Category Archives: Christmas

In the birth and birthplace of Jesus there is something which corresponds beautifully with his personal biography as well as the fortunes of his Gospel.

Two thousand years on, he still comes waiting to find room. And there is scant room for him.

The reason why Jesus can’t find room for his Gospel – which he embodied in his person at his first coming – is closely analogous to that which he encountered in his birth – namely that people’s hearts are preoccupied. They are filled to the brim with their own agendas already. And we, who are his followers, so poorly represent the worth and largeness of Christ and his Gospel. Preoccupied with the presenting and controverted issues of the day, we lack the inspiration he offers, and we end up giving him the stable, when we should be giving him the inn. Instead of putting him at the centre of our living, thinking and planning, we leave him at the margins.

You can read the whole sermon here.

Christmas has finally arrived. Here in Minnesota, it arrived in the midst of a beautiful snowfall. Last night, the four services at St. Stephen’s in Edina were filled with people who came there seeking something – most looking for the manger, many desiring a little peace, and quite a few unsure of what they were hoping to find on the other side of those doors. For all of them, however, grace and forgiveness were on the menu along with more than enough love for the whole world. This feast was spread out on the table thanks to the holy child whose birth we celebrated with carols of joy to God and greetings of good will toward one another.

Today was spent at home. My wife and I watched our toddler play with wooden trains (Gordon, Henry, and Emily arrived this morning) while an electric train circled around the Christmas tree and snow continued to fall outside. It was a great day. What made it even more wonderful was that we already knew that Love awaits us behind the doors marked December 25, December 26, December 27 . . .

Relationship is the new thing at Christmas, the new possibility of being related to God as Jesus was and is. But here’s the catch and the challenge. To come into this glorious future is to learn how to be dependent on God. And that word tends to have a chilly feel for us, especially us who are proudly independent moderns. We speak of ‘dependent’ characters with pity and concern; we think of ‘dependency’ on drugs and alcohol; we worry about the ‘dependent’ mind set that can be created by handouts to the destitute. In other words, we think of dependency as something passive and less than free.

But let’s turn this round for a moment. If we think of being dependent on the air we breathe, or the food we eat, things look different. Even more if we remind ourselves that we depend on our parents for learning how to speak and act and above all how to love. There is a dependence that is about simply receiving what we need to live; there is a dependence that is about how we learn and grow. And part of our human problem is that we mix up this entirely appropriate and lifegiving dependency with the passivity that can enslave us. In seeking (quite rightly) trying to avoid passivity we can get trapped in the fantasy that we don’t need to receive and to learn.

Which is why it matters that our reading portrays the Son in the way it does – radiant, creative, overflowing with life and intelligence. The Son is all these things because he is dependent, because he receives his life from the Father. And when we finally grow up in to the fullness of his life, we shall, like him, be gladly and unashamedly dependent – open to receiving all God has to give, open to learn all he has to teach. This is a ‘dependency’ that is utterly creative and the very opposite of passive. It is a matter of being aligned with the freest activity we can imagine, God’s eternal love, flowing through us.

You can read the whole sermon here.