God completely With Us

  

Luke 2:1-20

Would it be utterly tactless to admit on Christmas Eve that I am a teensy bit sick of Christmas? For the past month the soundtrack in our house, and car, and on vacation, and during dinner, has been Christmas classics. And while Bing and Ella and Frank and Mariah and are great, there’s a point when it all turns stale. 

 

And because Christmas classics are playing all the time, we’ve naturally had many conversations picking apart the origins and meaning of everything from the culturally shifting read of “Baby, it’s cold outside,” to the weirdly morbid lyrics of “Frosty the Snowman,” to the sketchy relationship dynamics in “last Christmas I gave you my heart but the very next day you gave it away” to the debatably patronizing misunderstanding in “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus.”  Interspersed among these empty, sugary treats are the delicious and filling songs we’re singing here tonight, telling a story of mystery and wonder, of love and joy. But it’s all mixed up together, the deep and the stupid, and it’s relentless. 

 

But I am not here to rail against the commercialization of Christmas, which I happily join in every year. Instead, I want to invite us into that story of mystery and wonder by being here in the presence of God and each other.

 

The truth is, I am not really sick of Christmas, so much as I am craving to know the truth of it, to feel the real of it, to be drawn back to the hope of it. I want to peel back the shiny paper and see Christmas for what it is, not a dreamy, cheery, fix-everything event that makes us feel all warm and cozy and ends all strife and strain. 

 

The birth of Christ is untidy and uncomfortable, and at least here, tonight, we need not pretend it’s anything else. The actual Christmas moment is just like the rest of life: it’s awkward and messy, tiring and scary, a little exciting, a little confusing.  

 

And that’s how God wanted it. God wanted to be human, so God came human -  vulnerable, needy, loveable and infuriating – to humans, into the arms of ordinary, conflicted people struggling to do the right thing and wondering even what that is.  

 

God trusted ordinary people to welcome him in and care for him like one of our own. Love came in to be loved. This is the beginning of the story of Jesus Christ, and it’s the new beginning for the whole earth and everyone in it.   

 

God chooses to be with us, as we are, in this life, as it is.  And so this Christmas, like every day, our sadness is as welcome as our happiness, our anger is a gift that points us to truth, and no matter what we do, even when we lose sight of what’s real and bury it in layers of false cheer, even when we hurt others or ourselves, even when we’re drowning in regret, desperate for forgiveness, or numb with fatigue, nothing can separate us from the love of God, who heals what’s sick and mends what’s broken and welcomes home what’s lost.  

 

This little baby Jesus will die, that guaranteed when he draws his first human breath and cries his first tiny tear. God takes all suffering and death into God’s own self. Addiction, estrangement, illness, pain, injustice, cruelty and loneliness, there is nothing God does not bear with us, nothing can be greater than divine love coming in. The cross is there, in the manger. So is the empty tomb, so that, even now as we celebrate his birth, we can say with confidence, No death, no matter how big or small, gets to define who we are, or decide where all this is going. In Christ Jesus, we are forgiven, connected and made whole. You and I, the earth and everything in it, this whole story from beginning to end, belongs to God. 

 

No wonder the angels busted the sky open with joy, and the shepherds’ fervent words caused awe and amazement in all who heard them, and Mary eternally ponders these things in her heart.  

 

God took on flesh and God crept in beside us. Suddenly the ordinary is miraculous. This human living, astonishing. Every breath we take, a gift.  Bodies that grow, and learn, and smell, and taste, and sweat, and break down and need tending, minds that solve complex problems, imaginations that conceive breathtaking art, hearts that discover little ways to make each other laugh, and uncover just what will comfort another, all of it, miraculous. All things God is utterly delighted by. All things God wanted to know from the inside. 

 

Christmas invites us to be present, then.  Not to have answers, or have it all together, or to be cheerful or even introspective. Simply to receive the presence of God, right here, in these ordinary, miraculous lives we’re given, and to receive these lives too, with all our limitations and misdirections and all our mystery and wonder, love and joy, our beloved, holy, ordinary lives as conflicted people struggling to do the right thing and wondering even what that is, called to be here in this gorgeous world God is always making new.

