"Are We Missing The Point"

While we are awed by the mystery of miracles we often miss its point!
  

 Jan 17 2016  1 Corinthians 12: 1-11  Psalm 36 5-10 John 2: 1-11

Years ago when Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show he interviewed an eight year old boy. The young man was asked to appear because he had rescued two friends in a coalmine outside his hometown in West Virginia. As Johnny questioned the boy, it became apparent to him and the audience that the young man was a Christian.  So Johnny asked him if he attended Sunday school.  When the boy said he did Johnny inquired, "What are you learning in Sunday school?" "Last week," came his reply, "our lesson was about when Jesus went to a wedding and turned water into wine." The audience roared, but Johnny tried to keep a straight face. Then he said, "And what did you learn from that story?" The boy squirmed in his chair. It was apparent he hadn't thought about this.  But then he lifted up his face and said, "If you're going to have a wedding, it might be a good idea to invite Jesus!"

You know as funny as that was for the audience,  that is pretty profound advice.  Jesus is, at least for those who follow him, a sign of God being present in your life.    Jesus brings God into the picture and kindles in us the Holy Spirit.   Both relationships are meant to be life long Folks, the first doesn’t end when you put a ring on a finger.  The relationship with Jesus doesn’t end when you say you are a Christian.  The covenant your making is for life Folks.  Jesus at the weeding is not only keeping the party going, his presence there speaks of the eternal.  There is something of eternity in a marriage and something in Christ that connects us all for eternity.  Christ was in our past, is in our now and will be our future.  

So then, it is a good thing to have Jesus at wedding ceremonies, indeed it is good to have Jesus show up everywhere in our daily lives.  The gospel today is not only about Jesus performing a miracle, it is also about family and about family embarrassment.  It is about how our celebrations can turn in a moment to personal disaster, this is when we really need Jesus to be there for us to.   What do you do when the laughter and the joy run out?   How many here today have experienced a family gathering when joy turns into an embarrassment, a difficult situation or yes even a disaster?  We humans can get carried away with indulgence and not see trouble coming.  How many of us here today would have consciously though to invite the spirit of Christ to come to our festive gathering.  Jesus has been invited to attend this gathering and His presence has a profound effect on its outcome.  Many focus on the biblical miracles and get sidetracked and miss the point of the story.  The miracle is really secondary to what Jesus brings to a gathering, or what he offer us in his teaching.  In those days, and probably even today, you the host wouldn’t want to run out of food or drink with invited guests.   Mary, understanding the embarrassment the family was faced with, she asks Jesus to do something about it, and he does.  At first Jesus show reluctance to fulfill his mother’s request, because he explains it is not time yet to show Gods authority over life.   But Jesus’ true nature, to be a servant to all, comes shinning through doesn’t it.    Jesus will never fail the voice who asks for his help.  Did you hear that folks, this is our first learning here if you have the ears to hear it, Jesus will always respond to a call for help.     

Notice how Johns Gospel doesn’t focus on the miracle but only says this it is the first of his miraculous signs.  What was the first sign of the Holy being present in the circumstances in your life?   Take a moment and reflect on that thought.   You can put your trust in Him for Jesus never fails.   When you invite Jesus into your daily life, no matter what the occasion, you open the door for the Holy to enter in.   On the other hand if you do not invite the Holy into your daily life, you will not see the darkness coming until trouble shows up.  Trouble is like an out of control foolish child, but the father of trouble is evil and evil isn’t just foolish evil can turn deadly.   Don’t invite the Holy and you will leave the door wide open for the unholy to enter into your wok, your family, and your life.   Darkness cannot with stand the light of Christ.  In fact His light dispels darkness and brings peace of mind, real joy and God’s love into any situation or circumstance.  It is not about miracles it’s about TRUST.   Mother Mary puts her trust in Jesus, and because of her trust Jesus gives them the first sign of His holy presence.  It was so obvious that the disciples began to put their faith in Him. 

Signs as we all know, point to something - for those of us with eyes to see – these signs testify to something that is greater than we are - and it is that greater thing we are meant to grasp - not the miracle.  The first sign points to many things about Christ and about His relationship with us.   I would like to mention just three this morning.

