Christmastide - Friday, December 27, 2024

Welcome To The Neighborhood

Scripture: John 1:14 (MSG) – “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.  We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

Message: Sometimes it’s helpful to read often-quoted Bible passages in new translations.  That certainly was the case when I recently read the verse quoted above.  As much as I love Christmas with the baby Jesus, angels, little lambs, shepherds, and stars, this passage challenged me to question if I’m not in danger of taming Christmas with sentimentality. 

Think about “the neighborhood” into which the baby Jesus moved.  It certainly wasn’t a warm, posh home but rather a cold, dark stable.  It wasn’t a time of peace, justice, and joy.  Instead it was a time of hardship, sorrow and suffering. 

In an essay published in the New York Times on Christmas Day 2012 entitled: “Having a Hard Christmas?  Jesus Did, Too”, Pastor Tish Harrison Warren wrote, “What astounds me most about the Christmas story is not merely the notion that God became a baby or that God got calluses and cavities, had fingernails and friends and enjoyed good naps and good parties.  Christians proclaim today that God actually took on or assumed our sickness, loneliness and misery.  God knows the depths of human pain not in theory but because he has felt it himself.  From his earliest moments, Jesus would have been considered a nobody, a loser, another overlooked child born into poverty, an ethic minority in a vast, oppressive and seemingly all-powerful empire.”¹   

The story of God “moving into the neighborhood” is the truth of a God who never leaves us alone in our doubt, our desire for truth and justice, our illness, our stress, or our longing for peace and joy and enduring relationships.

Prayer: Lord, thank You that You are able to bring hope through even the toughest of times, strengthening us for Your purposes.  What a blessing to know that You are always with us and will never leave us.   Amen.

Phyllis Klock

1.       “Having a Hard Christmas?  Jesus Did, Too” by Tish Warren Harrison.  2012 © Copyright.  New York Times December 25, 2012.  Partial quotation used by permission of New York Times and Pastor Tish Warren Harrison, Anglican Priest, Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others.
 

Revised: December 09, 2024

Any errors, omissions or non-scriptural thoughts are forgiven by the Grace of God as they were unintentional and done in love.