What Gift Can We Bring: Faith

The First Sunday after Christmas is one of my favorite days of the liturgical year. And this year, it rounds out my exploration of the gift of Jesus that we are called to continue to offer the rest of the world.

This week, using Matthew 2:13-23, we look at the gift of faith -- both God's faithfulness as well as our faith in God. And then we consider what it means for us to continue to offer the gift of Jesus to a world in need of peace, hope, love, joy, and grace.

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Merry Christmas! As we come together on this fifth day of Christmas, it seems appropriate to remember that the Christmas season begins on Christmas day and continues for twelve days (just like the song) to end just before Epiphany. And so we continue to celebrate the gift of Christmas today.

As Advent and Christmas drew closer this year, I was struck by the practice of gift giving we engage in this time of year. For many of us, we celebrate the birth of Jesus by sharing gifts with friends and family. We do this to symbolically commemorate the gift that God has given to the world that we celebrate at Christmas -- the gift of Jesus. 

What Gift Can We Bring: Grace

As we arrive at Christmas we come to the reason for the season and the reason for the series I have been writing the last few weeks. Jesus is the gift that God has given us that inspires us to gift others in return. Here on Christmas, we reflect on the birth of Jesus, God's gift of grace to the world, as found in the gospel of Luke (see Luke 2:1-20).

And so we gather in the stillness of the night to celebrate God coming into the world. We gather at the darkest time of the year to celebrate God's faithfulness to us. We gather to celebrate the light coming into the world, the birth of Emmanuel, God with us.

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“Do not be afraid.”

As is often the case when we are addressed by the divine, God’s messengers greet the shepherds with the admonition to not be fearful. Here in the first two chapters of the gospel of Luke, we get this a lot.

What Gift Can We Bring: Joy

As noted before, I approached Advent and Christmas this year with the hymn "What Gift Can We Bring" in the back of my head. As I thought about the gift that God gives to us in Jesus, I began to think about our calling as the body of Christ to continue to offer that same gift to the world. Using traditional Advent themes as well as the stories of the Christmas season, I continue to reflect on the gifts that we are meant to bring to the world.

On the third Sunday of Advent, we celebrate the gift of joy. Using the Magnificat (Luke 1:47-55), Mary's song in response to the news that she will be the mother of God-with-us, we reflect on a joy that is not for ourselves alone, but a joy that is meant for all peoples in all times and places.

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Mary’s song is one of my favorite gifts here in the first chapter of Luke. Mary has been visited by the angel who has told her that she has been chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. Even in the approach of the angel, we see the first inkling of Mary’s strength and wisdom.

Before she hears anything else, she ponders the angel’s greeting. She is obviously aware of the holy texts. She knows that angels don’t just show up to random people. There is a reason this angel has shown up to her. She has been chosen for something. And she likely has some idea of how difficult that task will be based on the history of her people. And she is perplexed because she can't believe she would be chosen for anything important.

What Gift Can We Bring: Hope

Inspired by the hymn, "What Gift Can We Bring," I continue to reflect on our call as Christians to continue to offer the gift of Jesus to the world. As we travel through Advent and Christmas and consider the gift that God has given us in Jesus, how do we continue to offer those gifts to the world?

For the second Sunday of Advent, we frequently pair John the Baptist with the theme of Hope. This year, we read the story from the Gospel of Matthew (see Matthew 3:1-12) as we weigh the connection between judgement and hope.

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On the second Sunday of Advent, we often hear from the prophets and from John the Baptist. And because of the ones who are speaking we often hear words of judgement. So it may at first seem ironic that the second Sunday of Advent is often the Sunday of Hope.

This is especially true when we look at John the Baptist. He is out in the wilderness preaching the coming of God’s kingdom. He is wearing clothes made of camel’s hair and eating locusts. I imagine he was also rather unkempt and dirty. Chances are he would be run out of any church he happened to wander into today.

What Gift Can We Bring: Peace

I was inspired this summer by a question asking how we can better connect the call to love God and others that has been central to worship here with the needs of our local community. It got me thinking about the Advent and Christmas seasons when we focus our attention on the gift of Jesus.

Inspired by the hymn, What Gift Can We Bring, and this question related to the mission of the church, I asked myself the question, how are we, as the body of Christ, still a gift to the world today? This inspired me to flip my focus in Advent this year. Rather than simply looking forward with expectation to the gift that God has given to us, I began to wonder how we as the church continue to make those gifts visible still today.

Drawing on the traditional themes of Advent (Peace, Hope, Joy, and Love) and the themes of Grace and Faith present in the season of Christmas, we will reflect this season on how we as the body of Christ continue to make these gifts known in our communities. On this first Sunday of Advent, we use the prophet Isaiah (see Isaiah 2:1-5) to help us reflect on the gift of God's peace.