"Sighting Grace: God’s Call" - Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Sighting Grace: God’s Call
Ash Wednesday
February 26, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Matthew 6,1-6, 16-21

After a brief jump ahead to chapter 17 for the Transfiguration, we’re back in Matthew for Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Here, in one of five discourses, Jesus as shown as the consummate teacher and authoritative interpreter of the Mosaic law. He is instructing his followers in the life of discipleship, what it means to faithfully live as God has intended. Today’s text about prayer, fasting and giving alms is a good reminder that it is not only important what we do for the life of faith but also how we do it.

I like how Eugen Peterson paraphrases Jesus’ words in The Message:

6 “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.
2-4 “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—‘playactors’ I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.

It’s a good reminder for the beginning of Lent when are invited to think deeply about our faith. It’s also helpful to take a step back when we are tempted to post on social media what we are giving up for our Lenten discipline. Yet, our text also presents something of a conundrum when we look at this year’s theme: Sighting Grace. We have a lineup of speakers who will be openly talking about where they’ve seen God working in their lives. But our hope is that you will see that we aren’t parading our piety, because God is the hero of these stories, not us. We also hope that by sharing our experiences you’ll see God working in your lives, too.

Tonight, I’m going to tell you about God’s call for me to become a pastor, how God brought that about. In 1984 I attended the Virginia synod assembly of the old Lutheran Church in America (LCA), a predecessor body of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Back then, it was common to include an ordination service for pastoral candidates as part of the assembly. After 35 years, I can still picture one of the ordinands serving Holy Communion post-ordination, seeing absolute joy on his face, and hearing a voice: “You should be doing that.” It was the first and only time I have clearly heard God’s voice.

Now, we had moved to Northern Virginia only two years prior and bought our first house one year earlier. Oh, and we were expecting our first child. Cindy, my wife and former Roman Catholic, was not enthusiastic about the prospect of me becoming a pastor much less trotting off to seminary. So, I pushed God’s call aside.

As you may have figured out, God didn’t quit on me and I saw God’s hand in various events over the next eight years. For example, when I had a question about the Trinity, my pastor gave me a book to read, which was cool. Jim Bittner, one of our church members, saw me with the book and said, “If you’re not careful you are going to end up in seminary with your collar turned backwards.” Jim, his wife and five kids were headed there themselves.

Then, when my father died in 1989, I did the eulogy at his funeral. I’m told that the pastor was hastily editing his sermon behind me as I talked. Afterwards, a number of people told me I needed to be a pastor. It was nice, but I really didn’t want to hear it. By this time, we were operating our own business and the economy wasn’t doing well. I saw an ad for a position back in Chicago and for which I was well suited. I interviewed several times, was wined and dined. It was perfect, except that I didn’t get the job because the owner of the company wanted younger and less experienced person in his company to have the job. I was crushed. God was closing doors.

By this time, we had two daughters and God kept bringing up being a pastor in various ways. In my Christmas letter of 1991, I mentioned to some relatives I was struggling with this call to ordained ministry. One night soon after, I received a call one night from another relative saying, “If you decide to go to seminary I’ll help financially.” I was stunned because I hadn’t even sent this relative a letter. Yet, I continued to struggle with the call. One day I whined to my sister, Cheryl: “I’m 38 years old and I’ll be 42 when I graduate.” In her kind but no-nonsense way she replied, “Scott, you’ll be 42 years old whether you go to seminary or not, so you might as well do what God is calling you to do.” That unlocked something inside of me and Cindy agreed I should apply, figuring she was safe because I’d procrastinate. I didn’t and I did.

So, at the age of 38, with a wife and daughters 4 and 8, we sold our house and move to Pennsylvania so I could attend seminary at Gettysburg. It took eight years from that initial call to begin seminary, but was working in more ways than one. During that time God gave me the opportunity to own and operate a business while gaining valuable experience as a lay leader and teacher in a congregation. God continued to provide as we left seminary without debt yet continued to be tithers. I could say more. But, as I said at the beginning, I am not the hero in this story; this story is about what God has done.

So, this Lent I am inviting you to come and listen to the stories people will be sharing about how they have seen God working in their lives: Marlys, Tom, Andrea, Terry and Bishop Hassanally. In doing so, we hope that you can see where God is working in your lives, not if God is working, but where God is working. For as Peterson reminds us, this is how “… God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.” Blessed Lent as you are “Sighting Grace” my sisters and brothers. Amen.

