Advent — Page 3 — Andy James

The Message of the Angels

December 18, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:26-56 for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
preached on December 18, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Whenever angels appear on the scene, you know that God is up to something. Angel really don’t show up all that much in the Bible – the word “angel” only appears some 104 times in the Old Testament and 99 times in the New Testament – but when angels do appear, they are always bringing or bearing a message, and the message is always more important than the messenger.

In our scripture reading this morning, the messenger came to a young woman named Mary who lived in the hill country of Palestine under Roman rule over two thousand years ago. The message from God was as unusual as the recipient: this young woman was favored above all women and chosen to bear the Son of God, the one who would change things once and for all for the people of Israel and all the world.

Mary was stunned and confused by all this, so she asked the angel how this would happen. She was not naïve and understood that certain things were involved in bearing children, and she knew if this message were true lots of people would be asking lots of questions.

The angel answered her, promising that her pregnancy would come not by a usual human method but by the power of the Most High God. And this wasn’t all that God was up to in these days. Mary’s relative Elizabeth, well past childbearing age and long considered barren, was also expecting a son.

Mary wondered about all this, but somehow she accepted it, whether or not she had a choice, declaring, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

These days, we don’t see all that many angels, and I for one am pretty skeptical when anyone suggests that they have such direct contact with God and God’s message, because that message is usually less about what God is doing and more about what the individual wants to hear.

But the seeming absence of angels in our midst doesn’t mean that God has stopped working in our world or has no message for us anymore. We still find God speaking to us in the words of scripture as the Holy Spirit moves in the community of faith. We still find God speaking to us as we live this message out in our worship, study, and service together in the community of faith. We still find God speaking to us even as we are confronted with the challenges of living in a changed and changing world that doesn’t look like what we remember it being even a few years ago.

But the key thing for us – and for Mary – is how we respond to God’s message. What do we do when we are bowled over by a powerful and challenging call from God? How do we keep on the path that God intends when we hear something unexpected or unknown?

I think Mary could have responded to the angel’s message in one of two ways. She could have freaked out, doing everything possible to avoid the consequences of his words, working to undermine the angel’s message and the hope of her son not yet born, maybe even saying “no” to the angel.

But Mary did none of this. Instead, she welcomed the uncertainty and challenge of the angel’s message. She set aside her fears and anxiety and opened herself to the possibility, gift, and challenge of being the mother of a child who would transform the world.

Mary’s actions after all this were pretty remarkable, too. She decided not to be ashamed of this child being born out of wedlock, clearly conceived before her marriage to Joseph. For support she set out to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the relative whom the angel had mentioned in his message, who was also expecting an unexpected child. And together they rejoiced in the strange and wonderful gifts of God taking shape and form within their bodies.

During their time together, Mary broke forth into song, echoing her ancestor Hannah and offering the great words known for centuries as the Magnificat. In her song, Mary places the fullness of her joy in the gift of God given not just in her time but across the centuries. In her song, Mary claims the justice and mercy of God for all people. And in her song Mary points the way to a new way of life that her son Jesus would make possible as he came into the world.

All along the way, Mary responded to this strange, challenging, and wonderful message by recognizing that she could only begin to understand what God was doing in and through her life, and yet she had no choice but to offer her thanks and praise.

The message of God before us isn’t quite as clear as it was for Mary, but there are definitely things going on around us that we need to be listening for. Even amidst the economic and political challenges of these times in our world, God is speaking words of comfort and hope to all people – and invites us to join in. God continues to challenge us in the midst of the deep need of so many to embody God’s own attention to and concern for the poor and all who are vulnerable. God calls us to listen for the voices of those who are kept silent or ignored. And God invites us to dream and imagine that things can and will be different for us and all the world, that things don’t have to be returned to their previous state or the clock turned back to make them right but rather can be new and different and wonderful and good as God continues the work of the new creation in us and through us and all around us.

So how will we respond to the message of the angels that God sets before us in these days? Will we consider only the ways and paths that we have known in the past? Will we stay true only to where we have been before and open only to the possibilities that are comfortable and well-known? Will we cower in the corner in fear, unwilling to move anyplace new because we are afraid of losing the little that we have?

Or will we be open to the power of God moving in us here and now? Will we be open to God’s transformation of the gifts that we offer into something greater and better? Will we let God change us and our world to make room not just for the ways that we have known but for the ways that God intends for us and all creation?

