Epiphany + 3 - January 22, 2012 - Taking the Message on the Move

Taking the Message on the Move

Mark 1:14-20

Epiphany + 3 – January 22, 2012

Why are you here this morning? Really, I'd love to know what made you get up out of your warm, cozy bed on this cold winter day and decide to come to church? What is it about this place that caused you to get dressed and leave your house and the morning newspaper or the Sunday morning TV shows or that extra cup of coffee or whatever you love about lazy days at home and come to worship? What is it that you find here – or that you hope to find here – that you can't find anywhere else?

I ask this question honestly, because there's been a lot of talk around St. John's lately about our congregation and where God is leading us and our desire to grow, to reach out to our community and welcome new people in to this community of faith. And we talk, in committees, and in council, and in various small groups, about the ways that we can spread the word about what is going on in this place. We have lots of tools that we use – we send mini press releases to the Herald and to Newsday and the hyper-local news site, the Patch. We're on Facebook and on Twitter, sporadically, anyway. We have a frequently updated website, and a brand-new sign out in the triangle. We've talked about other ways of “advertising” - whether it's actual ads in the papers or direct mail campaigns or whatever other tools might be out there.

We've worked on some internal things too. A few years back we put up signs all throughout the church building to direct people to worship or Sunday School or the offices or the bathrooms. We try to make our worship experience user-friendly & less confusing with all of our page turns, so that when people are brave enough to come here for the first time, they feel welcome, at ease, at home.
But what all of these things have in common is that they assume that people will come here on their own, that they'll all of a sudden wake-up on a Sunday morning and break from their routine, overcome their anxiety about going to church for the first time in a long time or ever, and come to worship with us. We assume that church is the place people will come when they have questions about God or want to encounter God. The burden of the first step is on them.

We act like John the Baptizer did. We've heard his story a few times since Advent, about his ministry of repentance and baptism out in the wilderness. And what John did was stay in one place and wait for people to come to him. And for a while that worked. People did come flocking to see him, but today we pick up that story a little bit further down the road, and we see that John's time is ended. “The present form of this world is passing away,” as Paul puts it in 1st Corinthians. The old ways don't work anymore.

And so Jesus burst on the scene with a similar message, but a new method. Jesus takes his message on the move. These next few weeks in church, we'll follow Jesus through the first chapter of Mark, and what we'll find is that Jesus never sits still for very long. Jesus takes his show on the road, first here, as he is passing along the sea of Galilee and sees first Simon Peter and Andrew and then James and John fishing and calls them to follow him and fish for people, and then the story will continue with Jesus coming and going, cleansing lepers, healing people, all the while preaching and teaching and living what it looks like when God's kingdom, God's reign, God's rule is on the loose in our world. And it's true that people come to seek him out wherever he is, but Jesus never stays in one place for very long. He comes to worship at the synagogue every week, and then he's right back out there in the world, meeting people where they are, seeing what they need, inviting them to repent, to reverse the way their lives are going and re-orient themselves to what God is doing in the world, calling them to be a part of something new, something the world has never seen before.

That's what this call to Simon and Andrew and James and John is all about... a chance to learn from Jesus and then to partner with him in spreading this good news about what God is up to in the world – a call to share this experience of Jesus with everyone they meet. And in typical Mark fashion, the gospel doesn't tell us what their motivation was for following Jesus. He doesn't give us any back story as to why they would literally drop everything and immediately follow Jesus. I don't think that's because he was running out of paper or trying to meet a deadline. It's his very clever way of getting his audience – US – to put ourselves into the story. To get us wondering what about Jesus would make them do that – and then to answer that question for ourselves.

Which brings us back to where I started this morning. Why are you here? You probably didn't have to leave everything behind to follow Jesus, but somewhere along the line, you heard him say, “Follow me,” and in ways big and small, that's what you've been trying to do ever since, in fits and spurts, with times of great progress and your fair share of setbacks too. I'll let you in on a little secret – the disciples did the exact same thing, especially the way Mark's gospel tells the story! But even with all of their missteps and misunderstandings, the important thing is, they jumped into this movement with both feet. They followed Jesus, learning how to take his message on the move.