For an audio version of this sermon click here.

"You Can't Stay Here" - Sermon for Transfiguration of Our Lord Sunday Year A

You Can’t Stay Here
Transfiguration of Our Lord A
February 23, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Matthew 17.1-9

I want you to imagine something for a moment. You are visiting a friend several months after his or her wedding. When you get settled in you ask, “So, how’s married life?” In response, your friend says, “It’s great; let me show you!” Your friend proceeds to pull out the wedding album and talks gushingly about the wedding several months earlier. You would think it a bit strange, wouldn’t you? You know that the reality is that after the wedding comes the necessary and good but hard work of marriage. Marriage is not lived in the wedding. The same is true about life-events. After the miracle of birth comes the sleep-deprived nights, feedings and diaper changes. After graduation from high school, college or tech school comes the work-a-day world and “adulting.”

In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus takes his “executive team,” Peter, James and John, up on a mountain. We don’t know why the four of them go up there. (Maybe it’s for a retreat?) In the blink of an eye, they experience an incredible event: Jesus’ transfiguration where he and his clothing are turned dazzling white; his confab with two legendary pillars of faith, Moses and Elijah; and God’s terrible voice from heaven. The last is too much for them and they fall to the ground, overcome with awe and fear. Then Jesus, compassionate and understanding, says “Get up and do not be afraid.” In other words, “We can’t stay here.”

 We can’t stay here. The four descend the mountain into the valley on a road we already know. Six days prior, Jesus has made the first of his four passion predictions regarding his suffering and death. So, on the way down the mountain into the valley, he reminds them again that the road they travel leads to the cross. At this point, they have no idea what that really means, but they know enough to be sure they’d rather stay on the mountain. Yet, Jesus leads them down the mountain because they can’t stay there. They need to walk the good and necessary but hard road of discipleship.

Wherever we are in our lives and whatever watershed moments we’ve experienced, we know that we can’t stay there. As a congregation, as much as we’d like, we cannot recapture our glorious past nor can we wistfully enshrine it as some golden age. When I was selling window treatments and upholstery in my previous career, I would occasionally visit a home that had a “parlor” with fancy window treatments and clear plastic slipcovers on the furniture. One look told me that the room was never used. It was almost like a museum; the only thing missing was the velvet rope across the entrance. But congregations are not museum pieces. We are constantly on the road of discipleship because our God is a living, active God always on the move.

The good news is that we don’t walk the road alone. God is always with us on the road. In fact, God is always way ahead of us. One day I got a call from Brian Junker, a Winona funeral director, asking me to do a funeral for a non-member. The deceased had a vague Lutheran connection, but no affiliation. He told me that the family wanted a Lutheran pastor to do the service but they had one request. He said, “the family didn’t want someone to preach at them.” Brian concluded by saying, “So, I thought of you.” I think it was a compliment. I set up an appointment to meet the family, but I struggled with how I was going to bring God into the conversation. After all, I am a Lutheran pastor. Yet, when I arrived, they were already talking about God. I didn’t have to bring God with me because God was there already.

Whatever road we travel, God is both always with us and somewhere ahead of us arriving before we get there. There will be moments of exhilaration, but as a congregation, you are on a good and necessary and hard road because you cannot stay in the past nor can you preserve it like some museum piece. On this road there will be intense conversations and difficult decisions. It’s a road into an unknown future, but what is known is that God is with you. The better news is that because you are also Beloved of God, just like Jesus, you can do the things necessary. You can’t stay here, but you travel the road because resurrection and new life are ahead. Amen.

For an audio version of this sermon click here.

"A Matter of Life and Death" - Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

A Matter of Life and Death
Epiphany 6A
February 16, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Matthew 5.21-37; Deuteronomy 30.15-20

Shortly after our marriage and because of a promotion I received, Cindy and I moved from suburban Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky. We moved into one of those apartment buildings that had a breezeway with an open stairway and landings. One day, a neighbor girl, Morgan, was pushing little figures off the landings and watching them fall to the ground below. Her mother saw her doing this and chastised her for it. “Morgan, how many times have I told you not to throw things off the landing!” With a straight face, Morgan responded, “I’m not throwing them, I’m pushing them.” It was our first glimpse into what life with children as little lawyers would be like.

