Children of God

For those who don’t want the holidays to be over, we are only on the 7th day of Christmas – so don’t be surprised if your true love gifts you a bevy of swans this afternoon. For you, there is another week to enjoy your Christmas decorations before it is time to celebrate Epiphany and the visit of the Wise Men and pack it away. For others of us, the first day of the new year today marks the time to ensure that all of Christmas is packed away until next Advent.

We are very time-oriented. We are so concerned with when Christmas decorations are displayed and when they are stored that we have “rules” about not putting them up before Thanksgiving, and not leaving them up after Epiphany.

Paul tells us that God is time-oriented as well. God, who is eternal, who exists outside of time, who says that his very name is ‘I am “what it is to be”’ cares about what time it is. “When the time had fully come,” God sent forth his Son. It isn’t that God had tried everything else and failed to redeem humanity. It isn’t that God changed God’s mind and decided to relate lovingly with humanity. The time had come; what went before was important, it prepared the way, and then when the time was right, he was born – not in some extraordinary way, but in the ordinary way. He had a mom, and an umbilical cord, and he cried when the night air expanded his lungs. And he was born under the law, as he grew there were rules and rituals that he learned to follow, just like all of the neighbor kids. What was extraordinary was the reason he was born. He was born to redeem us so that we can be adopted by God.

Notice the change in verb tense there? He was born, to redeem us, so that we can be adopted by God. I have had people say to me apologetically that Christmas is their favorite holiday. While it might be a reason to reflect on how we better celebrate Easter, I don’t think there is any reason to apologize for Christmas being your favorite holiday.

On Christmas we celebrate that the Eternal, who created the confines of time, not only accepted those confines, not only put them on, but formed them into a human life. And the purpose of that life was not just to redeem those he met and knew in the flesh, but all who came before and all who came after. Alexander Smith, a Scottish poet in the 1800’s, wrote that “Christmas is the day that holds all time together.”

Christ was born on a particular day, over 2000 years ago to be Emmanuel, God-with-us even now, to redeem and adopt us for life eternal. Christmas is about the past, present, and future all held in one. So we frame our celebration with tradition, fill it with joy and love, and it is wrapped with hope.

We all have our traditions, our customs, our rhythms of Christmas that we follow year after year in pretty much the same way that frame our celebration. Making fudge, baking, decorating cookies or a gingerbread house, watching Christmas movies, going to choose a Christmas tree, …every family has their traditions that frame the celebration. Then, we fill it with the gifts of Advent, the joys of food and lights and gifts and love and swirl it with time with family and friends. These are the moments of memory-making. This year we were able to gather with all of Chris’s family for the first time in 5 years. Lizzie and I had gone and gotten the youngest grandchild her first makeup. I will never forget how big her 5 year old eyes and smile were when she opened it – pure JOY! And the youngest had a loose tooth and learned that I am good at wiggling teeth out, so she asked me every little bit to try and wiggle it again. It came out on the last wiggle, as we were standing at the door to leave. What memories of joy and love will you treasure – gifts of God-with-us that you glimpsed this season?

As I worked on this sermon, I realized I had so many and that I had already almost forgotten and would soon forget them if I didn’t capture them. I encourage you to get a piece of paper, or in your journal or a notebook, to write down at the top of the page “Joy and Love Christmas 2022” and write down everything you can think of that happened. It could be as simple as I remembered that when I went to get the oranges for the Christingle service, the parking lot was packed, and I parked on the side of Kroger in the last space before you start down the hill toward Germantown Village Square. The lady beside me asked me if I’d like for her to take my cart back with hers and then handed me a bag of her groceries to put in her back seat and close her passenger back door as she walked back toward the store. I was awed at her generous offer as it was a bit cold last Thursday afternoon, if you recall, and at the trust she offered.

God was born – God is with us – and our Christmas celebrations are wrapped in hope year after year because we have been adopted. Our primary identity is no longer human beings created by God, we are now adopted as children of God. The Spirit of God indwells our hearts – I looked up synonyms for indwells and my favorite to describe the Spirit’s indwelling was “roosts.” The Spirit of God roosts in our hearts as we embody the gifts of Advent and Christmas – hope, peace, joy, and love.

Perhaps today instead of New Year’s resolutions, we might consider how we can be more hopeful, how we can influence and work for justice that brings peace, how we can allow joy to roost in us, and how we will intentionally embody love in our daily lives: love for ourselves, love for others who are like us, love for others who are not like us, love even for those who would hurt us. This is the resolution we make each time we come to this Table to remember Christ, because his invitation is to all, as we become more like him.