First  - In turning water into wine,  Jesus takes what is and shows us that it has the possibility to become something else.  What can that do for us here today?   Well for those of us who might feel tired, worn out, devoid of joy, empty, or lacking in purpose – WE can be transformed by the power of His presence in our lives.   WE can be turned into something rich, fragrant, and ripe with the fullness of joy through His presence in our lives and through His care.   There is a lot of gospel in that for all of us.  Who doesn’t need his care, who doesn’t need his presence.  Jesus can bring new life, even to that which appears to us dead. 

Take Lazarus for instant.  He was dead for over three days yet still responded to the voice of Christ.  Hearing it he was able to walked out of his darkness back into the light where Christ reigns.   Can you grasp the power in these metaphors.   He can fill the emptiness in your life  - he can take whatever it is that we bring to him - no matter how little - or how much - and utterly remake it - giving to it a savor - a taste - beyond the best that the world is capable of providing.   TRUST IN CHRIST, HE CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.  

Second -  John notes that wine, not just new wine but the best of wine came from thirty-gallon jugs that were full of water,  think of it, because of his generosity the time for celebration had once again begun, not as it was but something much better.  Your new life awaits you, have you invited him in, what are you afraid of, what are you waiting for. 

Third - the Gospel story emphasizes the abundance of what Jesus can provide.  The wedding guests went from having no wine at all to having almost enough to swim in.  By putting your trust in Jesus you too can share in His generosity,  of an abundant life.  One in which the wine of life will be the best ever - your cup will always be full to overflowing.  Thus this miracle was a sign pointing to the prize, Jesus' is that prize.  He is the long-awaited deliverer of your life.   He is the one who will purify you and make the circumstances of your life palatable.   Jesus always provides more than is needed.  Isn’t that GREAT!!!!   

                                   “Jesus on the Main Line”

Ever Felt, "Set Adrift"

Have you ever had the feeling that you had been cut adrift?  How will I ever find my way back?  What words would you use to describe the feeling? 

Jan 10 2016  Readings  Isiah 43: 1-7  Psalm 29

A new attendee to a local church looks out on a sea of faces and wonders where do I sit?   How will I fit in?  Will they like me?  Will I like them?  Is this a meeting place where I will feel wanted and needed?

A women walks by the den within her home looking at the chair where a loved once sat reading the newspaper.  The room is full of reminders.  The feelings of being cut adrift, being alone or lost come rushing back one again. 

A man drives towards the Dr. Office for an examination he has been dreading for the past several months.  His body will no longer let him hide the discomfort and the sense that something wrong is going on within him.   

Who am I?  Where do I belong?  What makes me worthy?     You probably know that these questions which take root in us during adolescence and young adulthood never really go away.  I do not know about you but I have often felt at different stages during my life cut adrift, left out on a limb or have found myself feeling lost, alone and lonely. 

These questions can come from our subconscious mind but not always.  It makes no difference whether they come from, the sub conscious or the conscious mind, what does matter is, where we go looking for the answers to these questions.   Many of us get distracted while looking in the wrong places.  It is very common for people to look for the answer to these identifying questions within their work, their achievements or their profession, only to find them short lived there.  What happens to a women when she begins to feel what phycologist call the empty nest syndrome?  When the last of the children are all gone, off to college or finished and are now out there on their own?  Is the woman no longer a mother? What happens to a home maker when there is no home for them to be maker anymore?  This often happens during family separation or divorce.  It also takes place for the elderly when they face the options of full time homecare or nursing home.  Is she no longer the home maker?   What happens to a man when his career comes to its end at retirement?  What happens to a man when he feels he can no longer satisfy his spouse sexually?  Is he no longer a man?  These three old identifying question may come to the forefront anytime without warning. 

This does not only happen to individuals but happens to groups who get their identity from a label or a name.  Legionnaires, Lyons, Sisters of Charity, or Church organizations like the United Church, you name yours.  Take away their label, United, Baptist, Anglican or Catholic or their common meeting place, the building where they congregate and many will begin to feel cut off, set a adrift, or experience the loose of their roots.  Individuals within the group who have experienced this begin to sense a piece of their identity slipping away.   