It’s this legalistic parsing of the law that is Jesus’ mind. Today our Gospel reading is the third in a series from the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew. The Sermon on the Mount is the largest of five blocks of teaching from Jesus in Matthew, covering chapters 5-7. This and the other four discourses establish Jesus as one who teaches with authority, who rightly interprets God’s law. Two weeks ago, we heard in the Beatitudes that there are unlikely people who are blessed or favored. Last week, we heard how we are salt of the earth and light of the world. In Pr. Paige’s most excellent sermon, she reminded us that we are enough, we have enough, and that, like a parent, God loves to watch us “play” as we live life.

Anticipating what would become the great Lutheran question, “So what does this mean?” Jesus launches into several “for instances” to help his followers understand how this might work in their lives. But, before we continue, there are a few cautions. First, in saying, “You have heard it said … but I say to you” we may get the impression that Jesus is replacing Mosaic law with his own law. He is not. Rather, Jesus is intensifying the law. I’ll say more about that. Second, given Jesus’ extreme speech, we are tempted to err in two extremes. We are tempted to double down on his assertions by taking them literally, which would leave us blind and limbless. At the other extreme, we are tempted to dismiss his command to pluck and cut off as “mere” hyperbole, not to be taken seriously. We must take Jesus seriously while not literally.

Jesus’ teachings in Matthew show us that we are not meant to live as the Morgans of this world, parsing God’s commands for our own benefit or for the condemnation of others. The companion reading from Deuteronomy reminds us that God’s law is a gift. The law came to Israel after God made them God’s people. God’s commands were never intended as a burden but a blessing to help the people live well.

Several years ago, some well-meaning people thought that a fence around a playground stifled children’s play. They believed that the fence was making the children fearful, so they removed it, thinking the children would enjoy playing more without its presence. However, they found just the opposite effect. Without the safety of the fence, the children huddled closer to the center. With the fence, the children used the whole playground.

When the writer of Deuteronomy invites us to choose life, and when Jesus intensifies God’s commands, they are reminding us that the heart of God’s law is relationships, both with God and with others. Susan Pitchford, a sociologist and Franciscan nun says that

“… the point of religious rules is that we are in a love relationship with God. Anyone who thinks relationships are better without rules has never been cheated on, been left to do all the housework, or been deserted by their partner at a dinner party where they didn’t know anyone. … Jesus … defined the essence of the law as wholehearted love of God and neighbor.”

By inviting us to choose life, Jesus is reminding us that when our relationships with each other are strained or broken this presents an obstacle in our relationship with God as well. In the command about lust and adultery, Jesus is warning us that objectifying other persons, regardless of gender, treats people as objects rather than children of God made in the divine image. When Jesus encourages us to make our yes, yes and our no, no, he reminds us that community depends upon trusting one another to keep the commitments we’ve made to each other.

In preaching this, I’m not pretending that this is easy. In fact, it can be quite difficult at times. The reality is that on a regular basis we choose “death” instead of life, or perhaps, death chooses us. Hardly a day goes by when were not reminded of broken relationships, unhealthy thoughts, and mistrust. We are not alone in this situation. Even the Apostle Paul had trouble, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.” Then he asks, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul’s answer to this anguished question is the same as ours: “Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord!

So, you see, it all begins and ends with God, who loves us enough to make us his beloved children. Because we are beloved and God wants us to live, God gives us guidelines for living together. Then through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the cross, we see that love poured out for us. We are reminded God will do whatever it takes to show us how much God loves us so we are freed up to love each other.

We were only in Louisville for one year, so I don’t know if Morgan ever grew out of her legalistic thinking and grasped the love God wished for her and her mom, love in their relationship. I hope so. For it’s a matter of life and death: a life lived in response to God’s love and the death of those things that stand in the way of life. So, my brothers and sisters, I invite you to look to the cross and join the living, loving God. Amen.

For an audio version of this sermon click here.

