Second Sunday of Christmas – Series C
Christmas in the larger culture often is seen as a saccharine and superficial moment. If the world looks for depth, it finds it in even more emotion. It does not really allow Jesus to be Jesus or God’s Incarnate Word to speak into our lives. This is where the preacher needs to step in. Jesus came into the flesh because this world is really messed up, broken beyond all recognition. We may decry the degradation of the environment, but God is the ultimate environmentalist. Jesus has died to restore the whole of God’s creation. We are so familiar with the brokenness of the world that we think it is normal. He sees as problems things which we dismiss as simply the way things are. No, that is not the way they are, that is the way that they are broken. He has a grand scheme, a plan, a purpose which he relentlessly pursues, namely the restoration of his creation. He is not satisfied with tape and glue, with some cobbled together smaller thing, fragile and a dim reminder of what once was. He is after the whole thing restored, renewed, resurrected from the death of division.
Divisions are on our minds these days for the reasons outlined in the first Law section. But divisions go much deeper, including the next two, the division which is sin and is death. The preacher will want first to highlight and magnify the problem. The divisions which seem so big to the pundits are in fact small potatoes when compared to the real problems.
