Lord of the Streets, Houston
January 4, 2025
2 Christmas
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Psalm 84:1-8
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
God became human and lived among us. Forgiveness and reconciliation were revealed as the way of God among us. Love and service of others were shown as the life of God lived among us, and heaven and earth were joined.
When God was born among us, the baby Jesus, born to a young woman named Mary and her husband, Joseph. They were a couple of teenagers, probably 14 or 15, who had been promised to each other in marriage by their parents. It seems to have been a good match. They had other children together after Jesus was born. They were faithful to God’s call on their lives, and they were faithful in following God’s ways and God’s laws even before Jesus was born. They were good parents, and heaven and earth were joined.
Then, a couple years after Jesus was born, Israel’s mad king thought he might take his throne, and so he plotted to assassinate Jesus and his parents. They fled their country, becoming political refugees, and fled to Egypt. Then, when the king died, they went back to Israel, no longer seeking asylum in a foreign land. Still, felt that they were in danger near the capital of Israel, in the area of Judea, so they went to the region of Galilee, to the town of Nazareth, and heaven and earth were joined.
We’re still in the season of Christmas, “the hap-happiest season of all”, and we’re not telling the story of the baby in the manger, the shepherds with their flocks, or the angels singing, “glory in the highest heaven.” We’re in “the most wonderful time of the year,” telling a story of attempted assassination. Happy Christmas.
It’s not all bad news, I promise. Have any of you ever been a part of a worship service where the music was playing, the congregation was all joined in together in singing and in prayer, and you could feel the Holy Spirit among you? Heaven and earth are joined, and God’s spirit is with us in worship and in prayer.
Have you been with a group of friends, enjoying one another’s company, having a grand old time, and also felt God’s presence among you? Heaven and earth are joined, and God’s spirit is with us in love and fellowship.
Then, have you ever been with someone in times of sadness and mourning, you’ve supported them, or been supported when you were mourning. In those times too, God’s presence was felt among you. Heaven and earth are joined, and God’s spirit is with us in the times of loss, in the care and support we give one another.
Heaven and earth are not only joined in the good times, and God is not only with us when we pray. Jesus and his parents fled an assassination attempt by a mad king and fled as refugees to Egypt. Heaven and earth were joined then, too. We get to tell this story of exile and murder during the happiest time of the year because God is with us even in the death and destruction we cause, and that is reason to rejoice.
Anglican bishop and author N.T. Wright notes in his latest book, The Vision of Ephesians, that Christians often miss the joyful reality of God with us. According to Christian Post reporter Leah M. Klett, Bishop Wright believes that many Christians have totally misunderstood our faith. Instead of seeing Christianity of God joining with humanity, instead of seeing heaven and earth as joined, many have been taught to think of salvation as escaping the earth, getting to go to Heaven when we die.
https://www.christianpost.com/books/nt-wright-why-western-christians-have-misread-heaven.html
Jesus is not a portal for good little Christians to flee through once they’re dead. Jesus is the physical joining of God with humanity. Jesus is the cosmic union of God and creation. Jesus is Emmanuel, “God is with us,” or do we really think we live in a world devoid of God’s presence, with God only waiting for us to die so we can be with him? Are our lives really just a proving ground to get to heaven? Are we really just trying to have faith, so that our souls can escape this earth once we’re dead?
That’s not the story of scripture. That’s not the story of the Gospel in the Christian scriptures. The Gospel is the story of God coming to us, not us leaving to go to God. God became human. God joined humanity in our physical bodies.
The idea of a soul as something different from our bodies isn’t a particularly Jewish or early Christian idea. That’s an ancient Greek and Roman idea. The Gospel is not that faithful enough Christians get to leave the world once they die. The Gospel is that heaven and earth are joined.
We believe not that we will leave, but that Jesus will return. Heaven and earth have been joined, and at the end of the ages, God will finish this work, and all evil will be destroyed, and all things will be made new.
“The Church,” Bishop Wright says, “is called to be…the small working model of new creation.” We are here to live this new creation as best we can, which we can only do if God truly is with us. If God truly is with us, then, as Paul points out, our battles are not against one another, but against spiritual forces of wickedness, and so we’re told to put on the Armor of God, which is almost totally defensive.
Bishop Wright points out that many Christians think of this spiritual battle as one we must fight, and that we must constantly fight the demonic. The greater struggle, however, is how so many Christians claim to see the demonic in so many people and groups of people around them. The greater struggle, Wright says, is believing people are our enemies when they are not. That’s what Herod did to Jesus.
Paul said our struggles are with cosmic powers, not with one another, and that doesn’t mean that everything bad is demonic. Everything and everyone that bothers us is not demonic. Herod trying to assassinate Jesus was not demonic. It was the sad actions of a tiny, scared little man.
When we see demons and evil everywhere, we live into this notion that the point of the Gospel is to escape a terrible earth and go to Heaven instead. That’s not the Gospel. The truth of the Gospel is that Heaven and earth are joined.
Rather than seeing demons everywhere, see God everywhere. God was there when Jesus and his parents fled for their lives. Heaven and earth were joined. Demons didn’t seek to kill Jesus, a scared little man did.
God is there when people beat, rape, steal from, and kill one another. That’s not the demonic fighting humans. When people beat, rape, steal from, and kill one another, that’s humans fighting God. Heaven and earth are joined, and whatever we do to one another we do to God who became human. We don’t get to pin that on demons. That’s on us.
Humans do terrible things to one another, and our fight is not with one another, but with those terrible things that we do. We are meant to be, we are meant to live as God’s new creation. Heaven and earth are joined, and so we are meant to see God among us. In the good times and in the bad, we are walking among God with heaven all around us. Heaven and earth are joined. Happy Christmas.
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