"Lifeline" - Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Lifeline
Epiphany 4A
February 2, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Micah 6.1-8

 “You hang by a slender thread!” Dr. Gerhard Alexis intoned to my Gustavus Adolphus College freshman English class. “You hang by a slender thread!” (I’ve learned since then that all academic persons named “Gerhard” are not to be trifled with.) “You hang by a slender thread!” Dr. Alexis was not only quoting the essay of 18th century revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he was also channeling him. Our performance in that class was not up to his expectations and this was a teaching moment for him and for us. We learned all too quickly that past performance in high school was no guarantee of future success in college. It was time to step up our game.

Expectations are at the heart of this well-known text from Micah, a late 8th century BCE prophet. We don’t know a lot about Micah, only what we can glean from the book itself. We can tell that he was a laborer rather from the “prophetic class.” We also know that he was probably a contemporary of three other prophets: Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. We also know that he was prophesying in the southern kingdom of Judah, though he had a message for the northern kingdom of Israel, here referred to as Samaria. We do know that the Assyrians to the north threatened to overwhelm Judah and they tried to make sense of that incursion. The book itself alternates between oracles of doom and oracles of hope – Micah takes the people of Judah to task for unethical practices: the corruption of leaders, both religious and secular, and the exploitation of the people.

Like Jonathan Edwards, Gerhard Alexis, and other prophets, Micah brings an urgent message from God to God’s people. The relationship between God and God’s people is in danger of breaking; God wants a heart-to-heart conversation to correct that. So, in today’s passage, God enlists all of creation as witnesses to a crucial conversation about their relationship. God then reminds the people of a number of saving acts on God’s behalf that are designed to keep that relationship intact. Even so, the people are still confused about their part in that relationship and list several possible responses, from the simple to the extreme. God figuratively shakes his head and declares that they have known all along what God wants: God wants them to act justly in the world, love steadfastly in their relationship to God and each other, and walk as Jesus walks.

Like Micah, we don’t have to go very far to witness acts of injustice, hatred and arrogance in our world, nor do we have to think very hard where we’ve hung by slender threads as Edwards says. The good news is that we remember from our gospel last week that Jesus makes it possible for us to turn around and go a different way and today Jesus gives us a different vision of the world. Because of God’s saving acts in Jesus Christ we value things and people in a different way. In the Beatitudes, Jesus helps us to reorient our lives to those things that make for a blessed world. In other words, we have a lifeline, not a slender thread.

So often we get overwhelmed when we hear the Beatitudes or God’s invitation to justice, kindness, and humility, and we don’t know where to start. So, here’s an invitation to start with one thing this week. You can give someone a kind word when you see them struggling, cheering them for doing the best they can. You can correct an act of injustice, no matter how small, or you can meditate on what walking purposefully means. You can be a peacemaker instead of a peace-breaker, even for one small moment. You can offer a Kleenex to someone who is weeping. Whatever you do, know that you don’t hang by a slender thread. You have a lifeline, upheld by the loving arms of God who strengthens you to love and bless the world. Thank you for being a lifeline to others who are barely hanging on. Amen.

For an \audio version of this sermon please click here.

"Turn Around" - Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Turn Around
Epiphany 3A
January 26, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Matthew 4.12-23

“From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

You know those young people who leave the church after Confirmation? Well, I was one of them. I looked around our church, Hope Lutheran in South Minneapolis, and I only saw hypocrites. At the time, I wasn’t sure there was a God, but I was pretty sure I wanted no part of their God. I stayed away from the church through high school and college, even at Gustavus, a Lutheran school. The only time during my four years there that I entered the chapel was when giving campus tours to prospective students.

After college, I didn’t make it to grad school as planned. I needed a job, so I took a flyer on a management trainee position at Minnesota Fabrics, a fabric and decorating store. It was one of the best things that happened to me because I had started drinking more and when I drank, I smoked. It seemed I was destined to follow in my parents’ footsteps, who were highly functioning alcoholics.

That’s until I met LuAnn, a fellow Minnesota Fabrics employee, who invited me to the young adults group at her church, Trinity Lutheran of Minnehaha Falls. Long story short, that group loved me and prayed me back to the church where I could engage my deep faith questions. And so, it was that in May 1978 I rededicated my life to Christ. In other words, I turned around and started following Jesus. Not unimportantly, it was in that same young adults group that I met my wife Cindy and subsequently stopped drinking and smoking. Other than Communion wine, I haven’t had an alcoholic beverage or smoked a cigarette in 40 years.

