Jan 4 ~ 2nd Sunday of Christmas/ A Story About Light

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Psalm 147:12-20

Ephesians 1:3-14

John 1:[1-9] 10-18 

Sermon by Bishop Cindy

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ! And thank you to Pastor Joel for inviting me to share the gospel with you today.

Let me begin by wishing you all a Happy New Year! Even while the church remains in the season of Christmas, the world has moved on to New Year’s greetings and turning the page on 2025. If your house is like mine, the decorations have faded into the background. The lights and candles are extinguished. Maybe the Christmas tree is already out on the curb. The manger scene is dusty or packed away. And our attention turns to going back to school tomorrow, back to work after a few days off, back to our regularly scheduled programming. But here in the church we’re still in the Christmas season.

On Christmas eve and Christmas day we rightly focused our attention on the manger scene. At the center of our Christmas is the baby in the manger, heralded by angels, worshipped by shepherds, illuminated by a star, the promise that God is with us, born among us.

But on this second Sunday of Christmas, the evangelist John invites us to lift our eyes, to turn our gaze away from the manger, to look back to the foundation of the earth and into the fullness of time where God is and has always been with us in grace and truth.

“In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him,

and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life,

and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it.”

These words from John send shivers down my spine. They evoke images of space from the Hubble Telescope, vast galaxies in the heavens, nebula shining against the backdrop of darkest space. And the picture of earth as seen from space, a blue and green ball spinning in the light of the sun.

Looked at another way, John paints a picture that could just as well be seen through an electron microscope, the cells of organisms from earthworms to elephants, cells of every living thing dividing and forming up into tissue, and bone, and organs, growing together to form a living being, like you and me.

In the beginning was God’s Word, making light and life, and behold it was very good.

From this cosmic perspective our own lives may seem small and insignificant. Our day-to-day existence is a tiny blip in time, a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of time and space. The struggles we face to make our way in the world, to make a living, to make a family, to make a difference in our world… do they really matter to the God who made heaven and earth? And will they matter in the fullness of time?

John the Baptist thought it mattered. John the Baptist thought it mattered so much that he devoted his life to testifying to the light coming into the world. He forsook family and the comforts of home to go out to the desert to meet people who were seeking meaning, people who wanted their own lives to mean something. And so, John, in his wild ways, pointed them to one coming after him, who would bear the light of God. Light that would shine meaning on their existence.

During his teaching ministry, Jesus taught his followers about how much their life means. Jesus told his followers that God numbers each and every hair on each and every head. Science teaches that every one of us is made unique. Consider our fingerprints, so personal that they can identify who we are when we leave our mark behind. Look at the eyes of the person beside you. Everyone with a different color – blue, brown, grey, green – but more so, that colored part, the iris, has its own pattern, enough to make a biometric signature that can unlock a door.

But that’s only biology. Think of the patterns of experience that make up each life. Parentage, the place were born, schooling, the people who love us, the nurture we receive, the opportunities for travel, work and leisure. Who we are and who we become is a story unique to every individual. It’s like a spark of light within us. When it’s nurtured, fed, tended, that spark of light grows into the person we become.

And in the mind of God, by the Word of God, from the foundation of the world, there was light and life. And in time, the light of God, the Word became flesh and lived among us. God came down from the heavens, and up from the smallest building block of life, to take on human life, with every messy nuance that life includes. God’s own Son came into the world bearing God’s own glory and conferring God’s own grace to all who will receive it.

In Jesus, God experiences all of human life, from birth through the growing pains of childhood. Through the ministry of Jesus, God knows the joy and frailty of human relationships. Through the life of Jesus, God knows the uncertainty we feel when we aren’t sure which way to go. And in Jesus, God experiences the agony of suffering and the finality of death.

And when God takes on human form, God blesses all humankind with the power to become God’s own children, sisters and brothers of Jesus, siblings of one another. We are able to know God in grace and truth because we are God’s children. And the spark of light within us is nurtured as we grow in faith and love.

Through our relationship to Jesus, we receive grace upon grace that fuels that spark of light until we are like beacons in the world, shining the light of God’s love into the dark places we encounter. We don’t have to go out into the desert like John the Baptist. We don’t have to paint amazing word pictures like the evangelist John to let our light shine. We have only to be the people God made us to be, children of God, children of the light, shining hope and justice and kindness and love through our daily lives.

What else can it be but the light of God shining when our congregations gather food and mittens and furniture and funds to help people in need? What else can it be but God’s light that shines through the music of our liturgy, the preaching of our pastor and the hospitality of all who welcome others and feed us in this place? It’s clearly God’s light that shines in advocacy for creation, for peace in our world, for shelter for the unhoused, for care for those who cannot care for themselves. And in our own homes and communities and workplaces and schools, we continue to be beacons of light when we practice kindness in our everyday encounters.

As we begin a new year in God’s grace, we pray for light in our world and light in our lives. We pray that the darkness we may have experienced in 2025 will be lightened and that the new year will be one of good health, joy and peace for each of us, for those we love, and for our world.

May God make it so. Amen

Dec 28 ~ 1st Sunday of Christmas / Where Have You Heard an Angel Speaking to You?