And that what Jesus is calling us to do – to stop waiting around, expecting people to come to us, safe inside our beautiful little building – and instead to get out there, beyond these walls, into our homes and at our jobs and with our neighbors and friends, to be willing and able to say, “God's at work in the world and in my life and this is how – and God wants to be a part of your life too!” Not in a pushy, obnoxious way, but as an invitation to reorient their lives to God's life, to find meaning in God's way of being in the world, to let them in on whatever it is that has changed your life and made you want to follow Jesus. Because that's what Jesus calls us to do – and all of the newspaper articles and websites and signs in the world can't replace the personal invitation that can only come from you. I know it's not easy. I know it makes us nervous. But Jesus calls us to be fishers for people, and we can't do that if we never get out on the water. May Jesus open our eyes to the people all around us who are hungry to know God's love – and then make us bold to share the good news!
Amen.

January 15, 2012 - Epiphany + 2 - You Will See Greater Things than These!

“You Will See Greater Things than These!”

John 1:43-51

Epiphany + 2 – January 15, 2012

Lucy wasn't expecting anything unusual to happen on that rainy, dreary day. She and her siblings had recently arrived at the Professor's house, their temporary home during the war, and since they couldn't go outside to play, they decided to explore the big old house. In one room, there was an old wardrobe, and while Peter and Susan and Edmund didn't see anything there worth looking at, Lucy decided to look inside. When she found the fur coats, she couldn't resist! She got into the wardrobe to touch and feel the coats, going further back, through the 1st row to the second behind it, until much to her surprise, Lucy found herself no longer in the wardrobe, but in the middle of the woods, with snow falling all around her.

Lucy was surprised of course, and a little afraid, but she was drawn into this strange place, wanting to know more, wanting to explore, and so she did. She was gone quite a while, and had tea with Mr. Tumnus the fawn, but eventually, had to go home. She retraced her steps, and tumbled out of the wardrobe, shouting to her brothers and sister that she was okay, “It's all right, I've come back!”

Of course, if you know the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you know that back in Lucy's world, our world, mere seconds had passed, and her family hadn't even realized she was missing. The story of what she has seen and experienced spills out of her, but they are skeptical. They don't believe her, thinking she's just making up stories to entertain herself. No, Lucy protests, “It's a magic wardrobe. There's a wood inside it, and it's snowing, and there's a Faun and a witch and it's called Narnia; come and see!”

And even in their disbelief, Lucy is so excited, so convincing, that they all follow her back to the room, flinging open the doors to see this new world. Except they don't see it. Nothing is there but old fur coats that smell like moth-balls, the back of the wardrobe as plain as day. Lucy is crushed. Rejected. All she wanted to do was share this amazing thing she has seen, but they don't have her same experience. Peter and Susan and Edmund wonder what all the fuss was about.

Isn't that what we are afraid of? That we, who have seen this new thing, who have encountered a world beyond this one, who have a sense of something bigger than we are, who have encountered God in that strange place, may tumble back into our normal, everyday lives and run to tell our family and friends of this experience that has changed us and the way we see the world, that we will say “Come and see,” and race ahead, dragging them along behind us and throw open the doors, climbing into the wardrobe where we have found God and hope and faith, and they will get there, and see
NOTHING.

That they will reach into the wardrobe and find nothing but old fur coats and fancy clothes, bumping into the solid wall that is the back of the wardrobe. That they will dismiss us or scoff at us or reject us, wondering why we are making up such amazing tales and why we made such a big fuss, when there was nothing magical there at all, just like they knew all along there wouldn't be.

I wonder if any of these fears or thoughts went through Philip's head on that ordinary day when Jesus came to Philip on his way to Galilee and said, “Follow me.” Somehow, Philip saw in Jesus something beyond this world, beyond the normal, beyond his expectations. In those brief moments with Jesus, Philip found what he had been looking for his entire life. He is drawn into a new dimension, a new world, and he knows that he has to share it. He has to tell someone, and he runs to Nathanael, saying, “We've found him! We have found the one Moses in the law and the prophets wrote about! It's Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth!”