I don’t tell this story to present me as some sort of hero in the faith. I’m not the hero in this story. If anyone is a hero, it’s LuAnn and the young adults group who loved me and gently helped me turn around.  “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Jesus’ call to repentance may confuse some of us in the church because we view repentance in a strictly moralistic sense, as if we have done something wrong and needed admit it. Indeed, I had much to regret about my life as a young adult. But the word for repent is metanoia, which literally means to change one’s mind or a acquire a new mind. It can also mean to turn around and go in a different direction, to change your attitude. As I learned from that young adults group, Jesus didn’t come to shame us into a new way of being; Jesus invited us into a new way of thinking, a new way of going.

When Jesus calls his first disciples to follow him, he calls them to a life of radical transformation. In fact, Jesus invites them to become agents of transformation themselves by serving others. Jesus invites them to question the prevailing political, economic, and social systems of the day and think differently. Jesus invites them into a different reality, one where God’s overwhelming love for all people breaks into our hurting and broken world, where forgiveness, resurrection and new life are possible. In other words, what the disciples (and us) will come to know is a reality defined by the cross.

Today is our annual meeting, a time to look back on the year and celebrate where God has been at work in, with and through us in this place. Our annual report is full of stories of just a few times where we have been agents of transformation, of how we have been Christ to others, how we have made a difference in the lives of so many people. I hope you will read them if you haven’t already done so. Yet, if I may be so bold, I think it is also a time for repentance. By that I mean that we need to acknowledge those times when we’ve fallen short of God’s intentions for us, but we also need to listen to Jesus’ voice that invites us to turn around and follow him.

In Jesus, the kingdom of heaven has come near, breaking into our world with the gift of abundant life. With that gift comes a call on us to not only receive that gift but to share it with others in word and deed. You are worthy of that call, sisters and brothers, not because of who you are but whose you are. So, please, can we spend the time at our meeting and in the year ahead discerning together what that means? Can we spend less time on proper procedure and more time on how we proclaim the good news? I know we can do that because I see you striving mightily each and every day to do so. Bless you for that good work. I look forward to walking with you as we discover what it means to follow Jesus. Amen.

For an \audio version of this sermon please click here.

"The Obedience of Faith" - Sermon for Baptism of Our Lord Sunday Year A

The Obedience of Faith
Baptism of Our Lord A
January 12, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
Matthew 3.13-17

When hearing the story of Jesus’ baptism, I can’t help but think of some notable baptisms that I’ve done. For instance, like Cornelius’ household in Acts 10, there was the whole family I baptized as a result of the mom’s friendship with my wife, Cindy. Then there were the two teenage sisters, daughters of a Lutheran dad and Hindu mom, who decided to be baptized and then confirmed. There was a woman of Asian descent who grew up in a Catholic school system but was searching and wanted more in life. She started attending church, accepted the invitation to the Lord’s table and then wanted to be baptized.

It hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns. In one of my less-than-finer moments, there was the dad that wanted to kill me after I dramatically declared that we were going to “kill” his infant daughter in baptism. It was my dramatic way of emphasizing that we have died to sin and rise to new life. He didn’t buy it. I no longer do this with parents, but I do tell the story to illustrate the same point.

Those who study baptism and the early church think that the baptism of John the Baptist may be loosely connected to ancient Jewish washing and purification rituals. Yet, they also believe those baptisms were an entity unto themselves. Likewise, the significance we place on baptisms now as a sacrament, a gift of God’s grace that provides a daily dying to sin and rising to new life, becoming part of God’s family, an assurance that we will always belong to God no matter what happens, were not a part of John’s baptisms either. But what I think does tie these memorable baptisms with Jesus’ baptism is an attitude of vulnerability.

Only in Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism do we have the curious exchange between Jesus and John the Baptist. John wonders why he should be baptizing Jesus, intuitively knowing a baptism of repentance for Jesus doesn’t make any sense. Jesus’ response, that it is necessary to fulfill all righteousness, is vague and provokes much speculation as to its meaning. I think that Jesus’ comment has something to do with Jesus agreeing to take on the mission for which God sent him. In every case, being baptized means agreeing to give up control of our lives and giving it to God. Even when we baptize babies, we do it without their permission, setting them on God’s path for them. And at some point they have to say to God in one way or another, “Let it be according to your word.”