 

And honestly, God loves us so much, I think God probably finds it cute when we make such a big, fancy, obnoxious to-do out of stuff, inevitably mixing up together the deep and the stupid,even so much that we sometimes lose sight of the treasure underneath. No matter, because when this turbo-charged season ends we remain forever inside the story of Christmas, of God-with-us nevertheless, fully, always leading everything eternally toward life and love.  

 

Amen.

Merry Christmas: God is here!

 

May your day be filled with joy and connection.

Reflection on the Christmas Story, Luke 2:1-20, 

from Rev. Kara Root and Rev Lisa Larges, shared on Christmas Eve, 2021.

Luke 2:1-7                                                                                          

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

A first century Middle Eastern home design show would be big on the open concept.  House hunters would follow a large family with their animals, looking for a place for them all to be comfortable.  The homes they would visit would all be variations on the same theme: a split level with two entrances.  It would consist of one large room, where all the life happens, with a portion of the room several feet lower than the rest, and a small set of stairs going down to it. This portion would be open to the outdoors, because of course they would want their animals to be able to comfortably crowd into it at night to bed down safely next to the family.  

 

The savvy designers of these homes ensured there was a classic manger – a dugout feeding trough in the floor of the main room near the edge where the floor dropped lower, so that a hungry cow could easily reach forward and eat.  

Then, because hospitality was so central and important, on many of these homes a guest room was built on the roof or the side of the house. The word Luke uses in our text that we’ve translated as “inn” is not the word Luke for inn later on. It’s the word meaning guest room.  Perhaps the house hunters would find or build such a home, and our show would end with the family happily settled into life in their new digs in Bethlehem.

 

A few months or years later, Mary and Joseph came to the small town of Joseph’s ancestral family.  While they were staying there in this very home, the time came for Mary to deliver her baby. Elizabeth and Zechariah did not live not far, and since Luke begins the whole story of Jesus with them, it’s not unlikely that they came too, baby John strapped to Elizabeth’s chest, to be for Mary and Joseph what Mary had been for Elizabeth in her own time. 

There was no place for them in the guest room, we’re told, or perhaps our family had selected a home that did not yet have a guest room, so right in the center of the home, Mary labored and birthed her baby and laid him in the manger.  The animals looked on.  The women of the village, the midwives and the aunties, assisted with the birth.  

 

Not apart but alongside, not beyond but within, right into the center of a world in upheaval, right into the center of a crowded room, in a peasant home teaming with life, into a neighborhood rallying to the needs of a birthing mom and an anxious dad, fetching water, offering food, neighbors clapping shoulders, sharing joy, strangers lifting voices in thanksgiving for the baby’s safe arrival, the Lord of the universe entered into this world: Jesus Christ was born.

Entering a world already in motion, interrupting narratives already unfolding, just like every child born in every time, God came in.  

 

Luke wants us to see this:, Into a hungry world comes the Bread of Life, his first bed a feeding trough. Into the chaos, with no privacy from other humans or animals, and no capacity to be treated as an honored guest, comes the Word through whom God speaks into being all order and design, life and light, animals and humans alike. 

And into a corrupt system that takes advantage of the poor, under a government that wields power personal gain, comes the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, ushering in a different kind of kingdom. An empire of kindness and belonging, justice and equity, love and forgiveness, and power through sacrifice.  And he shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.

 

Instead of turning the Almighty face away from our hunger; Jesus becomes for us the bread of life. Instead of recoiling at our dread, Jesus says Fear not, I will be with you. Instead of shunning us in our arrogance and ignorance, abandoning us to our violence and hardheartedness, God comes to us in humility and weakness, a helpless baby, needing us to show up for him and take care of him, knowing all the while we would then betray and kill him, and coming all the same.  

Instead of concocting a way for a few very good people to escape dying, God came to die alongside, with and for us all, to end the power of death over us, and give us Christ’s life of unbreakable belonging to God and each other as our own life.  

