Christmas 2
Jeremiah 31: 7-14 + Psalm 147: 12-20 + Ephesians 1: 3-14
John 1: 1-18
Beloved, may the grace of the Christ child gather us in to listen to the word of God. Amen.
Merry Christmas! In the life of the Church, it is still Christmas. Tomorrow, on the Feast of the Epiphany, the Church will remember the arrival of the magi to the infant Jesus. For the upcoming Sundays between the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, our readings will invite us to consider Jesus as the light of the world, and they will encourage us to imagine how we might reflect that light. But for this day, we get to linger a bit longer in the mystery of the Incarnation. Perhaps no other Gospel invites us into that mystery like John’s does. Luke and Matthew offer us details….the details that make up the stories we tell….shepherds and angels and Mary and Joseph’s journey and how there was no room at the inn. The magi, who were not kings at all, but astronomers, who had studied the stars and had thus determined where they would find the infant Messiah.
We get all of these details from Matthew and Luke. These details go on Christmas cards and we remember them as we set up our nativity scenes and move the magi ever closer to the manger.
But John gives us none of that. John’s Gospel opens with this gorgeous Prologue, and we are launched into the mystery of the Word made flesh.
In the world that we have gathered in today, there’s not always a lot of room for mystery, unless you count “How did we get here?” as more mystery than angst. Preachers everywhere long to be able to tell a word of God’s faithfulness without having to elucidate humanity’s fecklessness. I would love to come to this pulpit and not have to raise up our sinfulness; our ongoing lust for power, which began in the Garden of Eden and has never abated. I would love to stand before you and remind you that Jesus loves you, because he does; and that God has called us beloved children, because we are. But I cannot tell you that without being reminded that some of God’s beloved children do not enjoy the fullness of their belovedness from their neighbors or their families or even from the Church. This week we hear news that the United Methodist Church has been unable to come to agreement on the matter of whether or not our LGTBQ+ siblings are worthy. Are equal to the rest of us. And it would be easy to feel some measure of pride in the ELCAs ability to navigate that without a schism, until we recall our beloved Laura and the way she has been treated by this Church.
I want to be able to tell you that random violence is on its way out, that we are safe sitting in school or at the movies or in our cars or in places of worship. But I cannot tell you that. Instead we pray for our Jewish siblings who are experiencing such hatred and violence against them. We pray for our children when they go to school that they will not need to enact the safety measures of their active shooter drills.
And we grieve with congregations reeling from gun violence even as I wonder how to protect you, my dear ones, in this place.
The word of God is clear on the necessity of naming the sin and brokenness in the world. And we who have the privilege of preaching are cowardly if we avoid naming that sin because it makes us uncomfortable and people send us angry emails.
So maybe the mystery is how we can preach: In the beginning was the Word… to the world as it is today. On the brink of war and comfortable with entire continents on fire. Accountability seemingly absent. Violence raging.
Oh Lord, come quickly.
Except….
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the word was God.
God has been here since the very beginning and God is the source of all life and God is not going anywhere.
The stories of God’s people and of God are stories of the people wandering away….time after time after time….and God always bringing them back. Not without their repentance and not without God’s holding their sin before them. Not without lessons learned and then unlearned and then learned again. But God always and relentlessly searches after us in our wandering.
Our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah today tells of just such an occasion. Israel has been in exile in Egypt. They’ve been there for so long that some of them know of nothing else. They are scattered to far flung places, we are told, and yet, none of them are out of God’s capacity to find them and lead them home. God isn’t just interested in bringing the strongest or the most capable back, either. The lame and the blind and the pregnant women will all be led home. Everyone. They will be led beside sustaining water and on easy to navigate paths and they will not stumble along the way.
Why wouldn’t they weep?
In their wanderings away from God, in their captivity and in the utter loss of their identity as God’s beloved people, God is faithfully leading them home.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the word was God.
Like Israel and like God’s people throughout time, we have wandered away. We have allowed children to be separated from their families at borders; we have allowed unjust rulers and unfaithful shepherds to assume places of power and privilege where they have not worked for the dignity of all people; we have allowed and participated in the absolute pillaging of the Creation and shrugged our shoulders when the world catches fire. We have allowed people of color and women and the LGTBQ community and the poor to be pushed aside and bullied and ignored and oppressed. And it is nothing new, dear ones. It is nothing new.
I want, with all of my heart, to offer you some comforting word about the joy of Christmas living on through the year, and I hope it does. But we are here today with a mystery. The mystery of the Word made flesh. God with us. Emmanuel.
And that, I believe, is the essence of the mystery. That in spite of an eternity of wandering away and being disobedient and failing to bear witness to the light of Christ which is for all people….in spite of that….God chose to come among us. Surely God could have accomplished God’s purposes in some other cosmic revelation. Surely God could have directed the celestial hosts to just shout at us that: we’d better get it together right now!
The Incarnation is the Mystery. Not the how’s and the where’s and was she or wasn’t she really a virgin and was there really a barn or was it a cave and how many magi were there. We don’t really need those details in order to dwell in this mystery.
The mystery is why God would come to such a broken people in such a broken world. And the answer is simple. Because God loves us. God loves us and ALL of us and ALL of creation so much that God has not and cannot and will not ever leave us. There’s nothing we can do or leave undone that will separate us from God’s love.
That’s called grace. And it is not cheap. It requires of us that we co-create with God, a world of justice for all people; a world where children are valued and safe; a world where differences are treasured and not feared. A world where all people are named beloved. A world where Creation thrives. A world where peace is the goal.
This is the world we may not see until the next life and it is the world we cannot stop believing is still possible. Merry Christmas. And let the Church say…Amen.