Christmas 2014

Christmas 2014 (Luke 2:1-14)

“I am bringing good news of great joy.”

The joy of Christmas is Jesus, others, you.

In Jesus God speaks to us and reveals to us that He is real, He is personal, He is love, He is Jesus Christ.

In Jesus the infinite and eternal God enters this universe of matter, energy, time and space to unify his divinity with our humanity in a particular person.

When people ask: where is God? God’s answer is a person: Jesus Christ. The reality of God emerges in the personal relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the assurance that God loves us- all of us- each of us- so much that He sent Jesus to reset the broken pattern of humanity. Jesus is the second Adam who empowers to follow a new way of life and a new way of becoming.

Jesus is Good News. The Good News is that Jesus reveals and demonstrates for us that God is universal unconditional love.

There is no condemnation in Jesus Christ and so there is no condemnation in God.

Jesus is God the Father’s gift to a lost and broken world. God the Holy Spirit speaks to everyone at all times inviting us to make the one real choice that has immediate as well as eternal results.

The Holy Spirit reminds us that he moved in the hearts of the shepherds to come down from the mountain to welcome Jesus. He reminds us that He invited the Magi to leave their ivory towers and travel east across the desert to bring gifts to Jesus. Even angels left the heavenly realm to sing the hymn of glory for the people of Earth, to announce the holy birth.

Jesus comes to offer a new way of thinking about God and a new way of experiencing God. Jesus comes to offer us a new way to think about other people and a new way to experience other people. And, Jesus comes to offer us a new way to think about ourselves and to experience ourselves.

The new way is the way of universal unconditional love. It is the way of worship, kindness and compassion,  and it is the way of personal transformation.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in all of the particularities of that birth in human history and in the traditions of our faith and families. We celebrate the birth of a new Way of being alive by grace, through faith in Love.

We celebrate the Good News of great joy that God is real, God is personal. God is love, God is Jesus Christ, Immanuel- God with us and God for us now and forever. Amen.