Isaiah the Prophet in the chapter 43 has a message for all of us who are feeling the pings and pongs of being cut off, lost or set adrift either personally or as a community.    He is speaking to the bloodied, bruised and bewildered Jewish people of Israel but also the message is for us today both personally and as a community of faith.   
Isaiah tell us Israel’s arrogance and disobedience to the will of God, opened the door that began a set of circumstances that will punish them severely.   The Babylonian empire would conquer them and throw a whole nation into exile.  In the previous chapter, chapter 42, you can read Isaiah’s harsh words of judgment, but now in chapter 43 Isaiah offers the reader these hope filled words of comfort.  Our God is not a God of condemnation as was the Greek and Pagan gods of Egypt.  No, our God is always hope filled and continues to extend hope to us for a future in spite of our sin.  

Isaiah offers his readers some insight concerning these three questions.   Who am I ?  Where do I belong?   What makes me worthy?   These are good question and Isaiah does a pretty good job of answering them for us.  Let us hear these words in Verse 4 of his writings:  “you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.”   In the eyes of God we are all still his children.  Not just any child but His child.   God is our true parent and sees us clearly in our curious, adventurous, foolish and fear filled lives.   We are not just from but are of God, made in His likeness, His image with the promise that we will one day be again with him.   If we could truly see ourselves in the fullness of the universe, what we might see is a tiny person on a tiny planet who is not and I repeat “NOT” insignificant in the scheme of the fullness of it all, despite our shortcomings.   Falling short is part of the deal folks, it is the only way we really learn anything.  Just as you cannot hope for something you already have, you cannot learn from something you already know.  If we were made not to make the mistakes we do, then why would we need a savior, what would we need to be saved from?  We can take comfort in the realization that our failures or sins do not prompt God to quit loving us or laying claim to us, “You are mind” sayth the Lord God: Isaiah 49.     

Who am I?  I am a curious, adventurist child of the universe with a parent who allows me the freedom to fall and grow on my own time in my own way and who is continually seeking me, loves me and wants the very best for me.  Isaiah is told by God and then he pens it in Chapter 49: “I have carved your name on the palm of my hand. I will never forsake you, I will not leave you orphan, I will never forget my own.”    

Where do I belong?   I belong in community with others.  The prophet reminds us that our core identify lies not in our roles as individuals, nor is it determined by the relative size and wealth of a congregation.  Our sense of belonging cannot be found within our doctrine, dogma or achievements as a community or the status of our peers.  It cannot be found in the label we attached to our community either, but from the one who claims us and will never let us go.  

What makes us worthy?  Here we sit on a bench, chair or pew in a small church in small community on the margins of a hostile planet and its environment.  Yet the prophet tells the reader, as small as you may feel you are valued and cherished by your Creator God.   He tells the reader in Verse 1:  “Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine.”   God claims you and holds you close.  We belong to God as sheep belong to the shepherd.  We are worthy only because we are His.  Not because we are good, for only God is good.  Not because we are have gained in stature in the eyes of the world, for we are all equal in the eyes of our Creator and we are all still learning children at heart.  May I suggest to you that we can trust and
hope in the God who is with us, and will protect us even in the midst of the floods of chaos caused by our irresponsibility as individuals and as a community.  Now isn’t that GREAT!!      

  

"And You Thought God Created Everything"

            Was God alone in the Beginning?  What do you Believe? 

Jan 3 2016     Psalm 148 John 1: 1-18

As I mentioned on Christmas Eve, the mystic John whom Jesus often referred to as the blessed one and was the only disciple who was there at his crucifixion with his mother Mary, offers us a cosmic Christmas perspective to consider.  Johns Gospel doesn’t start with Jesus’ physical birth, he is suggesting that Christ was there at very beginning of creations itself.   Let us listen:  John 1: 1-5   1.  In the beginning the Word already existed; the Word was with God, and the Word was God.   Let us keep in mind that this of course is according to John’s perspective. I must also say here that most of popular versions of the bible, NIV, American Standard, King James and may others all say “and the Word was God.”  But there are a few versions, Good New being one out there that say “and the word was the same as God”.  Either way, the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament merge as John makes the claim that the Word and God are one.  Verse 2:   ² From the very beginning the Word was with God. ³ Through him God made all things; not one thing in all creation was made without him.⁴ The Word was the source of life,^[a] and this life brought light to people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.