Despite my skepticism, these days remind us that angels are still present and at work in our midst, still bearing God’s message to us, in us, and through us, still showing us that God is up to something in our world and in our lives, still inviting us to join in rejoicing because of what God is up to in our world.

In the familiar stories we will hear over the next week, these strange messengers from God keep speaking, bringing more good news not just for a few people but for all humanity, opening the way to transformation for our broken and fearful world, proclaiming hope and joy and peace and love for all people not just at Christmas but all year long.

So may the message of the angels be alive and well in these days, bringing us good news and helping us to respond in faithfulness and joy as we join in God’s good work that is not yet done in our midst.

Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Rejoice Always

December 12, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
preached on December 11, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“Rejoice always.”

In the wonderful list of exhortations and instructions that the apostle Paul offers to the church in Thessalonica, I think this one has to be the hardest. It’s not easy to pray without ceasing or give thanks in all circumstances, nor can we easily be open to the words of prophets, hold fast to what is good, or abstain from every form of evil. But “rejoice always”? It just seems nearly impossible.

Thankfully there has been a lot of reason for me to rejoice lately. Last weekend, I spent an afternoon with dear friends and their two sons, enjoying many laughs and lots of fun as we saw a movie and took a leisurely afternoon to wander around Brooklyn together. Then I spent last Sunday evening in one of my favorite churches in Manhattan, listening to beautiful music and timeless words of waiting and wonder amidst the quietness of the Advent season. This week has been a good one on the church front, too – first as we learned that the pending litigation against the church is finally being settled and as we took some major steps toward completing the sale of the manse, too. You’ll be hearing more about these things in the coming weeks, but I for one am quite joyful that things are finally moving along with two projects that have occupied a lot of our time and energy in recent months.

But even amidst all this, everything hasn’t been joyful this week. Even all this joy has been tinged with something else – there’s always been something just under the surface nagging me and suppressing my joy. There were little things that went wrong – a broken paper shredder in the midst of a major cleaning project at the manse that led to an unexpected, unbudgeted expense for me – but also bigger things like changing plans that took away from hoped-for time with friends and another friend who lost his job this week and just doesn’t have a clear picture of what is ahead.

But all the little things that suppress joy in my own life seem so small amidst all the pain and struggle around us in our world – the uncertainty around elections in Russia and the Congo, the continued frustrations of economic and political life in our own nation, state, and city, and the heart-wrenching news of another shooting at Virginia Tech University on Thursday just as they finally were beginning to recover from the last tragedy there several years ago.

So in the midst of all the struggles of our lives, it’s not so easy to “rejoice always” – unless you count schadenfreude, that German concept of taking pleasure in the pain of others, as rejoicing! But yet Paul’s exhortation is still before us: “Rejoice always.”

It was surely just as difficult for his first hearers to take this seriously. They were some of the earliest converts to this new religious practice, and they didn’t have a clear path for how to behave or what to do. They were a tiny minority group in a city and nation where even perceived disloyalty to the practices of the empire meant troubles of all sorts. And people around them just didn’t understand why they would embrace this new religious faith and practice that seemed to bring nothing more than difficulty and struggle. And yet Paul instructed them to rejoice always.

I don’t think Paul didn’t understand what this was all about – he knew that rejoicing isn’t always easy. But he knew that rejoicing is about more than temporary things, about more than happiness in the here and now, about more than just seeing our needs and desires fulfilled and realized right away. Our vision of joy has become so limited, captured in an ideal of happiness for this immediate moment, locked up in snow-capped letters with little meaning on holiday cards or alongside the latest display in your favorite store, found first and foremost in gaining something right away for our immediate fulfillment and happiness.

But there is so much more to this joy and rejoicing than just these things. Joy goes beyond this immediate moment, beyond mere platitudes and snow-capped letters that show up in the ever-expanding holiday season, beyond the momentary happiness that comes as we enjoy time with friends and watch long-planned projects finally come to an end. Instead, real joy inspires us and even demands for us to look beyond the immediate things, to trust that there is something more than what we can see happening before us, to open our eyes to the transformation possible in and through our struggle and our happiness, to hope that God will be up to more than we can imagine and understand.