Isaiah 63:7-9  

Psalm 148  

Hebrews 2:10-18  

Matthew 2:13-23  

Sermon by Pastor Joel

A few weeks ago, I happened across a story I read, while preparing my sermons for Christmas. It was an experience shared by a reader in the New York Times, seeking advice. 

At a party, the writer observed a nasty exchange between two children, a 12-year-old boy and a younger girl, around 8. The boy had taunted the girl, who was Latina, saying, “You better pack your bags. Cause Donald Trump is going to send you home.” The girl in tears went to her mother, who confronted the hosts, who then asked their son. He denied that he had said anything. And with the classic he-said, she-said, nothing was resolved – the liar wasn’t chastised, and the victim’s voice went silent.

The reader explained, she said nothing. She didn’t intervene. She didn’t want to make a conflict between children into the centerpiece of a party. So she went home, having stayed silent, and yet wrestling with it enough that she wrote to a stranger to ask if she had done the right thing. (And let’s be honest: usually when we are asking that question, we are hoping to be absolved of our guilt.) 

So what would you have said? What would you have done?

This morning in our gospel, we hear the angels who came to deliver advice and warning to Joseph. The first angel appears to warn Joseph that Herod is looking for Jesus -  Mary and Joseph pick up and flee to safety, and barely escape Herod’s horrific atrocity – so fearful is he of Jesus, still a baby, that he orders the massacre of children. A second angel appears and tells Joseph to move again. And finally a third. The family finally lands in Nazareth where they stay. 

The angels that spoke to Joseph were not telling him anything he wanted to hear. The last thing I imagine he wanted to do was uproot his family – again – and take another trip to a strange place. All through the Bible, we are presented with examples of angels – serving as the bearer of news, usually the kind that unsettles the person receiving it, and forces them into action. The angels are the divine engines of the Christmas story: telling Mary how much life is about to change, urging Joseph to stand by her, pushing the shepherds out of their comfort zone. The angels are the voice that tells each of them to act when they might have stood waiting on the sidelines. They are the voice of challenge and change, neither of which are always comfortable or easy. They tell us to open our eyes and prepare for what is coming. 

We have gotten away from talking about angels. They are the pretty shape of ornaments. They appear on Christmas cards. But they somehow seem too fantastical, and maybe a little hokey for these modern times. We call people angels when they do good, when they act with kindness. But if somebody told you that they were hearing the voices of angels, you would probably tell them to see a doctor. 

But is it really true that you have never heard the voice of angel, a messenger of your faith speaking to you? Have you never heard a voice that said – Speak up! Or Wake up! Or Get up! I bet you have. I know I have.

Here is the part I left out of that writer’s story: She wrote in seeking advice five years ago. Five years - that’s before the pandemic. Before the lockdowns. Before the trade war. And yet, that letter could have been written exactly the same today. In the United States, the rhetoric and racism around immigration has worsened, become more dangerous, more violent: university students walking to class are being taken aggressively into custody, even Canadians are landing in detention. What did silence for the sake of momentary peace at parties, between neighors, in our advocacy for human rights change five years ago? We see for ourselves: it changed nothing. 

Have we even needed out better angels more than right now? Right-wing, anti-democracy rhetoric is only getting louder. Lies are presented as truth. The world feels thrust back to a time when racists could be outspoken, when tyrants rule the day, when honorable values of tolerance and justice are being erodes, when the good order - much of it created out of Judeo-Christian principles and ethics - seems to be collapsing into chaos. We could use a few angels to blast us with a trumpet or two and remind us to stay awake.

In the case of the advice-seeker, I went back and looked up the response. She was told, categorically, that she had failed herself, the children and society by staying silent. She has passed on her responsibility as a bystander, to stand by the victim, and to teach the bully. She was advised to call both sets of parents and report what she had seen, in the hope that reparations might follow. 

She was, in effect, chastised for not hearing the angel when she should have. At least, however, she was told, she could still hear the angel enough to have been bothered by her failure to act.

We will all end up in her situation someday; life is inevitably filled with these moments, where we bear witness to unkindness and injustice and must decide what to do about. Maybe, when that has happened, you heard your inner angel and acted. And maybe you chose to pretend you didn’t hear that better angel. Maybe you will act in the future. Maybe you won’t.

But our second lesson reminds us of the most important teaching of Christmas. Jesus didn’t come to earth to rub our nose in our failing. He wasn’t about final judgements, and he didn’t even spend a lot of time on sin – the church of history has done that work for him.

As we are reminded in our reading, Jesus came not to help angels, but to the descendants of Abraham. That is – us. “Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service to God.” 

Because Jesus was also tested, he can understand when we are tested. Jesus came to understand people by living among people, by hearing their complaints and concerns, and by experiencing those same complaints and concerns. 

asks that we see and listen to the little girl in the story, received the wound. But also see and listen to the little boy in the story, who wielded his words like weapons. And the to ask: how can we with our own actions and choices, fill the space between them with love and kindness and understanding so that they might cross? In this way, we are not only to listen to our inner angel, Jesus sets the example of listening to each other.

