Merry Christmas.
In this feast, God reminds us of God’s extraordinary love in giving us absolutely everything that we need: Our breath. Our conscience. Our imaginations.
In sending Jesus Christ to be born of a human mother and to make the way of the cross to be for us the way of life, God becomes one of us.
This astonishing gift means that we have a life to live by, a life to live for, and a life to live with. A life that saves us from everything that pulls us away from that life.
God gives us community—the church, people to travel with—where we get to discover together what life looks like in this time and in this place. And, as we discover that life, we begin to find our way to live it more fully.
So perhaps one question for us this Christmas is:
What now will we do with the gift of the Incarnation?
We know that salvation is pure grace, that it’s freely given. Yet in God’s choice to become human, we are invited to bear witness—sometimes with our words and sometimes with our actions—to how this grace transforms us.
We speak of God’s eternal changelessness, but we ourselves are changed, again and again, because Christ lives in us—in our souls, in our bodies, and in this very moment.
This Christmas, I want to walk with you as we take Jesus seriously, not leaving him in a story from long ago, but letting his presence shape us just now.
I can’t tell you exactly how to do that; I’m still learning how to do it myself. But I do know this: I’m eager to walk this path with you—sharing the load, caring for those whom we encounter, and discovering together what love looks like in Maine today.
In the birth of Jesus Christ, God gives us everything. And so we say, “Yes, Lord.”
Yes to sharing this gift with those who are sick, and those who are hungry, and those who are lonely, or those who are longing to be seen and who long to be welcomed.
We have the amazing opportunity to join God in giving the life that has been given to us.
So, my friends, may God who, in the Incarnation, gathers into one all things—earthly and heavenly—fill you with the sweetness of peace and calm.
A happy and holy Nativity to you.
Merry Christmas.