John perspective on creations forces us to take a closer look at the Hebrew Scriptures starting at Genesis 1.  These writings make up three quarters of what we now call the protestant Holy Bible.  I say protestant here because our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters study an extended version of the Old Testament that includes the books of Tobit, Judith, Ester, The Wisdom of Solomon and the book of Sirach.  These extra books are called the Apocrypha.  The rest of the Holy Bible is made up of the Christian scriptures or New Testament and begins with the 4 Gospel accounts.   Matthew, the first of the four does not start his account with the virgin birth story either but begins with a linage or list of Jesus’ ancestors to prove this child is of the house of David as the Hebrew scriptures had prophesized.   If you look closely at verse 26^th of Genesis 1 you will note that the author, Moses, makes reference to someone being with God in the beginning.  Let us hear the verse: Genesis 1:26 (NIV) ²⁶ Then God said, “Let US make mankind in OUR image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Jesus, in John’s perspective is not confined to the New Testament nor to the celebrations we commit to during the month of December each year.  Johns Jesus becomes the cosmic Christ, an entity who was there as the Word {according to John} in the very beginning.  I would like to suggest to you that it makes no difference which name you use as a metaphor to describe who was there with God, the Word as suggested by John or the Christ as suggested by Paul or Jesus whom is believed to be by some Christians today as God incarnate.  But Moses certainly tell us that an entity was with God, and that entity was one with God and was there from the very beginning. 

Let us move ahead 4.5 billion or so years to the time when the Word, finds itself embodied in a human being.   Isaiah 9:6   A child is born to us! A son is given to us! And he will be our ruler. He will be called, “Wonderful Counselor,” “Mighty God,” “Eternal Father,” “Prince of Peace.”  Our Scriptures now tell us that God would choose one of us to be the embodiment of the Word, the Word in human form.     Now the Holy Word as we know it comes in three forms.  The written word, the spoken word and the unspoken word which is word in action.   But how does this relate to our lives today?  Folks, we need to read the written word for ourselves, the written word informs us of where we came from and gives us stories to illustrate the struggles we face as human beings today.   If we read the stories within the Hebrew text or Old Testament not taking all of them literally as historical fact, we will find truths embedded in all the stories and we may discover why John chose the metaphor “The Word” to describe the entity that was there with God in the beginning.   

Without words nothing in our existence becomes tangible, debatable and or understandable.   Thoughts and emotions often make no sense to ourselves or others until they are expressed in one of the three word forms.  The written word allows us to study it, reflect or meditate on it, to absorb it, to take it in and then to interpret it, which helps you develop your own perspective on faith and the world around you.  The caution here is, do not develop your faith from someone else’s perspective.  The spoken word, combined with emotion has the power to heal or even resurrect a dead life, but it can also be used to manipulate or destroy a life.  The spoken word can be gentle and southing or harsh and disturbing.  The spoken word has the power to be more negative or positive then just the written word because of the emotion to which it is attached.  But the greatest power of the word lay not in what has been written or spoken but in the unspoken word, the word in action.   This was Jesus’ greatest and most powerful use of the word and the reason that we must look to him as the Word made flesh.  In fact it was because of what he did not what he said that brings people to believe that he is the one and only true Son of God but also the one and only true Son of Man.  You see John’s perspective offers us a Jesus who is both divine and human.   For Jesus was and still is the embodiment of God in human form.    May I suggest that for the New Year you begin to seek the written word, then speak it to neighbor, friend and family?  Then do as Jesus has so powerfully taught us, put yours words into action.   May the Lord Bless and keep you now and forevermore.  

                                           "Spread The Word"    

  

"The Virgin Birth, Fact Or Myth"

                               “The Virgin Birth, Fact or Myth?"

