Sermons

The star led them to a humble home in an ordinary part of the city.  Inside they found an ordinary couple, with an extraordinary child.  All it once it hit them:  God’s realm will not look like Rome’s.  God will dwell among God’s people, people who live in ordinary places and do ordinary things.  And God will come into the world with all the innocence and humility of a child. 

When I hear today’s text, it makes me eager to listen for the chorus of creation. To find kinship in its myriads of created beings. To praise God in community. To see Christmas beyond the singular lens of humanity.

And there they find two new parents, each one not too far removed from being terrified themselves. And these mangy shepherds and exhausted parents, gaze at new life. In the birth of a child, they realize that God has given them (and you, and me, and EVERYONE!!!) space to become God’s people.

The Gospel of Luke is the story of people just like you and me, determining to get started. We meet Mary and Elizabeth in the early stages of pregnancy, the life event that is most representative of life’s wonderful chaos. Hope, joy, anxiety, fear, comfort, discomfort, hormones, tears, laughs, hugs…the emotions are varied and endless. In one another, Mary and Elizabeth find community and support, and even more importantly, a sense of joy and hope. In one another, they find the strength to live out their calling.

Thank God for stars. Because when we gaze at the stars, we are reminded, like the prophet, that we walk in God’s light. We literally walk in God’s light. And God’s light can transform everything we know into something beautiful, something peaceful, something worthy, something illumined, something divine.

I believe God faiths in our faithfulness. Whatever our expression of Millbrook may be in the future, however robust or minimal, frequent or infrequent, structured or fluid, as long as they are rooted in a spirit of kinship, they’re gonna be enough. They’re gonna be beautiful. They’re gonna wonderful. They’re not gonna be of this world. And that’s exactly how it should be.