Advent and Christmas bring us true joy not just because Jesus has come but also and even more because Jesus is coming again, because there will be joy beyond all our dreams, because everything that drains us of true joy will be drained of all its power over us, because this world does not and will not have the last word on anything, for there is great joy yet to come in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so on this Sunday when we celebrate joy, when we let a little more Christmas joy creep into the preparations of our Advent, when we look again to God with hope and longing for the new things yet to come, when we light a pink candle and sing songs that speak of deep joy, we remember not happiness but deep and real joy, not empty platitudes of happiness that last only as long as the newness of gifts on Christmas morning but the joy of promises once fulfilled that will be fulfilled again, not temporary happiness for a few privileged people but permanent and transformative new life for all creation.

Pastor Abby Henrich puts it well, I think:

Joy is not easily won. You only get it by giving of yourself. Then, joy cracks the very center of your being open and allows the terrifying beauty of this world to creep in.

Joy has no defenses. With joy the pain of this life creeps in too.

Yet joy is like slipping on a new pair of glasses. Everything in the world becomes more beautiful and more painful when we open ourselves to joy.

So may we have all that we need to “rejoice always,” to give thanks in all things, and trust that God is still working around us to make all things new in Jesus Christ our Lord, the one who has come and is coming again. Alleluia! Amen.

The Comfort We Need

December 4, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 40:1-11 for the Second Sunday of Advent
preached on December 4, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There have been a lot of times lately when I’ve just wanted something comforting in my life. I’ve wanted one of those good home-cooked meals like only my parents can prepare – though I’ve found that some barbecue and some Thai food I can get here in New York get pretty close sometimes! I’ve wanted a good conversation with one of those close friends who can listen and understand all the things that are swirling around in life and make things seem to swirl a little less. I’ve wanted to listen to some beautiful music of the Advent season that somehow makes these days feel complete for me.

Thankfully I’ve gotten a taste of these and other comforting things lately, so I’ve gotten some of the comfort that I want, but I have to wonder if it is the comfort that I really need. I’m sure that my doctor for one won’t think particularly highly of the comfort food I’ve eaten lately when I visit him tomorrow. I know I’ve driven some of my friends a bit crazy over the years in seeking out their presence in the midst of my life. And even my carefully-chosen Advent music isn’t always endearing to those who find great comfort in Christmas carols! So it is that all this comfort I want may not be the comfort I need.

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah this morning deals in this comfort that we need:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

There’s no need to worry – God is finally on the scene.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

Any punishment the people might have deserved is now over and done with. It’s time to move on.

These words of comfort come out of strange silence – for some forty years, the people of Judah had been suffering in exile in Babylon, wondering when God was going to intervene in their pain and struggle and bring them back home.

So the prophet promises dramatic construction in the wilderness to get back to Jerusalem:

Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.

This comfort, you see, is not just the promise of stability and a return to something seen before. Comfort does not come in fulfilling the people’s wants and desires to turn back the clock. For the prophet, comfort comes in changing things once and for all, in transforming the world now and always. This is the great promise of what God is doing, the prophet says, for

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

This glory is not in the restoration of an old way for one or two people – it comes through a new way of life in the face of a world uprooted and torn apart, through a reconstructed land that pulls together people across all boundaries, through a changed world that shows the glory of God in every place.

In our world filled with much change and uncertainty, we really do need and want comfort and transformation, and probably something more than just a favorite meal, the companionship of a friend, or some beloved music. While our struggles are nowhere near the difficulties faced by the exiles of Judah who were Isaiah’s first audience, it sure feels like it sometimes: the ways of life that we once knew seem to be far off and distant; our nation needs a new and better way of life in our politics, our finances, our economy, and nearly everything else too; and our world faces great danger in the abuse and misuse of its many resources as it needs to show and see more signs of God’s glory every day.

But just like in my own life, the comfort we need in these days isn’t always the comfort we want. Sometimes we think we simply need to turn the clock back to a previous time and place to make things different, but we easily forget that the past had more than its fair share of problems, too. Sometimes we try to fix the struggles of our politics and nation by blaming them on someone else, but the reality is that we ourselves – each and every one of us – are just as responsible as anyone for the mess we face today, and only an honest assessment of our own complicity in our pain and struggle can bring us a different path for the days ahead. And sometimes we mix up God’s glory and our own glory, suggesting that God’s blessing upon America or this church or our privilege and status in life is the great expression of God’s presence in our world, when in reality God’s glory defies all these boundaries and expectations and brightens the darkness of every time and place with justice and life.