In our chaotic, unprepared, unwelcoming, unsuspecting and unjust world, God’s home is with us, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our circumstances, whatever they may be. God makes our ordinary holy; God makes our everyday sacred.  Because the first and final word is love. And by the power of God’s love this world is being redeemed. Our lives are being redeemed.                                     

 

- Pastor Kara

 

             

Luke 2:8-14                                                                                        

8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 

¹⁴ ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,

   and on earth peace among humans, whom God delights in!’

 

There’s a layer of earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere. The ionosphere, for a certain little slice of human history, connected late-night romanticists and restless spirits with faraway places.

Back when radio was a thing, for the news or the weather, or the baseball game, or the latest top forty hits, or for companionship on a long road trip, there was the radio. There was FM, with its clear signal; but before FM, and then alongside it, there was AM

At night, some of the less powerful AM stations would go off the air, and a handful of bigger stations with more powerful signals would own the airwaves. After the sun went down, AM radio waves would behave differently up there in the ionosphere. They would get bounced around, and returned to earth, and be scattered far beyond their normal daytime range. And so you could, and still can, sit up late at night, and with patience and focus, slowly, incrementally, turn the tuning knob  on the AM band of any old radio. Maybe you’ll get Detroit, or Denver, or Madison. You’ll hear late night preachers, and sports talk radio, and late-night callers with their theories of how everything works. The signal, bouncing around up there in the ionosphere, will be clear for a while, and then fuzzy, and then go away altogether; but you can twist the radio dial a little to the left or a little to the right, and maybe you’ll get that station back again, or maybe another, from another town not close to here.

Shepherds, on a night that was no different than a thousand nights before or a thousand nights to follow, got tuned in to a cosmic frequency. The music of the universe, which hums at a frequency just beyond human hearing, was suddenly audible to them. The cosmic glory, which continues in a range beyond human seeing was suddenly visible to them.

God’s love and human love collided on the earth, and the realm of grace and glory was especially electric that night. It danced in the skies. It hummed and reverberated, until at last it connected. It broke through on a patch of open land on a hillside, where sheep were gathered, and shepherds watching.

Why shepherds? Was it because they were awake and watching, alert, as a habit of the work, to any anomaly? Did their work of caring and tending predispose them to the announcement of newborn love? Were they lonely out there, and did that cosmic song come as a salve to their spirits?

However it was, the song of the universe, with news of God-with-us, came to shepherds, in the middle of an ordinary night. And the signal was so strong, so clear, so persistent, that not only could they feel it, but they could hear it, and not only could they hear it, but they could see it, and not only could they see and hear it, but they understood it, and not only did they understand, but when at last the signal faded, they got up, and went searching for that source of love.

Here we are this night. And there is music in the air.

The song of the universe is singing for you. Not just here, not just this night, but always. The song of the universe sings around you.

One day, you, and I, and everyone else in this room and with us across the invisible spaces, every one of us will be taken up into that cosmic song. We will return to the song, be enfolded by it. The ground of our being is love. We have come from love, and to that love we will return.

And here, in this life, maybe, not unlike the shepherds, a few times in our life we might actually hear the song. Maybe you have heard it? Maybe there’s been that moment when the joy was so strong in you, or love was so powerful, or your very own deep longing welled up from the core of your core and suddenly you were palpably connected to a signal – a field force – a shimmering – an awareness of love and grace that is the music of the spheres.

Sometimes, some of us are just that lucky – lucky like the shepherds, to hear the music. But whether or not we ever hear it – whether or not it ever breaks through and sings in glory around us – that music, that song of love is still there. It holds us. It renews our hearts for love. It gives us strength. It is always and forever singing the good news: God is with us. God is here.

 

- Pastor Lisa

 

 

Luke 2:15-20                                                                                    

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ ¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

    

                                                                                                               

In our rotation of holiday music the other day, while I was baking cookies, Go Tell It On the Mountain began to play.  Maisy said, “This isn’t a Christmas song!” and I assured her that, indeed, it was, and we paid attention to the verses, which turn out to be about the angels telling the shepherds and the shepherds telling too.  