Some believe, some don’t where do you stand?   Just how important is it concerning who Jesus is for you?   How do you answer the question: “Who do you say I am?” 

Dec 27 2015   Psalm 148,   Luke: 2 41-52

Let us examine the passage from Luke 2: verses 41-52.  Luke clarifies for his readers that the boy Jesus was a very human person as well as having unusual spiritual insight and at least an elementary awareness of his divine mission.  The portrait we may have here is of a headstrong adolescent who disappeared from the company of Galilean travelers as they left Jerusalem after the Passover festival.  He went missing for three days, a terrifyingly long time for his anxious parents.  My wife and I can attest to this terrifying and anxious feeling as we lost our middle son at the local fall fair grounds one fall at the age of 3 while checking out the horse barn.   After a terrifying frantic search for what seemed like hours we found him with a friend who had seen him wondering around in the arena.  Mary and Joseph finally found Jesus in the temple questioning the learned scholars about spiritual matters. Naturally, Mary scolded him, as all mothers would.  Instead of submitting to her rebuke, he answered her back, “Why did you have to look for me? Didn't you know that I had to be about my Fathers business?  But they did not understand his answer.” The distance between the boy and his parents was already widening.  Who was this young adult who so mystified them?

The claim that Jesus was fully divine, meaning he couldn’t be a human being was not the belief of the early Christian Church.  The perspective fully divine began to take shape in the early part of the 3^rd Century after Jesus’ death and is still being taught as doctrine in some of the modern day Christian denominations.  We know from biblical records that this was contrary to the early Orthodox Christian church because Jesus was only known by the majority as a Jewish Rabbi, a very special Rabbi but yet, only a Rabbi.  Let us recall in John 20: 16 at the tomb of resurrection, Mary Magdalene encounters a gardener, after realizing the entity she is speaking with is not a gardener by Jesus himself, calls out “Rabboni!”  Meaning Teacher or Rabbi.   Jesus was never considered by the majority of his closest disciples to be God incarnate but was viewed by the early Christians as a unique agent of God with great spiritual insight and powers.   

The notion that Jesus was fully divine didn’t really come to light until some of the 1st and 2nd-century texts, written by Paul, were officially canonized to become part of what we now know as the New Testament.   At different points in his writings, Paul implies indirectly to the divine character of Jesus, but he never makes a direct connection to the claim.  To this very day, there is still scholarly debates going on as to whether or not we can call Jesus God.   I have to admit that I myself at one point in my faith journey could be quoted as publicly taking sides in the debate. 

It was the Apostle Paul within his generous contribution to the writings found in the Epistles of the New Testament that this theological perspective comes to light, Jesus as  “The Son of God”.  This also sparked a new theological perspective, Jesus as “The Son of Man” and the debate continues.   Was Jesus in fact God incarnate or was he just a man, or was he both Son of God and Son of Man, both divine and human?

It has been suggested that in some of the Christian churches today, to help prevent the total humanizing of Jesus, there has been an overemphasis of his deity.  In fact it appears that some theological camps or perspectives want Jesus to be only fully human and others want him to be only fully God.  May I suggest to you that to minimize the humanity of Jesus is as heretical as the overemphasis placed on his deity?  The writer Luke does not attempt to do anything more than tell his story and leave the reader to answer the crucial personal question which confronts us all: Who is this man we call Jesus?

Jesus himself often avoided a direct answer to this question all the way to his death.  When confronted he often turned his answer into the question: “Who do you say I am?”

Is it then heresy to question the age old story of a virgin birth as historical fact? 

Most of the ammunition to keep Jesus as divine comes to us from the virgin birth as historical fact, being conceived by the Holy Spirit not by human means.  Holding tightly to this view as historical fact clears the way for Jesus to be completely divine.  He would be void of a human nature, the nature that is prone to missing the mark.  Thus we have the perspective that Jesus was born outside the curse placed on all human seed allowing Jesus to be free from sin and fully divine.  

