First Sunday after Christmas – December 29, 2013

By Bruce G. Epperly

Today’s readings describe incarnational encounters. God is present in Jesus, and God continues to communicate with us through the life and teachings of Jesus, the Christian movement, and our human and non-companions on planet Earth. The Christmas season is a continual reminder that God is with us, sharing in our joy and sorrow, moving through ordinary life and providing insights and intuitions when we are in greatest need of them.

Isaiah continues the Advent-Christmas theme of divine initiative and responsiveness to humankind and the created world. God comes to us directly, the prophet claims, without the mediation of others. God doesn’t need messengers to convey God’s will, although prophets are often sent to share divine wisdom and challenge. God is with us in the here and now. History reflects God’s intentionality. Narratives of God’s incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth and in Jewish history, however, raise questions of divine communication and the ways we might experience God in our lives. If God comes to us directly, what are the media of divine communication? Does God directly speak to us or provide insights, intuitions, and dreams? Does God come to us through our encounters with others? How do we know that our experiences of the divine reflect divine intentionality rather than personal self-interest? Does our perspective and life experience shape the nature of divine revelation as well as our descriptions of it?

While process theology doesn’t fully address the nature of our experiences of God, process theology’s understanding of divine ubiquity suggests the following: 1) God comes to us each moment in terms of possibilities for actualization and the energy to achieve these possibilities, 2) God comes to us in our experiences of institutional and personal transformation, 3) we experience God meditated through our encounters with other persons, 4) God inspires us to share God’s possibilities with others, and 5) all revelatory experiences are understood concretely and contextually and reveal as much about ourselves as they reveal about God.

Psalm 148 describes a world of praise. Process thinkers describe the universality of experience through terms such as “panexperientialism” and “panpsychism.” All things can praise God because all things – human and non-human – are touched by God subjectively, from the inside out as well as from the outside in. Psalm 148 reminds us of Paul’s hymn of the Spirit in Romans 8: God is present in the groaning of creation and our own yearnings; God is revealed in the sighs too deep for words within us and the sighs of all creation. The universe reflects a dynamic call and response at every level. Although we have defaced creation and ourselves, we still live in an enchanted universe in which all things reveal the movements of God’s Spirit.

The Letter of Hebrews anticipates the Orthodox Christian doctrine of “theosis,” or divinization. We can grow in grace and share in Christ’s divinity because Christ transformed humankind through the incarnation. Christ saves us by becoming one of us and experiencing the world from our perspective. God became human so we might become divine; Christ lived through every stage of life, thus making every stage of life holy. While patripassianism, the belief that the Father suffered while Christ as one the cross was judged as heretical by those who held to doctrines of divine perfection and apathy, Hebrews proclaims that truly Christ suffers. Christ experiences our pain; God feels our pain and is truly the fellow sufferer who understands. Christ invites concrete persons to holiness, not ahistorical abstractions. God’s experience of our world is fundamental to divine revelation. In sharing our lives, God lures us toward full humanity, and the glory of God in human history.

The Gospel reading needs to be rated “R” for violent content. The insightful pastor would do well only to read Matthew 2:13-15 if young children are present, as they often are on the “low Sunday” after Christmas, a Sunday when church school is often canceled. The slaughter of the innocents is graphic in its violence, and sadly we are not unfamiliar with such images of death and destruction, whether by terrorist actions, ethnic violence, school shootings, or impersonal drone attacks. Institutions, like persons, are ambiguous: they can do much good in the world; they can also wreak violence on innocent children. Military instruments such as drones, intended to reduce innocent suffering, become instruments that destroy families. As we ponder the killing of toddlers in Bethlehem, we are forced to our own examination of conscience as individuals and citizens. In what ways are we, through the actions of our lawmakers and political leaders, harming children? Where do government policies or business practices put families at risk?

In the Gospel reading, we catch a glimpse of the members of the Holy Family running for their lives. Joseph, Jesus, and Mary are political refugees, immigrants (similar to today’s legal and illegal immigrants) depending solely on the kindness of strangers. Their flight reminds us of our responsibility to today’s immigrants. Regardless of their legal status, they are God’s beloved children who deserve our compassion and support.

The first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel are filled with life transforming dreams: Joseph chooses to stay with pregnant Mary as a result of an angelic message in a dream; the magi have a dream that warns them to return home without reporting to Herod; Joseph is warned to leave Bethlehem; another dream inspires Joseph to return home.

God comes to us in many ways. We need to take time to pause, notice, and then respond to the many media of divine revelation that emerge each and every day.

Bruce Epperly is Pastor of South Congregational Church, Centerville, MA. on Cape Cod. He is the author of nearly thirty books, including his most recent books, Adventurous Advent: Days of Awe and Wonder and Letters to my Grandson: Gaining Wisdom from a Fresh Perspective. He may be contacted for conversation and engagements at drbruceepperly@aol.com.