Grace, peace, and mercy to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, and from the Holy Spirit who unites us in faith. Amen.

If you are playing trivia and you hear the question, “How many of the four Christian gospels include the story of Jesus’ birth?” the only answer you will receive credit for is two: Matthew and Luke. However, that answer is not entirely true. John’s gospel also includes an account of the birth of Christ. In what is referred to as the Prologue of John, we hear:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Prologue of John is the story of the birth of the Christ – the second person of the Trinity – otherwise known as the Word. The Christ is the divine person who has always been in relationship to God the Father. The Christ is the animating presence of the Creator God. The Christ has always been; but when God created the universe, the Christ became incarnate in creation. The Christ is the Big Bang and Genesis’ creation poem – the beginning of the creation of the billions-year-old universe. This is the first incarnation.

Incarnation literally means “enfleshment,” or the “meat-ing” of God. As long as there has been a physical universe, God has been present in it through the Christ. Every tree, drop of water, dinosaur, blade of grass, oxygen molecule, insect, every cell, and every single person who has ever lived exists and is sustained through the Christ force. Everything and everyone is holy because everything and everyone is an incarnation of God the Christ. This truth is one of the great gifts passed down to us from our Hebrew faith ancestors.

So, what then of Jesus? What makes this one person in human history so significant?

Let me ask a question, have you ever known something but forgotten it? Or not just forgotten it, but forgotten that you ever once knew it? Please tell me this happens to someone besides me. Every day I wander into a room and just stand there for a minute or two trying to figure out the reason why I entered. Similarly, my bookcases are filled with books that I have actually read, but if you picked one randomly and asked me to explain it, I am certain I would not be able to do so. My wife or my parents will start telling a story about something that happened and claim that I was there, but I rarely recall the story exactly the way they tell it. Sometimes I can not remember being part of the story at all. This happens to you too, right?

This phenomenon, on a global scale, is what necessitated the second incarnation – the enfleshment of the Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was born to help the first incarnation (i.e., all of creation, including us) remember the truth of our existence – that we, too are vessels of the divine, lovers of truth, and harbingers of grace and love.

Today a rapidly increasing population around the world would agree with the sentiment, “I love Jesus, but I hate the church.” Jesus, it seems, is just as popular, relevant, and attractive as ever. This is because as much as the church has mucked things up through every abysmal and immoral behavior imaginable, the church can never completely extinguish the truth that Jesus revealed.

Jesus was born to remind all people of our divine connection with God, one another, and all of creation. That is a message people want to hear because it confirms what God has put into their hearts and minds from the very beginning. People love Jesus because Jesus reminds us that our lives are good, meaningful, full of potential, and abounding in grace. In Jesus all of creation is reunited with a God it longed for but had grown distant from.

Nothing I can say this evening can fully express what it feels like to be reintroduced and reunited with the God who created you and loves you forever. I do, however, have something to show you that will depict just what God was up to with the second incarnation of the Christ. This is a video of a 53 year-old man with Down syndrome being reunited with his 88 year-old father after spending one week apart from one another.

This is just a glimpse of how much God loves you. This video resonates with people because it speaks to our Christ-likeness. The incarnate God in us witnesses moments of beauty in the world and fills our hearts with love. This interaction between a father and son reminds us of why we celebrate Jesus’ birth, why we are restless when we are distant from God, and why we must go out into the world and live realizing that that kind of love is the gift we absolutely must share with God and with all of God’s creation.

May your Christmas be one of reunification with the source and sustainer of all life, truth, love, justice, and hope. Amen; and Merry Christmas.

Luke 21:25-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see, ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down by dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

This is always such a great way to enter the holiday season, isn’t it? The first day of a new worship calendar… the first Sunday of Advent… the first day where we light our candles and are invited to begin waiting, preparing and hoping for all that’s born for us, in Jesus at Christmas, and we get “distress, fainting, fear and foreboding.” But we want more, don’t we? We need more, don’t we? And, while all of this doom and gloom matters – I don’t mean to dismiss it – the point of all of this (everything Jesus is up to and all of this waiting and hoping preparing that comes with these Advent days) it that it gets better. And it reminded me of something.

Almost a decade ago, an author and journalist named Dan Savage started a campaign to help combat the sad, staggering suicide rate for young people who struggle with their sexuality – in our country and around the world.

(Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24, and that LGBTQ youth contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth?)

(Did you know that LGBTQ youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth?)

(Did you know that LGBTQ youth who come from highly unsupportive families are more than 8 (8.4) times as likely to have attempted suicide as LGBTQ peers whose families are more supportive?)

(Did you know that every time an LGBTQ young person is victimized, like through physical or verbal harassment, it more than doubles the likelihood that they will hurt themselves? Every time … which means the effect of that kind of bullying is cumulative in a sad, terrifying way.)

Anyway, the campaign I was talking about – that made me think of Advent – is called, “The It Gets Better Project,” and it is a beautiful thing and a holy work and it’s almost as simple as it sounds. The creators started out by asking celebrities of all kinds to share their own personal “It Gets Better Stories.” Some of them you might expect – or could guess would play along – people like Ellen DeGeneres, Lady Gaga, Neil Patrick Harris and Chaz Bono. Other contributors might surprise you, like Stephen Colbert, President Obama, Drew Brees, Larry King, and Tom Hanks. Even our own Bishop at the time, Mark Hanson, got in on the action.

The point of the project is simply to do what Dan Savage, the creator, wished he could have done for some of the young people he learned had died by suicide after being bullied so much and because they were so desperate. He believed that if he could have had just 5 minutes to bend their ear, if he could have had just 5 minutes to tell them, no matter how bad or how hard or how sad things were, that it would get better for them eventually; that then they might have had hope enough to stick it out.

He believed that if he could point to himself and others like him – grown, successful, happy, fulfilled adults who had struggled and suffered in similar ways – that they could serve as living proof that it really can and really does get better – that your school and your hometown, that your neighborhood and your Church (too much of the time), that your family and friends, even – don’t have to be forever; or bully you forever; or bring you down forever, or break your spirit forever.

And, as beautiful and as needed and as holy and as clever as I think “The It Gets Better Project” is, you and I both know you don’t have to be a kid, or LGBT or Q, or bullied or picked on or suicidal to need a reminder every once in awhile that “It Gets Better.” And I think that’s something like what Jesus is up to in today’s Gospel. I think that’s what these Advent days of waiting and hoping and preparing are all about for us.

Jesus says there will be signs… there will be distress among nations… there will be confusion about the roaring of the seas. He says there will be fear and foreboding and that the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And he promises this to each and every one of us – without exception. And it’s enough to make you wonder, “What’s wrong?” Or, “What’s next?” Or, “What’s the point?” And “Why bother?”

And I think those are good questions. The world around us is a hard, harsh place to be a lot of the time. I’m am actually scared about the roaring of the sea and the waves. I’m worried about the political divide in our own country and the very real distress among the nations of our world. I’m concerned about all of the sickness and struggle on our prayer list. And I know enough to be curious and concerned, too, about all the things that don’t even make that list. It’s tempting to believe that not much has changed since Jesus did his thing on the planet.

But Jesus did do his thing on the planet – and that means everything has changed; everything is changed; everything will be changed by the hope with which we are called to wait in these days. Everything will be changed by the hope for which we are called to wait. And that really is Jesus’ point this morning – and our hope for Advent, in Christ’s coming.

He says, “raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Stand tall. Hold fast. And he talks about trees that sprout leaves as signs and reminders that summer is near; as signs and promises that change is coming. And he uses that as an example for us that the same is true for what God is up to in the world. We’re meant to live with hope in the belief that God is always up to something among us.

And with the coming of Jesus we’re supposed to begin waiting and watching and working for God’s purpose among us. We are meant to see just how far God is willing to go for the sake of healing and love and redemption: the Creator of the world would go as far as a manger in Bethlehem; the Son of God would go as far as a cross on Calvary; the Messiah of all things would go as far as a tomb outside of Jerusalem, even – all so we would know, so we would trust, so we would hope, so we would share the news that nothing can separate us from that kind of grace, for us and for the sake of the world.

In these Advent days – in the midst of the darkness and struggle and sadness that may surround us more often than we’d like to admit – we are called to hope and pray and live as though the kingdom of God is just around the corner, that the Kingdom of God is already among us, really … that it has, that it does, that it will always get better, thanks to the new life that comes in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.