Having been drawn into the cosmic celebration, inducted by a stunning angelic pronouncement into the growing collection of humans in on this world-changing scheme of the Divine, the shepherds rushed to share in the reality alongside those who were also experiencing it.  Just like Mary did when she went with haste to find Elizabeth and Zechariah. 

 

This is a truth that must be shared, a mystery to be treasured and pondered in our hearts, a reality to join in, a message to be told (Go tell it)

on the mountain, over hills and everywhere: 

The trajectory of the universe is shifted, 

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

Because

In our dark streets shineth the everlasting light,

a light that no darkness can put out! 

The hopes and fears of all the years are met 

tonight in God-with-us,

and in his name all oppression shall cease.

God crept in beside us, 

and the soul felt its worth.

Love is born! Come share in the wonder,

Love is God now asleep in the hay.

Love is Jesus within and among us

Love is the peace our hearts are seeking.

 

So

come let us adore him!

 

So the breathless shepherds go! And they find the baby swaddled tightly in a manger, in a regular peasant home not unlike their own, his tiny black lashes resting on his soft brown cheeks as he sleeps, reminding them of their own grandsons, their own sons.  And they excitedly share what the angels told them about this child.  And all those who hear - Mary and Joseph, all those neighbors celebrating in the yard, and our proud little host family, in whose living room this miracle took place, and by whom visiting hours are graciously extended as the wee hours of the morning begin to break around them all – they were all amazed at what the shepherds told them.  And Mary treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. 

 

And just as their message changed all those who heard it, the shepherds went away changed too. They were transformed by the experience and also by the sharing of it. Altered by both the supernatural encounter with the music of the cosmos, and by the sight and smell of the baby in the feeding trough. 

Beyond the bounds of daily routine and rhythm, even beyond time and space and life and death, the shepherds eyes were lifted to a further horizon. 

By witnessing heaven leaking into earth and earth invaded by heaven, angels and strangers and God-with-us sharing in this extraordinary ordinary event together, 

their awareness was opened to the vast interconnectedness of all things. 

In praise and gratitude for all they had seen and heard, 

their hearts were turned toward God. 

 

God comes in.  Nothing stops God, nothing deters God, nothing hinders God from coming in.  God’s love and salvation are for the whole world.  

Not a perfect world, this world. Not ideal lives, these lives. 

Right now, in the midst of every single thing happening on the earth, every life, every death, every moment of joyous celebration, every cry of devastating loss, 

any and all chaos and upheaval, 

into weariness and despair, 

corruption and violence, beauty and simplicity, 

in all of it, 

God is with us. 

We are every day invited to join in the world-changing schemes of the Divine.  Because the first and final word is love. And by the power of God’s love this world is being redeemed.

 

So tonight we turn our hearts toward God, and we lift our eyes to a further horizon. Tonight our awareness is opened to the interconnectedness of all, and we are too drawn into the cosmic celebration. Christ has come.  

Glory to God in the highest heaven! And peace on earth, good will to all!

- Pastor Kara

Right Into the Middle of It All

LNPC Christmas Eve 2012

Luke 2:1-20

I need to hear the Christmas story this year, to remember that God crept in beside us, that this world is shot through with love and hope. I’m craving the good news of great joy for all the people.

But there’s a line in the Christmas story that has always bothered me.  It’s when the choir of angels sing, “On earth peace among those whom he favors” – it’s also been said, “Peace on earth to men of good will,” or “peace on earth to those who please God.”  

 

Of course, we human beings are divisive and exclusionary, it’s sin’s hold on us, the way of fear that has us always competing and comparing, always striving to be good enough, and deciding who isn’t good enough. So translating it this way fits our distorted projection of who God is and what God must be up to.  

 

But it doesn’t fit what we know about the Kingdom of God, and who God really is and what God is really up to in the world, particularly at Christmas, when God comes into this life to save us.  And I’ve learned over the years that wherever we make the message of Jesus Christ narrow and obstructive we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and it’s worth retracing our steps.  