Imagine how he must have felt when Nathanael comes back with scorn, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” He's a good and faithful Jew, an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, Jesus calls him, but he doesn't expect God to show up in anything so lowly and common as a carpenter's son from the backwater town of Nazareth. Like many of us, he's perhaps a bit world-worn and weary. Jaded. Skeptical. But brave Philip doesn't argue with him, just says, “Come and see,” trusting that the experience of meeting Jesus will speak for itself.

Nathanael, willing to humor Philip, curious about what has got him so excited, comes along to see Jesus for himself. And the rest, really, is up to Jesus. Just like Lucy can't control whether the wardrobe will open up and lead to Narnia, Philip can't control whether or not Nathanael will see in Jesus what Philip sees.

Of course, Nathanael does. He has this little exchange with Jesus, who tells him he saw him under the fig tree, and whatever that means, something about that encounter opens his eyes, compelling him to confess Jesus as the Son of God and King of Israel. “That's not all though,” Jesus says. “You will see greater things than these!” This is just the beginning! There's so much more to come. “You will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” That's a reference back to Jacob's ladder in Genesis, where Jacob dreams of just this, of the heavens opening and angels going up and down – causing him to exclaim when he wakes up, “Surely God was in this place, and I did not know it!” John's gospel is saying that Jesus is the place where God is. Jesus is the place where the earthly and the heavenly intersect, where human and divine cross. He is the bridge between this temporal existence and all of eternity. In some ways, Jesus is like the wardrobe – the entry point into another world, the place where God breaks through and draws us into God's kingdom which overlaps our everyday normal world, if only we had eyes to see it.

This is what Philip experienced. It's what Nathanael had to come and see for himself. It's what Jesus promises us – that we will see greater things than we can imagine, that in him, we with catch glimpses of God's reign breaking into our world, where our jaded, cynical, skeptical selves are transformed by meeting God in the flesh, where the divine comes into our human existence, changing us and the way we see the world forever, leaving us so excited that we come tumbling out of the wardrobe, shouting, “Come and see!” And it may be that the people we invite won't see what we see, won't experience what we experience, at least not at first. Don't let that stop you though. This story of God's love, of Jesus living and dying and rising again for us, is too good to keep to ourselves. All we have to do is tell it, to live it, and then invite others to come and see. Jesus will do the rest. Thanks be to God!

Amen.

January 8, 2012 - Baptism of Our Lord - Jesus Cures Our Sin-sickness

Jesus Cures our Sin-sickness

Mark 1:1-11

Baptism of our Lord – January 8, 2012

The TV show House is an entertaining medical drama. Every week follows the same basic formula – someone collapses in the middle of their everyday lives, and is raced to the ER, where the doctors are stymied, mystified at the cause, utterly unable to figure out what is causing the patient's symptoms. And so eventually, Dr. Gregory House gets called in. He's a crankypants of a guy with all sorts of personal issues, but a brilliant mind, and so as much as many of his colleagues would like to have nothing to do with him, they respect his diagnostic skills, his ability to get to the root of the problem – eventually, by the end of the hour, after several missteps along the way, and only really with the help of his team.

I'm always drawn into the mystery of the show. What is the problem? Will they figure it out in time? Because of course, the illness is usually some exotic, rare thing, and as the show goes on, the urgency, the desperation to figure out what it is and how to fix it grows and grows; symptoms get worse and worse, until you realize if they don't figure it out, the patient is doomed to die. And until they can find the cause, they can't really know how to treat it.


And so House's team of young doctors asks a million and one questions – of the patient, of their family or co-workers or whoever might have some answers. They also break into the patient's house, because the doctors don't trust them to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That's one of House's mantras: “Patients lie.” They hold back crucial details, out of shame or embarrassment or just ignorance of what might be important and relevant to their illness. But until the whole of it is known, until everything is revealed, there is no hope for healing.

In our gospel story today, people are coming to John as patients turn to Dr. House. They come, and they come in droves, Mark says, because they know that they are sick. Not physically sick, but spiritually sick. They know that something in their lives is killing them. They gather at the river, drawn by this strange, wild man, because they know they need this baptism he proclaims, the one that is for the forgiveness of sins. Some of them are more obviously sick than others; the disease is further along for them. They can point to specifics, particular actions or behaviors; perhaps they can look back at the progression as sin took over more and more of their lives. Others perhaps won't be able to point to any one thing, but know that something isn't right, even if they can't put their finger on it and want to be seen by someone who might be able to help them. And John the baptizer proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – and they come, wanting to be washed clean, wanting to make a public stand of their desire to start over and live a different way, wanting to turn around, and start down the road to healing and wholeness again.