So amidst the comfort that we want, maybe we need to seek the comfort we need more like what Isaiah describes – an honest, heartfelt, compassionate, tender expression of love and support combined with real and true steps toward the new way of life that God envisions for us.

I think it’s quite appropriate that we hear this text in these days, for Advent is the time when we remember that God sends us the comfort that we need. God’s comfort for our world comes not with the end of waiting but in the midst of it, not with a powerful and immediate transformation of things but with patience and deliberation and hope for God’s return to our midst, not with blinding bursts of light in the darkness but in the great simplicity of one or two candles shining boldly in the night, not with a giant feast spread across many tables but with a small taste of the kingdom in a little portion of bread and grape juice shared at one table, not with a king sent in royal garb to rule and reign with great power but with a baby born Prince of Peace to show tenderness, mercy, and love.

So may this Advent be filled not so much with the comfort we want but the comfort that we need as God steps in to change things, as we take our own steps along the path toward God’s incredible new thing is transforming our world, as we look for the glory of the Lord being revealed in our midst so that when the Great Comforter comes we might be ready to embrace his presence and live in his love for others and ourselves each and every day.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

It’s Time.

November 27, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 64:1-9 for the First Sunday of Advent
preached on November 27, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The people of Israel knew what it was like for God to come down and meet them. By the time of the prophet Isaiah, God had intervened in their history many times, guiding them away from the danger of the Egyptians, through the waters of the sea, and onto dry land; shaking the foundations of their lives to give them the gift of the law to guide their life together; and stepping in to show them a new way when they faced the power of their enemies. God was the only god that they had known – “no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you,” as Isaiah put it.

But now something had happened, and God was not quite so present anymore. The people were in exile, longing to return home. Their land lay in ruins, torn apart by centuries of attacks from within and without. According to the prophet, the people had forgotten God and gone another way, becoming unclean like the filthiest, nastiest rags. Nothing was going right for them anymore, and things were just a complete mess.

So it was time for something new. It was time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It was time.

Our world seems to be very much like ancient Israel sometimes. Not only is that tiny stretch of holy land still the focus of great war and conflict in our day, we too wonder why God doesn’t seem to be as involved in things as God used to be. We too can look back and see marks of God’s presence in the past – in a less complicated, less busy world where it was easier to set aside the time we need for spiritual and religious things; in a seemingly stronger, more vibrant church where the pews were full and challenges absent; in a world that didn’t seem to have so many dangers and complications that strike at the core of our humanity; even in the little things of life and living where God’s face has emerged through the haze of our world over the years.

But we too face an uncertain and unknown day, a time mostly of our own making, a place where the presence of God feels distant. Our celebration of the birth of God’s son at Christmas has devolved into a competition for the best gifts and cheapest prices at the expense of the humanity of others and ourselves, as we have seen so clearly over the course of these past few days. The institutions of our society struggle more and more to be relevant to the new and different lives of people in our changing world. Our economy seems to be stuck in neutral for so many of us – and even jammed permanently into reverse for the least of these among us. And yet our indomitable American spirit makes us think that we can take care of ourselves and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps out of the mess we face. Nothing seems to be going right anymore, and things are just a complete mess.

It is time for something new. It is time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It’s time.

The prophet’s response to the great laments of his age wasn’t all that comforting. First he reminds the people of the fleeting nature of life: “We all fade like a leaf,” he proclaims. Then he suggests that everyone has given up on God and any chance of God’s intervention – and God has given up too: “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”

But he doesn’t leave it there. Isaiah says that God hasn’t completely given up, that God is still working on the people like a potter shaping her clay, gently but firmly reshaping the people into something new, just in time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It’s time.

We can stand to hear something like Isaiah’s words in these days. Like the fleeting leaves of the prophet, none of us will be around forever, and eventually things will be different because we’ll be out of the picture. Like the people of Israel, we too have often turned away from God and claimed that we can do it on our own. And yet God’s presence is still with us too, molding us and shaping us like clay in the hands of a master potter, correcting us where we have gone wrong, preparing us for the great and new thing ahead.