 

So, I did some digging into the Greek this week. And it turns out that the word “favors” means pleased in, delighted by. It’s the same word God speaks over Jesus at his baptism; This is my beloved child, in whom I am deeply pleased.

So when those ecstatic angels who cannot contain themselves blast their joy into the faces of the terrified shepherds, they are singing, Glory to God in the highest heavens! And on earth, peace to the humans, in whom God is utterly delighted! Y’all humans are God’s favorite! Glory to God and bottomless connection between God’s very own beloved children!

 

God is so utterly committed to us that God came right in with us to share it all, so that we might never again be separated by death, so that the end of this story is decided once and for all.  Christ has come to free us all from the bondage, judgment and suffering we inflict on ourselves and others, and bring us into peace.  God’s peace is not just for a few, for those who earn it or deserve it or claim it.  God has come for whole earth, and every person here belongs to God and to the rest of us. There is no pain or suffering of a single one of God’s beloved human beings any place on this wide planet that God is not intimately bearing with and tending to. There is no human joy that God is not celebrating.  

 

Each of our lives get to be part of glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth, our lives get to be for peace between all beloved human beings on this whole wide earth. God is doing this, it has begun and will continue until it is complete.  

 

Right now everything feels hard, we’re weary and strained, the future is unclear, the present is not simple, the world is aching, and life and death are close to the surface. So what better time is there to tell each other again about God coming in as a tiny, vulnerable human baby, born incognito, in the middle of unfortunately-timed road trip, to a teenage girl and the man who agreed to be the child's daddy? 

These two beloved, overwhelmed humans were living in the midst of great unknown and upheaval, making do with whatever they had, and welcoming God into the world, right into the middle of it all.  

Beloved human, God is utterly smitten with you, and with every person on this planet.  And God is here with us all. So we will tell each other the story again, and welcome God into the world, right into the middle of it all.  

May you go into your Christmas, whatever it looks like and whatever it holds, with your heart open to whatever cocktail of joy and grief, love and disappointment, hope and longing may be bubbling within you tonight. God comes in to be with you just as you are, and to bring us all peace. 

Christ has come; the world belongs to God.  Christ is here; we are not alone.  Christ is coming; the future is God’s.

Amen.

 

How the revolution comes

CHRISTMAS EVE: Grace Embodied, Part 5. (Go here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

John 1:1-5

Luke 2:1-20

There’s an old Jewish saying, “God couldn’t be everywhere, so God created mothers.”   I’m sure some of our mothers would balk at this while others might embrace it.  But it touches on something that is true, which is, we can’t experience love without someone to love us and someone to love.  And God, who is a relationship of love, came into this world as a human baby, to be loved by a human mother.

 When Mary said yes to the angel, this was scary and exciting and real and also little bit hypothetical. Sharing it with Elizabeth and Zechariah made it more real – joy needs to be shared. Remember how they all had a turn announcing the good news? 

It was cosmic good news – tyrants pulled from thrones, poor lifted up and rich sent away, ancient promises fulfilled, a mighty savior rescuing from enemies, a kingdom without end, light to all those in darkness, and guiding us into peace.  Heady stuff. Grand and marvelous stuff.  This is where her head was then.

And this is where the shepherds who come bursting into their little scene are too.  Their celestial vocalists gave them the vast view- Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace!  

She remembers this view. She was on board with this plan.

But now she is holding this tiny infant, her son. Now she is not the servant of the Lord joining in God’s plan for us all, she is this one baby’s mother. She has fed him from her body, she has stroked his soft cheek and looked into his eyes that look like her own mother’s eyes.  

And she loves him. Now she loves him. Now love has pulled her into this thing so deeply that she’s in over her head in love. She is inside the Trinity; between the Father and the Son stands only her.  And to know such love, to feel herself lost to such love, changes everything.  She didn’t know.  How could she know?  That she would want nothing more in the world than to protect this little one from pain and suffering? 

Just moments before, the transformation was complete that took her from enthusiastic teenager, swept up in the excitement of this cosmic revolution, to fierce mother, willing to do anything to protect her son from the darkness.