Andy & I have a book called Dinner Table Devotions. Each day has a topic or theme, with two or three related scripture passages and a reflection followed by questions for discussion. The other night was entitled, “Are You a Sinner?” No beating around the bush for that author. No trying to pretty it up – just a bold, bald question: Are you a sinner? “None of us like to think of ourselves that way,” she says, but try as we may to avoid that truth, much like the patients in House, until we tell the whole truth about ourselves, we won't recognize our need for Jesus. “We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.”

Let me say that again.

“We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.” Sin goes deeper than our actions, deeper than our intentions, deeper than our thoughts. Sin is a deadly, congenital disease, flowing through our bloodstream, infecting our lives, and the individual sins are just the symptoms of the underlying problem. Many of us can go a long time through life without feeling the mortal consequences; many of us can pretend to ourselves that we're not sick, but sooner or later, the symptoms start to appear. Ultimately, sin will sicken us and kill us all, unless we can find a cure.

The good news in all of this is that this isn't an episode of House. The thing causing our symptoms is no mystery – and neither is the cure! But John's baptism only goes so far. Certainly we need to repent. We need to come clean. We need to confess. But if that's what it took to cure us, we'd be in sad shape, because we really can't heal ourselves. We'd just end up back in the ER over and over again. We need something more, a miracle cure, something that comes from outside ourselves and our own efforts! And we see the beginning of that in this first chapter of Mark's gospel today. Because after the crowds have gathered, as people are confessing and dunked in the river by John, he tells them this. “I'm not the guy. There's someone else, someone more powerful than I am, someone whose sandal I'm not even worthy to untie! I've baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” I love the way the paraphraser of the Scarlet Letter Bible website puts it, “I just got you wet. He'll set your life on fire! That was when Jesus came.”

Jesus comes from way up north in Nazareth of Galilee and joins John in the wilderness in the south, in Judea. He shows up on the scene and lines up with everyone else for John to baptize him, and at that moment in the river, immersed in the muddy waters that hold the sin of all who came before him, Jesus sees the heavens torn apart. The Spirit comes down. A voice speaks from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This one, God's own beloved Son, is the medicine we have been seeking. He takes our sickness on himself, and offers his blood as the cure to the sin that is killing us, much as an antidote to poison, or a life-giving antibiotic. This gift of healing, of restoration, of new life is ours, because our lives are linked to his in baptism! In our own baptism, our lives and deaths are joined to Christ's. In our baptism, we see God tearing open the heavens and coming down to us, for us! We hear God claiming us as beloved sons and daughters, opening the way for us to enter new life, inviting us to live as new, whole, healed people. Baptism is the turning point, the day by which we mark time – before baptism & after baptism; the day we learned that we are God's beloved children, embraced, accepted, forgiven, loved. True, we may not be all we should be, but thank God we aren't what we used to be. We are people who were at death's door, and though Jesus, have been given new life! May our lives be transformed by thanksgiving!

Amen.

Name of Jesus - January 1, 2012 - God Gives Us a New Name

Jesus Gives A New Name

Luke 2:15-21

Name of Jesus – January 1, 2012

At 15 months, my daughter Norah is finally starting to use some recognizable words. Mainly, she's working on learning the names of things. She knows her own name when we use it, and she's starting to label the everyday things she comes in contact with or sees in books – Dog. Cat. Ball. Baby. Drink. Dolly. She's also learning that people have personal names: Mama. Dada. And of course we are thrilled about that! And with all of these new words, Norah has grasped a big new concept. Not only that things have names, but that knowing the name is important, that knowing a name allows her to have a new kind of relationship with that thing, to distinguish it from other people and things, to be able to ask for who or what she wants. There is power in knowing a name.