Wake up, angels said to Mary and the Shepherds and Joseph. Wake up, the angel says to us. 

Wake up so we can be kind when we need to be. So we can be strong when we have to be. Wake up so we can hear the voice of God. 

Amen

Dec 25 ~ Christmas Day/ The Word Becomes Flesh and Moves Into the Neighborhood

Isaiah 52:7-10

Psalm 98

Hebrews 1:1-12

John 1 :1-14

Sermon by Pastor Joel

Christmas morning has a particular kind of honesty to it. The rush has quieted. The candles have burned low. Some of us are full of joy; some of us are full of grief. Some of us are surrounded by family; some of us are missing people we love. Some of us are relieved we made it here at all. Christmas Day isn’t only a celebration -- it’s also a revealing. It shows us what we carry.

And that is why I’m grateful that the Church, in its wisdom, doesn’t give us only the sweet and simple story today. Yes, we sing about shepherds and angels. Yes, we remember a baby in a manger. But the Gospel appointed for Christmas Day often takes us deeper: not just what happened in Bethlehem, but also what it means for the whole world.

“In the beginning was the Word … and the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Not visited among us. Not hovered above us. Not tolerating us from a safe spiritual distance. Lived among us. Which means God does not love humanity in theory. God loves humanity in skin. God comes, not as a superhero who swoops in to fix everything without cost, but as a child—vulnerable, dependent, needing warmth and milk and someone to hold him when he cries. That is not an accident. That is the point.

Because the Christmas claim is not that God is strong where we are weak. It’s that God chooses to meet us in our weakness—so we can stop calling our tenderness “failure” and start recognizing it as holy ground.

If you have ever felt too small to matter, Christmas is for you. If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the world’s cruelty, Christmas is for you. If you have ever wondered whether your life—your ordinary, complicated, imperfect life—could possibly be a place where God shows up … Christmas is for you.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness immediately disappears.” Christianity is not denial. The Gospel does not gaslight us. There is still war. There is still poverty. There is still heartbreak. There are still lonely people on Christmas morning. There are still systems that chew people up. There are still bodies that hurt and minds that struggle. There are still families carrying fractures that no amount of tinsel can hide. But the promise is this: that darkness does not get the last word.

On Christmas Day, God doesn’t give us an explanation for suffering. God gives us presence within it. And that presence changes things—not always in a loud way, not always in the way we want, but in a way that is real. Because when God becomes flesh, God declares that we matter. That the material world matters. That food and shelter matter. That dignity matters. That the safety of children matters. That the lives of migrants and refugees matter. That Indigenous lives matter. That Black lives matter. That trans lives matter. That people who have been pushed to the margins of religion and society are not a problem to solve—they are beloved.

This is not a political add-on to the Gospel. This is the Gospel: The Word becomes flesh and moves into the neighborhood. And if God moves into the neighborhood, then faith can’t be a private hobby. It can’t be only an interior feeling. It becomes a public way of living—an insistence that our neighbors deserve what God has always wanted for God’s people: daily bread, safety, belonging, and a future.

That’s why the angels don’t sing to emperors. They sing to shepherds. That’s why the good news comes first to people working the night shift. That’s why the holy family is not sheltered in comfort but placed, from the beginning, among the precarious. Jesus is born into an occupied land, under a violent empire, into a family that will soon be displaced. Which means: if you are looking for God, you don’t have to climb up to heaven. Look in the places where people are trying to survive. Look where someone with tired arms is holding a newborn. Look where someone is making a meal stretch. Look where someone is grieving. Look where someone is choosing compassion when cynicism would be easier. That’s where God is.

And then John says something almost unbelievable: “To all who received him … he gave the power to become children of God.” Not “the perfect.” Not “the certain.” Not “the ones who never doubt.” To all who received him. Which means that the Christmas invitation is not: “Get your life together and then you can belong.”

It is: “You belong—so come home.”

Christmas is God saying, in the clearest language God knows: “I am with you. I am for you. I am not giving up on you.”

So, what do we do with this? We do what Lutherans do: we let grace come first. We stop treating ourselves like a project God is reluctantly managing. We stop treating other people like problems to be fixed. We stop confusing God with the voice of shame. And we practice in a different way.

Today, maybe the most faithful thing you can do is small: Make room at your table for someone who might otherwise be alone. Text the person you’ve avoided because you don’t know what to say. Offer forgiveness—if it’s safe, and if it’s yours to offer. Give generously to a shelter, a food program, a refugee sponsor group, a harm-reduction ministry. Speak up when someone is demeaned. Rest—because you are not God, and the world’s healing is not all on your shoulders. Let your life be a little more tender, because God has dared to be tender with us.

Because here is the miracle of Christmas: God does not wait for the world to become worthy. God enters it and begins to make it new from the inside out. The Word became flesh. And the light still shines. Not as an escape from the world, but as hope within it. Not as proof that everything is easy, but as promise that love is stronger. Not as a sentimental story, but as a holy expression of grace.

Glory to God in the highest—and on earth, peace. Peace that is more than a feeling. Peace that looks like justice and welcome and real connection with God. Peace that looks like enough. On Christmas morning, God has moved in. Amen