SPEAKER_01: A reading from Jeremiah How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger, who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy, for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion.
SPEAKER_01: Break forth together into singing, You ruins of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord has comforted his people.
SPEAKER_01: He has redeemed Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: A reading from Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: But in these last days he has spoken to us by a son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the world.
SPEAKER_00: He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being.
SPEAKER_00: And he sustains all things by his powerful word.
SPEAKER_00: When he made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
SPEAKER_00: For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my son, today I have begotten you.
SPEAKER_00: Or again I will be his father, and he will be my son.
SPEAKER_00: And again, he brings the firstborn into the world.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Let God's angels worship him.
SPEAKER_00: Of the angels he says, He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.
SPEAKER_00: But of the Son he says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: And the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.
SPEAKER_00: And in the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
SPEAKER_00: They will perish, but you remain.
SPEAKER_00: They will all wear out like clothing, like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed.
SPEAKER_00: But you are the same, and your years will never end.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
SPEAKER_02: He was in the beginning with God.
SPEAKER_02: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
SPEAKER_02: What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
SPEAKER_02: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
SPEAKER_02: There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
SPEAKER_02: He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
SPEAKER_02: He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
SPEAKER_02: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
SPEAKER_02: He was in the world, and the world came into being through him.
SPEAKER_02: Yet the world did not know him.
SPEAKER_02: He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.
SPEAKER_02: But to all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
SPEAKER_02: And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_02: The gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Happy Eve of the Feast of the Incarnation.
SPEAKER_02: Today we celebrate a baby that is truly out of this world.
SPEAKER_02: And no, I do not mean baby Yoda, cute as he may be.
SPEAKER_02: As I prepared for this summer, this sermon, I was ragging my brain for an illustration or a story, something that would help me to bring to life in a new way the understanding of what the incarnation is all about.
SPEAKER_02: And when I couldn't figure it out in my own brain, I did what most of us do these days.
SPEAKER_02: I asked Surrey.
SPEAKER_02: Went to Google, and I couldn't find anything there either.
SPEAKER_02: To be honest, everything I found there kind of did just did not do the job.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing captured the amazing mystery that is the incarnation, that is God taking on flesh and dwelling among us.
SPEAKER_02: Many of the illustrations I did find on the internet honestly bothered me in one way or another.
SPEAKER_02: I felt like they either missed some essential, important element of the incarnation, or they just simply got it wrong, or by trying to explain it away in some cute little story, they cheapened the mystery of it.
SPEAKER_02: This led me to ask: is the mystery of the incarnation too grand, too wonderful, too amazing for any of us to really get our head around?
SPEAKER_02: And therefore too big to adequately try to explain in one story or illustration or analogy.
SPEAKER_02: I wonder how often when we try to explain the mystery away, do we actually cheapen it?
SPEAKER_02: So instead, I thought I would spend the next 20 minutes giving you a dissertation of the significance of the Greek word logos translated into word in John's gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that would help us understand the incarnation.
SPEAKER_02: Nah, that's not really what any of us are here or looking for this evening.
SPEAKER_02: So I will save you from that.
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, to try to not get overwhelmed with trying to understand what the word word means, for the rest of my sermon, I'm going to use the word divine love to replace Lagos or Word.
SPEAKER_02: So we're here this evening, gathered together to celebrate the incarnation, to celebrate the truth that divine love becomes human and dwells among us.
SPEAKER_02: I recognize that I have been running the risk of cheapening the mystery of the incarnation myself this Advent season.
SPEAKER_02: And so I would like to spend a few minutes, not backtracking what I offered to those of you who were here through parts of Advent, but instead to fill out the vision in a different way, in hopes to get a bit closer to this divine mystery.
SPEAKER_02: Through Advent, I reflected on the Isaiah passages and focused on the image that we are all dwellers of the threshold.
SPEAKER_02: To me, this image suggests that we are living in between two worlds.
SPEAKER_02: One, a world that is full of pain and suffering and brokenness and darkness.
SPEAKER_02: And then this second world, this realm where God reigns and exists and everything exists in a way as it's meant to be.
SPEAKER_02: And so on this threshold we stand not to run away from the darkness, but to hold two worlds together, reaching up to God as God is reaching down to us.
SPEAKER_02: And while I think this image is helpful in some ways, at least for me, especially in expressing our role as God's conduits of love and living into this idea of the now and the not yet.
SPEAKER_02: And the first chapter of John's Gospel shines a light on aspects of the mystery that I may have misguided.
SPEAKER_02: First, the image of the dweller of the threshold may give some the idea that the world is nothing but darkness, that it is all broken and bad, that the world we are living in is just a place we are waiting to escape from.
SPEAKER_02: And this can then lead to a dualistic thought, simply put, anything physical is bad and anything spiritual is good.
SPEAKER_02: Second, the image of dwelling on the threshold and reaching up to God as God reaches down to us may also give us the impression that God is distant, removed, and somehow has a go-go gadget arm, or more modern ways of saying it, a drone delivery service that extends from God's far-off world to remotely be in contact with us.
SPEAKER_02: In the introduction of John's gospel, these two myths are dispelled.
SPEAKER_02: First, while I think that we can acknowledge that the world we live in has darkness, has brokenness, and we all experience pain and suffering, it's not the only thing that is in our present.
SPEAKER_02: And John reminds us that the second person of the Trinity, the divine love, has been present since the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: And the divine love creates all things, nothing is created outside of this divine love.
SPEAKER_02: All of creation holds the imprint of the divine.
SPEAKER_02: So while the Greek philosophers like Plato saw the world we live in as less than, only a shadow of the real self, and the Gnostics lived in a way trying to escape this reality because they believed that all things physical were not only inferior, but were simply put, bad.
SPEAKER_02: On the other hand, John suggests that creation holds onto the infused divine love.
SPEAKER_02: The divine love creates everything, and none of creation can ever be fully separated from this divine love.
SPEAKER_02: So to speak, it's in our DNA.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we live in a world that is broken, but even in the brokenness and the darkness, there is light of divine love shining through everywhere.
SPEAKER_02: There has been since the genesis of it all.
SPEAKER_02: In this second image of God, when things about when thinking about the dwellers of the threshold, has this idea of this God who is removed and detached, only drone flying into the present, this too is a myth.
SPEAKER_02: From the beginning, God has been with humanity.
SPEAKER_02: God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_02: God, as a wandering traveler, dined with Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: God spoke with Moses through the burning bush.
SPEAKER_02: As the Hebrew people traveled through the desert, God was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night to lead them through the wilderness.
SPEAKER_02: God was present in the tabernacle, that portable earthly dwelling place, so that wherever the Hebrews went, they could see a tangible reminder that God was in fact with them.
SPEAKER_02: God continues to be present in the world throughout all of history and even today with us.
SPEAKER_02: And in an ultimate example of God being present with us, God takes on flesh, becomes a human, and lives with God's creation in this most vulnerable, intimate, and loving way.
SPEAKER_02: As Eugene Peterson so lovingly paraphrases, the word becomes flesh and blood and moves into the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_02: While God is completely otherworldly, God is also completely seeped into this world, first as the creator and then as the dweller.
SPEAKER_02: The incarnation is a mystery, something more complex and more beautiful than we will ever get our heads around.
SPEAKER_02: But let's not have, but that does not need to have a stop from celebrating this glorious event that brought two worlds together more fully.
SPEAKER_02: Let's celebrate that God is in fact with us.
SPEAKER_02: God forms creation and it is good.
SPEAKER_02: And God desires to be with us so intimately that God becomes human.
SPEAKER_02: And so, what do we do with this good news?
SPEAKER_02: One way is by simply acknowledging that the divine love is within each one of us.
SPEAKER_02: We are, in fact, sacramental presence of the God in the world.
SPEAKER_02: And we carry this divine love within us, and we are invited to not hide this love, but to share it out to the ends of the world.
SPEAKER_02: I love the story of Beauty and the Beast, especially the Disney version.
SPEAKER_02: I have every line of every song memorized.
SPEAKER_02: I love the creativity and the magic of it.
SPEAKER_02: And I love the way that Belle, after spending some time with the beast, is able to see that there is something sweet and almost kind hiding beneath the scary exterior of the beast.
SPEAKER_02: Belle asks, I wonder why I didn't see it there before, implying that the beast's dear nature had been there all along.
SPEAKER_02: This movie reminds me that we can all turn into a beast at times.
SPEAKER_02: I'll admit I might have turned into a beast a few times while driving around Houston traffic lately with the holiday shoppers.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes by turning into a beast, others might feel obliged to sing, but she was mean and she was coarse and unrefined.
SPEAKER_02: At times, though, it takes someone else, someone to remind us that deep within us is that divine love that never disappears, no matter how ugly we may become.
SPEAKER_02: The more we are able to become aware of the divine love that is within us, we will find ourselves transformed back into those princes and princesses, or more correctly put, the children of God, that we have been all along.
SPEAKER_02: In a few minutes, we will light our candles and sing Silent Night.
SPEAKER_02: And I invite you to imagine yourself as the candle.
SPEAKER_02: The divine love is within you all the time, whether or not you see a flame.
SPEAKER_02: And then as you accept the light, the divine love that has been there becomes visible.
SPEAKER_02: The flame you will receive is visual proof that the divine love is there within you.
SPEAKER_02: Then you have the joyful opportunity to turn to your neighbor and to light their candle and to help your neighbor discover or rediscover the divine love that they have been carrying all along.
SPEAKER_02: And take notice that part of the mystery of this divine love is that the more that you help others discover the divine love, the more it grows and the more light it brings into the world.
SPEAKER_02: And also note that it does not take away from your divine love to help spark the divine love in the other.
SPEAKER_02: Then lastly, as you leave this space this evening, I encourage you to keep that light shining.
SPEAKER_02: And then when you do eventually extinguish it, that you remember that even when the flame might not be present, that you have the divine love in you, and you are called to carry it out into the world.
SPEAKER_02: You are invited to shine this divine love for all to see.
SPEAKER_02: Take this divine love out into the world.
SPEAKER_02: Seek out those dark corners of your life and the world around you that have lost sight of the divine love that is in them.
SPEAKER_02: And help them to fan that flame bigger and brighter so that there can be no doubt that the divine love has been with us all along.
SPEAKER_02: My brothers and sisters, let the light shine, for God is with us today.
SPEAKER_03: I bring you glad tidings of great joy.
SPEAKER_03: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not, will not, cannot overcome it.
SPEAKER_03: And what we know, of course, is that visible light occupies such a narrow spectrum of light.
SPEAKER_03: That is to say, all the light we do not see.
SPEAKER_03: And the mystery of the incarnation is that this very night, light invisible, light itself became visible before us.
SPEAKER_03: Eternal God took on flesh, not veiled in flesh.
SPEAKER_03: This is interesting.
SPEAKER_03: This is rather unlike the way I operate.
SPEAKER_03: God didn't just try to be like us.
SPEAKER_03: God infested the earth.
SPEAKER_03: God infested every corner of creation and made light that was invisible, visible this very night.
SPEAKER_03: This is the beginning of our promise of faith, a promise that extends from our birth to our death.
SPEAKER_03: There are moments in which we think, particularly in dark times, be they at work or in government or at home, we may find ourselves thinking, what difference can I make?
SPEAKER_03: What is one small act of hope or faith or charity amidst so much?
SPEAKER_03: Promise is the light shines in the darkness, and the light cannot overcome it.
SPEAKER_03: The promise for us today, this Christmas, is that every small act, and of course there are no small acts of peace, hope, joy, and love are eternal moments in God.
SPEAKER_03: Moments in which we make God's invisible light visible to the world.
SPEAKER_03: The promises there is no such thing as a dark switch.
SPEAKER_03: There is only a light switch.
SPEAKER_03: And there's a mystery today.
SPEAKER_03: A mystery that we get when we think about it, is that God chose not to make the light visible in some swarthy hero, not in some egg-headed figure hidden figures calculator.
SPEAKER_03: God chose to make the light visible in a helpless child.
SPEAKER_03: This is not the way I would have written the story.
SPEAKER_03: The answer to all of our hopes and dreams, all of our expectations, is a child to take care of.
SPEAKER_03: That is to say, there's something in the very beginning.
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna sing Silent Night Later, but you realize that's a song about an organ that stopped working in Austria.
SPEAKER_03: It's not a song about giving birth to a baby.
SPEAKER_03: There's nothing silent.
SPEAKER_03: About that.
SPEAKER_03: Otherwise called a doctor.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, this is an incredible opportunity for us to think about.
SPEAKER_03: God chose to infest the world in a baby that required not just feeding and holding, but also changing and learning.
SPEAKER_03: And the promise of the incarnation, I would dare say the challenge is that the invisible light of God would be visible in your neighbor.
SPEAKER_03: And if you can't see the light, perhaps the light is just, well, hungry or tired, or needs a change of one sort or another.
SPEAKER_03: And Mary and Joseph make the light visible when they care for the Christ child, and we have the opportunity to make the invisible, infinite light of God visible when we care for those in our world, especially when it's difficult.
SPEAKER_03: There is this image we often hear that we are reaching up to God and God is reaching down to us.
SPEAKER_03: This story says no.
SPEAKER_03: This story says God is reaching all around us, within us, beyond us.
SPEAKER_03: We get to hear these churchy words like imminent and transcendent.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe you've heard them before.
SPEAKER_03: Today the story says that God is more present in us than we are in ourselves.
SPEAKER_03: God is more present in the world than we are present in the world.
SPEAKER_03: God is more mindful of the world than we are.
SPEAKER_03: The part of God's presence we get is God's eminence.
SPEAKER_03: The part of God's presence we're not aware of is God's transcendence.
SPEAKER_03: God is more present in us than we are in ourselves.
SPEAKER_03: The word made flesh dwells among us.
SPEAKER_03: We're asked not only to celebrate invisible light becoming visible in our eyes in the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: We're asked not only to make the invisible light of God visible in our neighbors, in our family members, in people on TV who make us lose sleep.
SPEAKER_03: We are asked to do that.
SPEAKER_03: We are also asked to care for the light very carefully.
SPEAKER_03: You see, when I was a small boy, I was told that the Bible is the word of God.
SPEAKER_03: But the Gospel of John says that the word of God is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: And what that means, according to Martin Luther, is that the Bible is like the manger.
SPEAKER_03: It holds Jesus, but it isn't him.
SPEAKER_03: And the reminder for us in these times is that if we ever think that we're following the Bible and going into darker places, we are following ourselves and we are not following the light.
SPEAKER_03: No, the word became flesh and dwelt among us as a baby to be cared for.
SPEAKER_03: Scriptures are written for us to provide guidance and care, but so that we can follow the light and make the light of God visible.
SPEAKER_03: And my friends, it is a challenge for us because everywhere I go, people use the scriptures to make the world a darker place.
SPEAKER_03: That is not the miracle of tonight.
SPEAKER_03: Tonight is born an opportunity to follow the word of God, living and active and true.
SPEAKER_03: That's the person of Jesus Christ made flesh, to care for the infant Jesus and one another, so that God's light is made profound, and visible.
SPEAKER_03: In some ways it's a funny thing that we come and celebrate because you know it means yay, we get to care for the newborn baby and our boss, and our crazy Uncle Frank, and that person at work that drives us crazy, and that is exactly the gift of today.
SPEAKER_03: We get to join God in making the invisible visible in one another.
SPEAKER_03: Now we're gonna get to practice that in just a second, and that's why you have those candles.
SPEAKER_03: Don't worry.
SPEAKER_03: All of this takes energy, and we're gonna have energy from the Lord's table first.
SPEAKER_03: Energy for your spirit.
SPEAKER_03: And then we're gonna light these candles so we have practice seeing the light of God and sometimes the hardest place, right in front of us, coming from us.
SPEAKER_03: The light of God coming from you.
SPEAKER_03: And then we're gonna get to do this wonderful thing.
SPEAKER_03: You might be sitting next to somebody you've never met before, and you get to make the invisible light of God visible when you light their candle, or you get to receive the gift of making God's light visible when they light yours.
SPEAKER_03: And we're gonna sing this beautiful song, Silent Night.
SPEAKER_03: Again, it's about an organ.
SPEAKER_03: It will be quiet in here, and that's why this is a sanctuary, it's a holy place, so that we can practice before we go out there.
SPEAKER_03: This is where it starts to become challenging.
SPEAKER_03: You know, in church, people are on their best behavior.
SPEAKER_03: It's a little bit easy.
SPEAKER_03: That's good.
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have nourishment, we're gonna have practice, and then we're gonna take our light and we're gonna shine it in the lives of other people as we have champagne in the hallway.
SPEAKER_03: This is what we're going to do: nourishment to go home and make light visible.
SPEAKER_03: And then we're gonna do one other thing.
SPEAKER_03: This is really interesting because you know, when we're done with this light, when we're done illuminating it, we are of course not gonna let it burn all night.
SPEAKER_03: We're going to we're gonna change the light.
SPEAKER_03: Because you see in the Lord, life is not ended, it's changed.
SPEAKER_03: And the whole point of today is that even if light becomes for a moment invisible to the naked eye, there is all the light we do not see.
SPEAKER_03: And the truth is, I can't always see my light, and I can't always see yours.
SPEAKER_03: And that's exactly when the change guides us up, and we say, God, help me follow the smoke.
SPEAKER_03: Help me follow the smoke up.
SPEAKER_03: Open my imagination to see the Christ child in that nasty person so that I can imagine they're not actually nasty, they're just hungry.
SPEAKER_03: Help me, Lord God, to see what I cannot see in the person who I justifiably cannot forgive.
SPEAKER_03: And help me to change them.
SPEAKER_03: This is the miracle, the miracles.
SPEAKER_03: It's a joyous day and it's a joyful challenge.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you for celebrating Christmas and St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas.
SPEAKER_03: Merry Christmas, and let's get ready for some holy practice.