The people of ancient Israel knew this to be true too. They knew that names were important, that they had significance. We know how much time most people put into choosing just the right name for their children. Heck, it took Andy and I several days to find the right names for our pets! It was a good thing we had several months to think of names for our daughter. And if that's true for us today, in Biblical times, the naming of a child was of even greater consequence, because within the Bible, knowing someone's name meant understanding that person's identity in ways that our society can't quite imagine. Knowing a name would tell you something about a person – it pointed to their character and their place in the world. Names meant something – which is why you see so many biblical characters getting new names after an encounter with God, because something about them changes, and that requires a name change: Abram (exalted ancestor) becomes Abraham (ancestor of a multitude) when God promises Abraham will become the father of many nations; Jacob (He supplants) becomes Israel (The one who strives with God) after he spends a night wrestling with God. As our confirmation students have been learning as we've looked at stories from Genesis and Exodus, names in the Bible, even the names of places, mean something. They tell you something about those people or places. And the understanding then was that knowing the name of someone bestowed some level of power over that person.

This concept isn't unfamiliar to us. We know the importance of names, we even know that names mean something – that's why there are all of those baby name books out there, complete with a little definition about where the name came from and what it signifies. As someone whose name isn't spelled the way people expect it to be, I've always worked hard to learn the right pronunciation and preferred names for people – because even in our day and age, names are a huge part of our identity. The theme song from Cheers had it right, “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.” Because if someone knows your name, there's a better chance that you may be known. Valued.

Names have power. I'm not just talking about our given names, though. There are names that people will give us beyond what is on our birth certificate or name tags – names with the power to put us down or lift us up. Names with the power to wound or heal. Names that tell us we are ugly or pretty, stupid or smart, freak or friend, worthless or worthwhile. These are names that seek to tell us who we are, names that we let identify us, names that influence the way we understand ourselves and our value in the eyes of the world. We've heard a lot of stories in the news in this past year about the power of hurtful names to destroy lives, to drive people to extremes, even to suicide. That is how powerful names can be.

Our gospel story this morning revisits the tale end of our Christmas Eve story, with the shepherds going to Bethlehem to see Jesus and Mary and Joseph with their own eyes and share their story of angels appearing in the night sky and then returning on their way. But we get one extra verse today that we didn't hear on Christmas Eve. It's kind of matter of fact, this verse 21, just telling us a little bit about the early days of Jesus' earthly life: “After eight days,” Luke tells us, “ it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” Just one extra verse, but this one verse contains a crucial moment. His circumcision marked Jesus' acceptance into a community built around God's covenant with God's people, and that circumcision plus his naming gave him an identity, as it did for all children. It tells Jesus and everyone else who he is. The giving of this name “was an act of blessing, a dedication of the child to God, and a declaration of the child's heritage and character.” And this name, Jesus, which means “God saves,” given to him by the angel Gabriel before he was even conceived, identified him from the very beginning as the One who would be the Savior of the world. It's a weighty name. There's a lot to live up to in that name. The giving of that name is the beginning of the fulfillment of what the angel had foretold.

It is in this One, Jesus, Son of God, Savior, that we receive our identity. Despite the names the world or our family or friends may label us with, despite the ways that they would try to tell us who we are, our identity ultimate comes from and rests in Christ Jesus. Just like Abram and Jacob, when we have an encounter with the living, holy One, we are given a new name. As we are baptized into Christ's life, death, and resurrection, God names each of us, “Child of God”. This is what Paul is talking about in the letter to the Galatians that was our 2nd lesson when he says “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son...so that we might receive adoption as children. And because [we] are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 'Abba! Father!' (Gal. 4:4, 6). This name we are given allows us to call God by a new name. It names a new relationship. Abba is more like Daddy or Papa. Close. Intimate. Trusting. In baptism, in Jesus, we learn the name of God, and even more important, we discover that God knows our name! God puts the Divine Name on us and blesses us! This name trumps and outweighs any of the other hurtful, damaging names we may be given, even the ones we sometimes give ourselves.

As we enter into this new year, may we learn to know ourselves by our God-given name. May we claim our identity, may we embrace and let ourselves be embraced by this relationship with the one who created us, who formed us, who claims us, and let ourselves, our relationships, our whole lives be transformed by the name we have been given, “Child of God.”

Amen.