Only, he’s here to go into the darkness. He’s here to go right toward the pain and the suffering and bear it for us all. That is why he has come. And she agreed to this. She agreed but maybe didn’t know what it would mean, or chose not to think about that in these first maternal moments.

Until the shepherds remind her.  Until the little family’s reverie is shattered by their boisterous excitement with a clear message.  He’s for us all. He’s here to turn the world on end. He IS the light that no darkness can put out! 

God’s whole plan is so ludicrous. So dependent on weak people who are swayed by emotion, to follow through and do their part.  God’s whole plan is so ingenious, so dependent on people born from love and returning to love, to come back to love and participate in the salvation of all creation through love.  

Mary ponders these things. She treasures the words of the eager shepherds, who sound like how she felt not too long ago. She believes in this hope, with all her heart she did. Now her heart belongs to this baby.

They all thought God would come in with power and might, through strength and force. But God came with love.  Through love.  Weak and vulnerable, needy and dependent, tiny and helpless, and bound heart and soul to his mother. God came into the love of a mother for her baby. 

This is what the angels sing about. This is what we misunderstand. 

This is how the revolution comes.  In hidden and gentle ways and very tangible ways.  

There is nothing stronger than this.  No army can defeat a mother’s love for her child. No technology or weapon is stronger than the bond between true friends.  There is no Tsunami or demagogue or suffering of any kind that can stop love.  All over the world, through next door neighbors, and kindergarten teachers, and great uncles and little sisters, and strangers reaching out to help each other, the transformative power of love leaks between the cracks and spills over the edges and rises up between us with healing and tenderness, and even in the midst of terrible bondage, it sets us free.  Anyone who has lost a loved one can tell you not even death itself ends love. 

While nations rage and powers shake, in every place at every moment, love is breaking through, people are sitting with one another in their suffering, celebrating with each other in joy, listening, seeing, sacrificing, embracing, joining God right where God already is. God’s love is embodied. 

We are part of that love. This is God’s way.  This is how God came.  

God loves us beyond measure or comprehension. From love we came and to love we will return. Darkness doesn’t stand a chance.

This doesn’t make it feel any less like darkness.  But in that darkness, the light shines.  Because into that darkness God comes.

The carols we sing tonight are mostly triumphant and hopeful; they’re the infectious joy of the shepherds like new grandparents in the grocery line, telling all who will listen about the cosmic good news and how God is redeeming the world.  Tonight we are singing with the angels the hopeful big picture part of the story. And that part is real and true.

But how this happens in the world, and how it is real and true in our lives, is more often the small, close-up picture that’s messier, deeper and often hidden.   It’s in all the small acts of giving and receiving of love, the daily losing and the finding of ourselves, the coming in alongside someone like God did with us, it's how God does with us.  It’s when we’re pulled in over our head to something that doesn’t make sense, but is more real than everything else, a belonging to eternity and to other people, to ourselves, and to God.

It mostly feels more like the wordless part of the story, fit for treasuring and pondering but hard to put into words because it begins before words exist.  

God’s heart belongs to us. 
God came into this life to love and be loved. 
Our hearts belong to God. We exist to love and be loved.  
This is the light that no darkness can extinguish. 

May it shine through us.

Amen.

Great Joy! (aka, Do not be afraid!)

Isaiah 9;2,6-7

Luke 2:1-20

Do not be afraid. That is the most often used phrase in the bible. Fear not! It’s what angels say every time they come to tell someone what God is up to. It’s what God tells the prophets, and tells the prophets to tell the people; it’s what Jesus says to his disciples, Don’t be afraid!

I suspect it’s the thing most often said when heaven meets earth because here on earth, it’s the thing we most need to hear.

From a human vantage point, there is a lot to fear—a lot that feels big, and scary. The world feels shaky and distressing right now.  Globally. Politically. Socially. Economically. Geo-thermally.  And that doesn’t even begin to touch the anxiety about what happens inside our own bodies, minds, hearts or homes.  Everywhere you look, it seems, there is something we could be afraid of.