It is from this place where we begin our journey toward Christmas – not from the manic lines and crowds of the holiday shopping season, not from the bulging feast of our Thanksgiving tables, not from the crazy busyness that marks these days between Thanksgiving Day and December 25th, not in the songs that repeat the platitudes of the holidays over and over again, not in gifts or any things that too often carry the day.

No, my friends, we begin our journey toward Christmas with a longing for something real and whole and new, a heartfelt cry to God for things to change once and for all, not just a change in things for the better for one or two of us or the one percent or even the ninety-nine percent, but a new way of life for all of us, where the heavens break open and God comes down and cleans up the mess and starts things over again. My friends, it’s time.

This way of approaching this season is what it means to celebrate Advent, to make a space for this time in our lives and our hearts for the coming of Jesus into our world, to prepare the way for God’s new thing by putting aside the certainty that we can handle things on our own, to keep awake and be ready for the time when God’s presence will transform us and our world, to make sure that we are longing not just for a baby boy born two thousand years ago but also for the time when he will return in power and glory to make things whole once and for all.

And so it is time for us to do radical things in these days – small but radical things amidst our world. We light candles to show the promise of God’s light shining through the darkness. We sing strange hymns that talk about waiting and longing and hope and promise. We pray quietly and hopefully for the time when something new will break into our world. And we keep being as faithful as we can together, showing God’s claim upon us and our world in baptism as we do today with Eve and never forgetting to let our world know the reality of God’s love as best we can.

And so, my friends, it is time – time for us to set aside the trappings of the holidays in favor of preparing for something radically new, time for us to trust that God will not leave us to our own devices along the way, time for us to clear out what we must so that we can be as faithful as we are called to be, time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It’s time.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

A New Perspective for Christmas

December 19, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent on Matthew 1:18-25
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 19, 2010

The Christmas season is filled with wonderful traditions in our lives, and the life of our congregation is no exception. We’re right in the middle of the biggest span of Christmas events, as you probably know. Many of you joined in hanging the greens here in the sanctuary a week or so ago or in celebrating at our congregational Christmas Party this past Friday night, and we still have our annual caroling excursion tonight and the festive celebration of the coming of our Lord on Christmas Eve.

Each year, we approach this very familiar holiday in much the same way, with things changing mainly by necessity and only rarely by choice. In my family, we celebrated Christmas in much the same way every year up until seven or eight years ago. On Christmas Eve, we always gathered at my mom’s parents’ home, went to the early church service, came home to a festive and sumptuous dinner, then adjourned to the living room to sing carols, hear the Christmas story from Luke, and open most of the gifts before going to bed. Then on Christmas morning, we would get up and see what Santa had brought us in our stockings, topping off our celebrations at lunchtime with yet another overwhelming holiday meal that prepared us well for a long winter’s nap on Christmas afternoon!

But then, about seven or eight years ago, things changed in our Christmas celebrations. My grandfather died, and my grandmother moved from their home, first to a condominium and then to an assisted living facility. I moved to New York City and took up a job that carries responsibilities until late on Christmas Eve – and sometimes on Christmas Day, too, leading me to spend my first Christmas night as a pastor by myself in a hotel near the Cincinnati airport after missing my connection there! At the same time, others in the family started to develop their own practices and habits based on their own changing and shifting lives.

After a year or two of trying to hold onto all the old traditions, we quickly learned that we needed to see Christmas from a different perspective, to stop trying to fit the square peg of our Christmas traditions into the round hole of our lives that was emerging before us and to open ourselves to something new for Christmas, built less on the practices and traditions we had established for ourselves over the years and more on the concepts and principles that had shaped our practices in this way over the years. It’s not perfect, but slowly and surely, with each passing year, we are starting to see and celebrate Christmas from a different perspective.

This morning, our reading from Matthew offers us a different perspective on the Christmas story. Beginning with this Advent, we’ll spend much of this next liturgical year making our way through Matthew’s gospel as we do every third year, but Matthew’s take on the Christmas story that we heard this morning is quite different from what we are used to hearing. While the gospel of Luke goes on at length about angels visiting Mary and Mary offering an incredible song of of praise to God in response, Matthew makes Mary the secondary character in the story. Here, Joseph takes center stage, receiving his own visit from the angel of the Lord, facing his own challenge to receive a strange and uncertain word and respond with grace and hope.