But there are many Christians who struggle with theology of the virgin 

birth and do not see it as historical fact, neither do they see it as a fairy tale but as historical myth.  Myth when used as a noun refers to  a traditional story, concerning the early history of a people that explains some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involves a supernatural being or events.  The historical myths of all ancient writings, including the bible always, have a hidden truth contained within the story.  It is up to the seeker to uncover the truth behind the myth. For example, a virgin birth would not prevent Jesus from experiencing the fullness of being human.   He was to experience everything we experience and be tested with every temptation of the human nature, see Matthew 4: 1-3.  The understanding of this theological perspective would allow Jesus to be full alive, fully human yet containing the full embodiment of the divine nature of God.   

May I suggest to you here that either way there is room for the understanding that Luke’s intentions in telling his version of the Christmas story was to provide a narrative which would start the debate that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine.  Let me leave you with the question that we all have to wrestle with in the development of our own faith.  The question Jesus asked his disciples:  “Who do you say I am”   

The Divine and Human as one, Incredulous!

Christmas Eve service 2016

I would like to tell you a story I heard recently about a nativity pageant, that like life itself didn't go quite as planned... The youth group at a city church was performing a manger scene.  Joseph and Mary and all the other characters were in place and ready.  They had practiced their parts with seriousness and commitment.   During the performance as the shepherds were proceeding to the altar steps, Mary and Joseph were looking earnestly at the straw in the manger, which contained a single naked light bulb that was playing the part of the glowing newborn Jesus, the light of the world.    With his back to the congregation, one of the shepherds said to the person playing Joseph, in a very loud whisper for all the cast to hear, "Well, Joe, when you gonna pass out cigars?"    Mary and Joseph's quiet snicker erupted into loud bursts of laughter.  This caused The chief angel, standing on a chair behind them to break out in laughter also.  She was laughing so hard that she fell off her chair and took the curtained back drop and many of the staged props with her.    The whole set was in shambles.   But do you know what?  The only thing that didn't go to pieces was that light bulb in the manger. ... it never stopped shining. --- Folks that baby in the manger is a light for the entire world.

We gather tonight to celebrate a birthday, but not just an ordinary birthday, for this birthday involves all of us here tonight and all those around the world who have come to accept, believe in, and practice the Christian religion.  In the beginning before our religion was formerly formed by the early apostils, we were simply know as People of The Way, followers of the light, the light that shines in our darkness days when things are not going as planned either.  The light of Christ is a light that shows us the way to wholeness.  For the early followers it was the same, they too struggled and tried very hard to follow in his way and abide by teachings.  Some began to see and understand that Jesus was not just an ordinary man, his extraordinary compassion for humankind, and his understanding of life and death seemed beyond their comprehension.  He performed many miracles, the lamb would walk again, the sick and possessed would be healed and set free, and the dead would rise.   Jesus did not teach from a pulpit within a synagogue or church building but simply went from community to community teaching on the hillsides, in the streets and in people’s homes.   His message was simply to Love God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  He choose just ordinary people like you and me to carry on his teachings, and his message of salvation and love throughout the world.  The Christmas Story was not meant to be a celebration for on one specific day or evening of the year, but was meant to inspire us to live as though every day was the last day of our lives.  To live with hope, for a new and better tomorrow, to love others as He loved us, to work for peace and justice in our personal lives, our community and in the wider world.       Jesus’ beloved disciple John, writes of a cosmic Christmas story in his writings found in the Gospel of John.  John doesn’t start with the human birth of Jesus but his gospel begins at the beginning of creation.  He uses the metaphor of the word, which in my perspective was an entity that we call the Christ.  The Word or the Christ became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  John goes on to say: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth”.  John’s Jesus is not confined to a manger 2000 years ago but rather reaches out to us from the very beginning of time itself.  Jesus was no ordinary man – Let us hear these words from the gospel of John   Chapter One:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This is truly what we celebrate here this night.  A love and its story of cosmic prepositions. He was there in the beginning as the Christ, just as he is still with us in spirit now, the Spirit of Holiness who speaks only the truth to our hearts.  May your Christmas experience this year be a blessed one.   

"Human and Divine Together As One " Impossible?