And if we wanted to give in to the fear, it’s easy to do - it’s right here, tapping us on the shoulder, ready to whisper an ominous “boo” in our faces; and right now there are plenty of folks letting it in the door, pulling out a chair for it at the table, handing it the mic. 

And yet, whenever God breaks in, whenever the story of God is told in human language, the very first, and most frequent, words are, Do not be afraid!

We gather here tonight to hear again the story of God with us.  And it’s so human and haphazard, so messy and joyful, so irrational and unreasonable, it doesn’t seem like it would be a effective weapon against big, scary fear at all.

And yet, it turns out that this is the most formidable force of all. It turns out that hope, love and light joyfully and stubbornly refuse to let the darkness prevail.  God sees our scary darkness and raises us a baby, a poor, homeless, baby, born in an awkward pit stop on the road, to rookie parents in an ominous political time. From a human point of view, this is a ridiculously vulnerable and doubtful way to take on death and fear. And yet, this is how God puts his money where his mouth is on the whole Do not be afraid thing. God comes. As one of us – right into the mess of it. Right into the darkness. The fear. The shakiness and unknown.  Not to rescue us out, but to share this life with us.

God says, I will go there with you. I will bear it for you. You are not alone. Fear and darkness will not triumph. Love is the deepest reality and the final word. And here I am in person to bring it into being.

Do not be afraid! The angel tells a random bunch of baffled, ordinary shepherds. For see? I am bringing you good news of great joy! For all the people!  God is with us!  God is right here!

This week has been hard for me. The sadness, and the fear, have felt close by.  But there is something we’ve learned here together, and we keep on learning it, and at this point, I would bet everything I have and my very life on it, and it’s this:

When we stop, God meets us.

God is already here. Waiting for us to arrive in our own lives.

To pause the CNN stream with the reporter’s mouth wide open, to silence the ring and shut off the computer. To look up at the life you are in right now, the people you love right now.  To take a deep breath into your body and feel it reach all the way inside, and feel the whole entire exhale too.

God is here right now. That is never not true. 

And yesterday, right when I needed to hear it most, someone said to me:

You know what? When you look closer at fear, it diminishes. And when you look closer at hope, it increases! 

I want to look at closer at hope. I want us to watch for hope and dwell in love and let gratitude be where we make our home. I want joy to define us- irrepressible, in the midst of, nevertheless joy.  I want us to help each other remember.  To tell each other the truth.

So, sisters and brothers, here is the truth:

Horrible things happen.  There is more evil and pain and suffering than we can humanly bear.  And God sees and holds it all.  More than we ever could.

But there is also more love and peace and joy than we can even begin to fathom. And it’s everywhere. All the time. Even in the darkness and the suffering. It’s the fabric of reality, and the future toward which this whole thing is heading –the light has come, it’s permeating the whole world.

God is with us. This is the most true thing of all.

And despite having wireless, instant access to every piece of information, news story, and competing opinion about every troubling thing happening everywhere in any moment, as a human, mortal person, we are not supposed to bear the weight of all the hard and heavy things in all the world.

We are each called to live fully and joyfully this one, precious, life we’ve been given, to live in the light and let the light live through us.

Because the promise of Christmas is that God has come. In the flesh. God is here right now.  God’s light is breaking in, shining through, every place on earth, through ordinary people joining their simple, vulnerable, messy lives with the love of God-with-us, love that never stops coming in spite of, and into, everything. 

And we can actually see the God who came to be human alongside us, when we are human alongside each other.  We meet the Jesus who shares this life with us, when we share life with each other. When we carry each other’s sorrow and welcome each other’s joy, we encounter God with us, Jesus Christ, here, actually, tangibly, right now.

And so in simple, vulnerable, messy, and ordinary ways – paradoxically powerful ways like tears and laughter, hugs and arguments, listening, learning, and loving, grieving and giving, we are joyfully, defiantly, living toward the future when all fear will fade away and only love will remain. 

The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. 

We are some of those people, you guys. That’s us.

So, beloved ones, Do not be afraid.  I am bringing you good news of great joy! For all the people! God is with us!  God is right here!

Let us rejoice!

Amen.