. God looks at the pain and suffering in this world and says, “I need to be with them.” But not as the Great Wizard who instantly forces things into different shapes and realities. God’s way is to come as one of us, in this baby Joseph’s trying to understand today, who is God’s Christ. And in each of us, God’s children, so each of us is God’s Christ, God’s anointed, God’s Messiah in the world.

Remember that when you pray God to come and stir up things. The first thing God stirs up is your life.

God’s coming turned Joseph’s life upside down.

We don’t know if the everyday working person in Israel had a lot of time to hope for Messiah, or if Joseph prayed with that expectation. Whatever he wanted, though, was lost once Mary got pregnant. Hope for a settled life with this woman to whom he was betrothed. Hope for a firstborn of his own, maybe a son to teach his livelihood. Mary’s announcement utterly changed Joseph’s life.

First he had to trust that this baby came from God, not from a neighbor. But he also now faced all the challenges of being a father, on top of fleeing from political persecution to save the baby’s life. This baby was inconvenient, unexpected, weak, dependent upon Joseph’s skill and energy and effort. God’s plan was going nowhere without Joseph’s life.

We could say the same about our own lives.

Whether or not we like it, like Joseph, we are faced with the reality of God’s coming being exceedingly inconvenient, unexpected, weak, and dependent upon us.

We’d rather God didn’t involve us. The problems we face just in our own lives, let alone the horrors that the world endures, are often daunting beyond our ability to grasp. We wake up in the night and realize our worry again. We see the news and fret, get angry, feel despair.

But when we say, “Stir up things, God, come and be with us,” God says, “I am. In you. You have my Spirit.” And we realize our lives are God’s answer, God’s stirring, God’s healing.

And we rarely have God’s view of the big picture.

If Joseph could have seen the whole story of this baby, from birth to life to teaching to healing to the cross to the resurrection and ascension, maybe he’d have a perspective of hope and expectation.

But like us, all he could see was what changed that day. That moment. His life was now on a different path, a harder path, one he probably didn’t want, certainly didn’t expect. A journey he could not see the ending of. And that sounds familiar to us when we hear God calling.

But here is why we pray in Advent, “Stir things up, God.”

Here’s why we hope, why we say, “Come to us, O God.” Because we know we want God to be with us.

Yes, God’s coming is often inconvenient, and unexpected, and we are weak and dependent. We don’t often know how we can help or even if we want to.

But we know the Spirit of God in our hearts, and we know the love of God in our lives. We know the grace of being forgiven and restored. We know the comfort of being guided on our path, and having our eyes opened to ways we can be God’s Christ. We know the joy of God’s community of faith, where we meet God in each other.

And we’ve seen God’s plan actually working. Unlike Joseph, we can see how important he was. We can see countless followers of Christ Jesus the same way, living as Christ over the centuries. We can see God brought healing and life through them. We don’t always see the inconvenience it caused them, or the suffering, or the fear they weren’t enough. But we know they felt it, since we do.

And like us, they knew God was with them. They lived, as we do, in that hope.

God is with us. That’s the promise. That’s the hope.

You and I are the coming of Christ in this world for our time, along with billions more. That will mean changed habits, challenging moments, fearful days. We might, like Joseph, wish for a simpler, calmer life, where God just took care of things and we lived as we wanted to.

But you don’t always get what you think you want. The grace is you always get what you really want.

You get God, who comes. You get the joy of living in God’s love with each other and with the world, filled with God’s Spirit, never alone. You get the hope of God’s healing coming to the world, even through you.

Compared to that, what’s a little inconvenience, a little stirring up, a little change? Or even a lot? God has heard your prayer, and is come. In you, in me, in Christ throughout the world, God will heal all things.

That is a prayer worth praying.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen