The sermon for December 25th was based on John 1:1-14.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We've gathered here today to celebrate the central and most sacred mystery of the Christian religion, the incarnation of our Savior. Apart from the mystery of the Trinity itself, there is no mystery that can compare with the truth of the Son of God made man.

There are all kinds of very specific theological categories for describing what we know from the Bible about how the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity can be both man and God at the same time but the truth is that none of us really understands it. It is a profound mystery and a blessing beyond compare and at the very mention of it in the Nicene Creed we bend our knees in awe.

Christmas, like Easter, is time when our heads and our hearts often come into sharp conflict with one another. We're conflicted about whether to do the dutiful thing and drag our families around the country visiting relatives or stay home with our children and rest together. We're reminded of strained relationships in our families and of the sometimes very valid reasons for those relationships being strained and at the same time we feel the urge to mend fences and bind up old wounds. We're even conflicted over our lifelong love of things that we've come to recognize as less than beautiful or mediocre to a degree, if such a thing is possible.

Thoughtful Christians may also experience something of a crisis of faith at this time of year. We want to believe everything we were told as children about the birth of Jesus. We want the shepherds and the angels and the manger and the humble Virgin. But so many other bits of what we learned about Christmas as children have turned out to be false and not much of what we read in the Bible sounds very credible. I mean really, wouldn't somebody have noticed a multitude of the heavenly host? The whole things sounds like the ancient version of a UFO sighting, no proof!

An even more urgent question precipitating an even more painful crisis is "So what?" How does the fact that the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity has become a man make any real difference in my life? As Christians we know that it's supposed to matter. Its supposed to be helpful and comforting but who here can explain how Jesus' Incarnation helps them with their anger or fear or anxiety or greed? Can anyone here explain in real and understandable terms, how this great mystery of the ages makes any practical difference in the way we live our lives here in this world?

There are times when, exasperated with life, we cry out to God: Come on, give me something I can use! For a lot of us Christmas is one of those times. I want you to know that He hears us. He doesn't want us to be perpetually anxious about anything, let alone our salvation. So rather than have our souls be in constant conflict with our minds, He overwhelms our reason with absolutely unfathomable mysteries. Like the Angel and the flashing sword at the entrance to Eden, Christ's Incarnation stands sentinel at the door of the Church stopping our fallen reason dead in its tracks. The Church is no place for the substandard mental processes that are the glory of the University and the root of so much vanity among men who pride themselves on their brains.

Jesus Christ is both man and God. He's not half God and half man. He's fully human and fully divine at the same time. And this isn't something that was true for a few years some centuries ago it's true right now and will be for all eternity. We worship a man who is also God and a God who is also a man. I can't say it any more plainly than that and yet I can explain it no better. The esoteric text books of the theologians only complicate this simple truth with arcane phrases and obscure analogies. We must either believe what we were told as children or reject it.

If we believe it, as I do and as I hope you do too, it is because God Himself has given us saving faith. Reason takes hold of the things of this world and tries to make sense of them. Faith takes hold things that are beyond our senses and assures us of their veracity. To the smarty-pants at the head of the class, we Christians look like fools and imbeciles. What we celebrate this morning was foolishness even to the Greeks with all their make believe gods and goddesses. And yet the irrational and unprovable confession of St. Peter that Jesus is the Christ, shields us from all the wickedness, mis-belief and anxiety that the gates of hell may unleash against us. Go figure!

We must simply take Jesus at His word. And He assures us time and again in Scripture that doing so will provide us with more than enough strength to face any opposition to our salvation. We don't need our puny little brains to fight the good fight. As St. Paul reminds us, God has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. If Jesus says that I'm forgiven, having checked my fallen reason at the door, I'm free to assert my righteousness, the righteousness He gives me, to one and all, even to the very devil himself when he accuses me.

This is a tremendous comfort. And it does make a huge difference in the way we live! I wrote this sermon in the car on my way to Monroe the day before yesterday. Those of you who know me and the way I work will realize that for me this indicates a level of chaos in my life at the moment that is on par with the Apollo 13 mission. Houston we have a problem! This season I've been pulled in 1,000 different directions. And we're not talking about the typical work or family related stress that's common to all of us. We're talking about one serious crisis in the lives of my people after another with no break, with no respect for holidays, with no regard for my own preference, with no possibility of my not getting personally and deeply involved. I've never had a more difficult Christmas. I can't tell you the number of times over the past weeks I've said to myself, I quit, I can't take anymore, I just can't do it. And yet I've done it all. I have a renewed appreciation for what St. Paul means when He says that it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives within Him. See, there's another assertion that makes absolutely no sense at all. But its true. I can't explain how the incarnation of Christ has made it possible for me to serve my way through a season of Pastoral horrors but I can tell you that it has. The mind simply cannot process what faith grasps so firmly.

My family must think I'm crazy. I go around huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, trying to take deep breaths to maintain my composure, which isn't easy. Since in addition to all the other stuff going on in my life right now I'm having to go through a kind of preparatory detachment from my family, an emotional getting ready for a possible deployment to Iraq, made all the more frustrating because it might turn out not to be necessary after all. My family doesn't really understand the process and while its my job to help people through it, it isn't really possible to help myself through it. So I have to find strength and assurance from somewhere outside of myself. I have taxed my brain to the limit trying to figure out how to do this as painlessly as possible but my brain hasn't come through. My heart hasn't done any better. I need something alien, something so unlike anything I might imagine that it overpowers my situation and gives unexpected hope. I need the kind of solution provided by a God that would appear among us as a baby born of a virgin, surrounded by shepherds. I need grace from a God who chooses to be incarnate. When He plainly didn't have to be.

I feel bad this morning for people who have sensible, comprehendible gods, gods that can't be present in the Sacraments, gods that can't create the world in six days, gods that can't be born of a virgin and rise from the dead, gods who can't suffer for us and with us and lead us through the suffering to divine wisdom and unearthly grace.

I don't really understand Jesus. Because of His grace, I trust Him and I believe in Him but I can't really make any sense of Him. And yet I have Him as my own and I am, in a way that defies any satisfying analysis, His own. I eat His body. I drink His blood. We are bound together by Holy Baptism. Jesus is my Lord even though I cannot begin to comprehend Him. But to put very, very bluntly what St. John says so sublimely in this morning's Gospel, The Truth (with a capital T) is ever so much stranger than fiction... and of so much more comfort. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008