That a child would be born into our world, who would fill his life so much with the love of God, that in him , thousands upon thousands would be moved to make the incredible claim that they had actually met their God in person. 

Dec 20 2015   Readings:  Psalm 80   Luke 1: 46-55

One of the great theologians and renowned author of our time, Karl Barth, was asked to be a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Divinity School.   Dr. Barth being quite elderly, not well and quite tired, sat quietly after his arrival.  The organizers for the lecture thought after speaking Dr. Barth shouldn't be expected to handle the strain of the many question that were expected from students.  It was decided that the presider would ask one general question for all.  He turned to the renowned theologian and asked, "Of all the theological insights you have ever had, which do you consider to be the greatest of them all?    It seemed the perfect question for a man who had written literally tens of thousands of pages of some of the most sophisticated theology ever put into print.  The students held pencils right up against their writing pads, ready to note down the great insights of one of the greatest theologian of their time.  Dr. Barth closed his tired eyes, and he thought for a minute, and then he half smiled, opened his eyes, and said to those young theology students, "The greatest theological insight that I have ever had is this: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so”

Karl is right folks, for the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest love story ever written!  If it weren't for Christmas we might never have known the intensity of the love that God has for each and every one of us.

Mary and Joseph, far from home because of imperial rule, a peasant mother giving birth in unsanitary substandard conditions... There was no fanfare, no religious delegation and no royalty in attendance.  They just gently laid their newborn in that manger, amazed at the miracle of new birth, gauzing in joyful celebration as they looked at his little face, just like every new parent does.   But this child would be different for He was to be the sign of God’s true unconditional love for the world to see and to know personally. 

True love accepts us for who we really are; God chooses to love us precisely because we are all His and because we are all subjected to the human condition... Let us set aside the myth that we are loved only if we are good, for if that were true, none would be loved.  Let us also set aside the myth that if we are bad we are not loved, for if that were true none would be loved.   How come the same?   Mary and Joseph had nothing to offer but their obedience to a calling beyond themselves and that is precisely all we have to offer, a calling beyond ourselves.  It is an invitation to trust and surrender our lives over to the care and control of something greater than ourselves. 

Jesus was to be the Son, the true Son of God so patiently waited for, and now to be born into our world.  This child would be the ONE, the one who was willing to finally embody God’s unconditional love for all to see and experience.  Not just some of the time, not when it was convenient, but in every waking, breathing minute of every single day... It is the birth of that love into our world that we celebrate at Christmas.    It’s not about being bad or good folks.  It’s about a love so unconditional that its power transcends good and bad.   Who would have ever guessed that this crossing of paths, this intersection of the divine and the human, would take place in the remote village of Bethlehem?  That a child would be born into our world, who would fill his life so much with the love of God, that in him , thousands upon thousands would be moved to make the incredible claim that they had actually met their God in person.   On Christmas night God would sent out a love letter of cosmic proportions. This was the moment, in that little town of Bethlehem when God and humanity were joined as a bride and groom on their wedding day.  As Jesus grew and went out into the world, so our understanding of just how much God loves us also grew.   We find in Jesus that God's love doesn't demand perfection, that forgiveness isn't given away sparingly but recklessly and indiscriminately, that unconditional really means unconditional, and that God's love is completely and thoroughly inclusive.  Why was and still is, this profound truth so hard for the religious and non-religious to grasp and hold on to?   We find that even the likes of us gathered here this morning fall within the embrace of that love, and that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God found in Christ Jesus.   But I also know this folks,…. that.without Christmas my life would be positively unbearable!  ---  that for me, the baby in the manger is the light of my world, even when my world is in shambles...For in that baby the Divine and the human miraculously cross paths.   The infant Jesus is our living, breathing sign of the immeasurable love that God has had for all of us from the very beginning.

Christmas is the living promise that we are never ever alone.  No matter where we are in life, no matter in what condition we find ourselves, no matter how far we might stray away, or how unfaithful we are, God, the supreme lover, will pursue us in love for eternity!    It's a love that never stops shining.

May God bless each of you and those you love this Christmas. 
                               
                                  Bonny M sings Mary's Boy Child 

Still Still Still