The thrust of the season of Epiphany is to make manifest or reveal just who this Jesus is that has come into our world. It is bookended by two festival Sundays, the Baptism of Our Lord and the Transfiguration of Our Lord. In both cases, as we will see, a voice from heaven declares Jesus to be God’s beloved Son. So it is that in our baptisms, we are baptized into Christ Jesus, becoming God’s beloved children forever. In addition, we open ourselves to God’s direction in our lives, to share in Jesus’ mission to love and bless the world, an act of faithful obedience that continues daily until we move to the next life.

As we’ve seen all too clearly this past week, we live in a hurting and broken world. The shooting of Officer Arik Matson and the all-too-sudden death of Arlene Thieme have rocked us. In our own community of faith, we still feel the effects of numerous conflicts, traumas and tragedies. Yet, we persist because we are God’s beloved who are called to be a healing presence in this world. You see, all baptisms are notable baptisms. Today, we are humbly reminded that God has a vision for us, to make manifest God’s love to all who need to hear it, including ourselves. In the months ahead, we’ll discover together what that means for us as Grace Lutheran Church. But for now, let us “walk wet” in the obedience of faith, allowing the light of Christ to shine in, with, and through us. Amen.

For an audio version of this sermon, click here.

"One of Us, One with Us" - Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas

One of Us, One with Us
Christmas 2A
January 5, 2020
Grace, Waseca, MN
John 1.1-18

The pastor-in-training was visiting a patient in the hospital as part of his chaplaincy rotation. After a few minutes of intently listening to the agonies of the seriously ill man, the nascent pastor, with as much empathy and compassion as he could muster, said “I know how you feel.” Without warning, the patient’s hand shot out from under the covers and his fist caught the pastor square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. The ailing man snarled, “You can’t begin to know how I feel.” It was a valuable, if painful, lesson the seminarian learned that day about walking with people and one I took to heart when it was related to me by him.

All the presents have been unwrapped and put away, the trees and lights are down, the Christmas programs are a memory, and Valentines displays are in the stores, but here in the church it’s still Christmas (at least for today). You might think it’s a cranky attempt by the church to be counter-cultural and revolt against society. There is some truth to that, but as Kathryn Shifferdecker points out, “The wonder of the Word-made-flesh cannot be contained or packed away with the decorations and trappings of Christmas.” Then she adds that, without all of the distractions, “…we may able to hear and speak of mystery” of Christ’s birth.

 “And the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, glory of a Father’s own Son,” John tells us in poetic, exalted language. The One who was there from the beginning, before there was a beginning, the One through whom and for whom all things were created took on and became one with that which he created. This claim has startling implications, not the least of which we claim that things that are finite are indeed capable of bearing that which is infinite and that which is limited can hold the limitless. In other words, human flesh, water, and bread and wine can contain God. As my friend and colleague Pastor Darby Lawrence notes when we take the very creator of the universe into our bodies, “It’s a wonder we don’t explode.”

Yet, perhaps the greatest implication of the mystery that God become one of us is the claim that God knows in an intimate way what it means to be human, to actually know what we feel. But is that true? Are we now protesting that claim with a mental fist aimed squarely at God’s chest? Sure, in Jesus Christ God knows hunger, pain, grief, suffering, death and joy, but does God really know what it means to be me. Does God know about cancer, Alzheimer’s, divorce, job loss, depression, PTSD, mental illness and other things? Yes! Jesus knows exactly what it is like to be us because in his cross Jesus took on all our pain and suffering and brokenness where it was ultimately crucified and redeemed.

That’s good news, but there is more because with God there is always more. The even better news is that the God who became One of us is also One with us. Perhaps the most enduring mystery is not that God entered creation at Christmas. The most enduring mystery is that God is still here. It would be easy for us to give up on ourselves and our world, to be cynical about our world full of political and cultural divisions, the wars and petty conflicts, if it weren’t for Christmas. Christmas reminds us that God has not given up on us nor will he. With that assurance and the New Year looming, I ask you to look back and see how God was with you this past year, to where the Word-made-flesh lived with you and invite you to resolve to look for God’s presence in the coming one. Thanks be to God! Happy New Year my sisters and brothers in Christ.

For an audio version of this sermon, click here. (It is dated January 8 and is in two parts.)