Mary and Joseph had gotten engaged, but before they could get married, Mary became pregnant. Joseph, just trying to do the right thing for Mary, felt like he should just let her go, but then the angel appeared to him in a dream, instructing him to go ahead and take her as his wife, for she had not been sleeping around on him but was rather pregnant by the Holy Spirit and would bear a child to be named Jesus because he would save the people from their sins. Matthew interrupts the story to note that all this happened to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard this morning, but he finally reports that Joseph did as the angel had told him: Joseph took Mary to be his wife and named the son born to her Jesus.

At the core so much of this story is the same as what we’re used to hearing from Luke – a young unmarried woman is found to be pregnant, her husband-to-be decides not to cast her off, and an angel appears to explain how all this works and encourage everyone not to be too alarmed by what is happening. Even so, Matthew’s telling offers us just enough of a different perspective on things that it reminds us how much we need a change sometimes. Putting Joseph rather than Mary at the center of things invites us to consider that there were a lot of people who had something to say about what was happening here – not just Mary and Joseph but surely also their parents, their relatives, their neighbors, even the spiritual guides of their community. Hearing a different angel voice speaking to Joseph reminds us that we can all hear different things from our one God. And Joseph and Mary’s strange and seemingly inappropriate pregnancy suggests that God can and does work outside the boundaries we establish in our world.

This story reminds us that especially in these days we need a different perspective on Christmas. Too often the story of Christmas we tell is so familiar that we forget its radical message and purpose and so miss the real meaning of Christmas for us and our world. My favorite clergy comedy, The Vicar of Dibley, put this tendency so well. As the female vicar prepared to celebrate her second Christmas in a small town, her quite ditzy assistant notes that she didn’t remember the first sermon Christmas sermon the vicar had preached the year before.

“Not that it’s your fault – you probably just chose a boring subject,” she said.

The vicar responded, “The birth of Jesus Christ, otherwise known as the greatest story ever told?”

“Well, yeah, the first time you hear it, but after that, it’s a bit predictable, isn’t it? Man and woman get to inn, inn full, woman has baby in manger, angels sing on high, blah blah blah.”

“You have forgotten to mention that that baby is in fact the son of God.”

“Oh yeah, I know, I mean, that’s a nice twist.”

“Nice twist?”

“Yeah, but they aren’t exactly a lot of laughs!” (“The Christmas Lunch Incident”)

I don’t think we necessarily need a lot of laughs to get a new perspective on the Christmas story, but we do need something to help us see this incredible event in a new way. This is about more than shepherds and angels, more than an unwed mother and an uncertain father, more than a baby in a manger – the Christmas story is about how God breaks into our world and does something new when and where we least expect it, shifting our perspective at every turn and inviting us not just to go through the motions of a well-worn season but to see how Christmas changes everything – how God shows power and salvation through a little child, how God works through a strange, unexpected, unmarried couple to shape and mold one who bears salvation into the world, even how God invites us today to stop forcing our square pegs into round holes and so be a part of the incredible new thing that is coming even now. Christmas reminds us that God has changed the way God relates to us in these days, shifting from enforcing laws to proclaiming good news, moving from a set of rules to a wide-ranging relationship, enabling a new vision built not upon grudges but on grace.

That’s why I believe Advent is so important, my friends. If this Christmas is worthy of our celebration, then it is worthy of our preparation, to make space for something incredible and new to take hold in the world. If we believe what we say happens on this coming Christmas Day, then things ought to be different on the other side of it – and this side too! – so that God in Jesus Christ is more than just another baby and another birthday for us. If Christmas really is the day when God breaks into the darkness of our world and of our lives, then it deserves not to be the culmination of all worldly holidays, uplifted in the public sphere and celebrated even by those who misunderstand and disbelieve its central claims, but rather should be a time to celebrate and live our call to see things from a new perspective, for this is the time when God began to see things so clearly through our own human eyes and began to bring new light into all the world.

As these Advent days draw to a close and we welcome the Christ child, may God bring us all a new perspective on these Christmas days and the days to come so that we might be strengthened to walk in this new light even on the darkest of days until God’s brightness comes again to illumine us all forever. Lord, come quickly! Amen.