Transcript
Hi, [I’m] Bishop Brian. This is the time of the year when I come to you with a message for Christmas, which means before this is recorded, I spend time thinking what’s going to be this year’s Christmas message. Is there a new way to tell the old story? Is there a new way to offer a new piece of wisdom? If we’re honest, the real challenge is, is to remember there’s really only one story that we keep saying to each other over and over and over again.
In the Christmas story, God came to be with us and has not left. God comes to us when the nights are long, when it is cold, and we are far from home. When there’s not room, when we’re surrounded with strangers and God shows up and God shows up in the fragile, fragile person of a child, a child with a complicated family, a family that is for him.
But also bewildered by his appearing in their life. That’s how God shows up. So God is showing up again and again and again with us in similar moments with people who are celebrating, people who are grieving, people in the cold, people well housed, people at a loss, people with a new sense of hope. In all those moments, God is showing up.
God is showing up and is not departing from us. So the story of incarnation really doesn’t have to be wrapped up in new ways each year. It’s why so many people as a family tradition, gather and simply read the story again after you’ve passed out gifts that maybe will last for a few weeks or a few years, or maybe forever.
After you’re given those tangible, physical gifts, we go back and we read the story again. We read the story again because we keep forgetting it. So often we live as if God is not with us, that God has forsaken us, that were somehow alone in the dark, in the cold, far from home. Our brothers and sisters, my friends,
God is with us in the hardest places, in the most hopeful places. And what is particularly good news is God often goes to the hardest places and from that place creates hope comes to us when the nights are long and sits with us as the light grows. It is in that kind of incarnate sense of God’s presence that we celebrate now.
So as I continue to serve as your bishop in this place in a new year, that will emerge in a Christmas season, and then in 2023, God being with us is the same story. Thank God it’s the same story because we keep forgetting it. So let’s tell it to each other again. Let’s tell it as we gather for Christmas Eve worship services.
But let’s also tell it in our homes, and in our neighborhoods, with friends who are struggling with friends who are hopeful. God is with us and is not departing. That is the good news. Now, that is the good news in the past. That will always be God’s good news for us. Amen.