Christmas Day - December 25, 2011 - The Power of the Word

The Power of the Word

John 1:1-14

Christmas Day – December 25, 2011

“In the beginning...”

If we hadn't just heard the gospel of John read, when we hear the words, “In the beginning,” we might not think about this story. We might not think about Jesus. Instead, we might find our minds drawn to another Bible story that starts this exact same way, the story that John's gospel echoes. We might find ourselves recalling the beginning of the beginning – the opening words of the entire Bible, the opening words of all creation, set back, not in John, chapter 1, but in Genesis, chapter 1: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said...”

This is how it all begins: “Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light.” We hear this refrain throughout that first chapter: And God said, “Let there be...” and it was so. And God said... and it was so. And God said... We learn from the very beginning of time the power that God's word spoken has. God speaks the word, and it is so. God speaks the word, and light leaps into existence. God speaks again, and there is sky and land and plants and sun, moon, and stars and animals of every kind and human beings – all because God speaks the word, and it is so. Into chaos and confusion, God speaks, and they are replaced in an instant with beauty and order and goodness. And God said, and it was so.

And now, in this beautiful song from the beginning of John's gospel, we get another glimpse into the power of God's Word, capital “w” this time, rehearsing, re-framing the creation story, looking at it with a different lens. “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.” God speaks the Word, and light shines in the darkness.

This Word, God's son, was with God before the beginning, eternally existent. This Word, Jesus, whose birth we celebrate today, was there with God to see the birth of all that is – and without him, John says, none of it would exist. This Word of God, spoken and speaking into our world, brings life and light; this Word is filled with glory and power and might –

Yet what we are reminded of on this Christmas morning is that he laid all of that aside. The world and all that is in it came into being through the Word, and you'd think that might have been enough – but it was not enough for him simply to create life, not enough to shine light into that life, watching from on high, from a distance. This Word of God longs for relationship, wants the world to know him. He comes to his own, because he wants to be a part of our lives, and if that's going to happen, he has to come. It requires his presence. He couldn't just be “Skyped” in, he couldn't send someone in his place. God had tried that again and again, the stories are there in the Old Testament, but it was never quite enough, and so, in the fullness of time, he chose to come in person. The Word became flesh and lived among us. He came himself, because nothing and no one else would do. He came because the world is filled with darkness, with the consequences of our own sin and rebellion, yes, but also with sickness and loneliness and despair. He came because the darkness of this world threatens to block out the light, tries to convince us that darkness is all there is, and so he came – the Light shining in the many shapes and forms our darkness takes, and the darkness did not overcome it. He came, because the world is filled with the shadow and the fear of death hovering over us – not just physical death, but emotional and spiritual and relational death, so that there are those among us who are not dead, but are not really living – and so he came, because in him is life – new life, abundant life, eternal life... life truly worth living, life that he wants us to live. He comes into all of the places where death's specter would seek to reign over us, and he speaks his own life. He comes, embracing the full human experience, birth, laughter, love, crying, anger, frustration, loneliness, even death – embracing us and all that it means to be human, in order to redeem us, to reveal God to us – Love itself becoming flesh and living with us, dying for us.

This is why we celebrate at Christmas. It's not about Christmas trees and Christmas carols and Christmas cookies and Christmas presents. Those are all fun and wonderful and add to the celebration, but they're not the reason why we celebrate. We celebrate because the Word of God comes, offering himself to us as a gift. He transforms our lives in his living, gives us power to become children of God ourselves, drawn near by the light of his love, drawn into his life so that we may live. May our lives bear witness to this love that has been for us and all creation since before the beginning. May we carry his light into our dark world, and speak his life-giving Word to all the world.

Amen.

Christmas Eve - December 24, 2011 - That Little Baby?!?

That Little Baby?!?

Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve – December 24, 2011

If you happened to be here this past Sunday at the 10 o'clock service, you got a chance to see our kids in action for the annual Sunday School Christmas play. This year, we shared in their wonder and excitement as they told the story of Jesus' birth from the perspective of the animals. A little lamb had fallen asleep and lost her shepherd when he raced off to Bethlehem to see this thing that had taken place, and so she and her animal friends set off to find the shepherd – telling us the story of Jesus and Joseph and Mary and angels along the way.

It was a wonderful, joyful pageant, as it always is. But there was one line that has stuck with me all week. It's been playing over and over in my head since their rehearsal last Saturday morning. As the animals come to Bethlehem and come face to face with the One they have been told is the Savior of the world, one of the animals looks at this child and says in confusion, “That little baby?!?”

As in, “I'm supposed to believe that that little baby is the savior of the world?” It doesn't quite seem to fit. With all the trouble in the world – with sectarian insurgents in Iraq threatening their fellow citizens now that the US war there has come to an end; with oppressive government regimes menacing normal, everyday people who just want a chance to pursue life and liberty and justice; with people who were already living on the margins tossed over the financial edge by a tropical storm that wiped out their homes and their livelihoods; and with others forced by drought and political instability to leave their homeland and walk hundreds of miles carrying their children on their backs, in hopes that when they arrive at the refugee camp, they will be welcomed and not turned away because there is no place for them; with fears of unemployment and economic insecurity stalking our hearts and feelings of loneliness and loss and depression overcoming many as we face the first Christmas without a certain loved one to share it with – with all of this tragedy and sorrow, what we need, to paraphrase a song from the 80s, is a hero... “and he's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast, and he's gotta be fresh from the fight... he's gotta be sure and it's gotta be soon, and he's gotta be larger than life...”

We need a hero, a larger-than-life hero – but what we get is a baby. Small wonder that that innocent animal in the Christmas play was confused - “That little baby?” The idea that a baby can do anything to resolve the problems that face our world seems absurd. Laughable. Ridiculous. Babies are wonderful – great fun to play with, lovely to snuggle and cuddle – but they are weak. Powerless. Vulnerable. Not exactly hero material.

Joseph and Mary faced the same kinds of uncertainties, as they were forced by occupying powers to leave their home to travel in the late stages of Mary's pregnancy to a strange town far away, hoping someone would take them in in a show of hospitality so she wouldn't have to deliver her child on the street. The shepherds were no strangers to struggle either, watching their flocks in the field by night, eking out a subsistence living, just barely living hand to mouth, looked down upon by those of the upper classes. Their world was filled then, as now, with anxiety and uncertainty, violence and oppression and greed, with hurt and desperation, and longing for a hero. A rescuer. A Savior.

It is into this world that angels keep appearing. We're only in the 2nd chapter Luke's gospel, but this is not the first time angels have come. They keep popping up everywhere, declaring to everyone they meet that God has not forgotten them in their trouble. Gabriel came to Zechariah and Elizabeth in their old age to tell them that they would have a son, John that Baptizer, who would go before the Lord to prepare his way. Not too long after that, Gabriel goes to Mary, announcing that she had found favor with God and would bear a Son named Jesus, which means “God saves” - that he would be called the Son of the Most High, the Son of God – “for nothing will be impossible with God,” Gabriel says. And again, on this silent, holy night, an angel comes to the shepherds with “good news of great joy,” exclaiming that God is on the move in their troubled world, that God is acting, even NOW, to bring about a reversal, to turn the world right-side-up, that God is transforming this dark, broken, fearful existence into a world overflowing with God's light and healing and hope. The angel comes this night announcing the imminent arrival of the hero, the Savior the world has long waited for, and the sign that all this is true? “That little baby” - wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in a manger.

An unlikely hero, it's true, but then God rarely works in the ways that we'd expect. This is the good news of great joy for all people, for Mary and Joseph, for shepherds watching their flocks, even for us - that God, the ruler of the universe, the creator of the world, is born to us, born for us, this day. God comes down, Word made flesh, Love Incarnate. God becomes one of us, and comes, not with conquering armies, but in the vulnerability of a baby. God comes, not to strike fear into our hearts, but to fill our deepest needs. God comes, laying aside the glory of heaven to be born in the mess and muck of a stable - poor, humble, vulnerable, human – so that we can know we are never alone. This is how God loves us – with a love that does not stay far off, but comes near, taking on our flesh and blood. This is the way God overcomes the world, not with a sword, but in the love of a baby sent to be one of us, sent to save us by being God with us, holding us with a love that will never let us go. That little baby? Yes, that little baby – Savior. Messiah. Lord. Thanks be to God.

Amen.