Month: December 2025

Homily for December 24, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 2:1-20.

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This is the time of year when people travel great distances to visit the people that they love. In today’s world, do we really have to travel? Most of us carry around a little device that enables us to communicate with our family and friends any time. We can text them, we can email them, we can send them pictures, we can call them, we can even have a video chat. Any time at all. We can keep in touch with people both near and far through social media, people who share common interests and goals in life or people who are dear to us.

But there is something special about physical presence. The way we communicate is not really captured by phones or computers. In one study, only 7% of human communication was the words that were spoken, another 38% was tone of voice, and the other 55% was through body language. We’ve all experienced that text messages and emails are misinterpreted, phone calls are often unsatisfying, and even video calls aren’t good enough.

My general experience since the pandemic has been that texts are OK for specific communication or for casual contact, email is good for transferring information, and phone and video are good for maintaining relationships. But when things get hard or when you’re trying to build a new relationship—in the workplace, in your personal life, or whatever—there is no substitute for physical presence. There is no substitute for being together.

I am privileged to be able to live with the person who means the most to me in the world. Sometimes, Rhonda and I drive each other crazy, but that’s the price to pay for a deep emotional connection. The rest of my family is spread across the country—we are all where we belong, but it’s hard to be separated from everyone. Fortunately, I saw some of them at Thanksgiving and will see the rest of them over the coming week.

I can talk to my friends and family who live far away any time I want to. But I can’t hug them, I can’t share a meal with them, I can’t experience that close bond that only emerges when people are gathered together.

God had the same problem. In Genesis and Exodus, God shared a special closeness with humanity in the Garden of Eden, with Abraham, and with Moses. But for the most part, God could not really be with us. God yearned for the intimacy and emotional closeness that comes with physical presence.

And so, Jesus was born. Jesus was God in the flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus was born like every other human so that he could, so that God could experience the close bond between mother and child. Jesus grew up in a village so that God could experience the rhythms of life. Jesus lived among fishermen and tax collectors and Roman soldiers and Pharisees and all other walks of life so that God could experience the fullness of human relationships.

You can’t really learn about relationships by watching them. I mean, when we watch movies and TV shows, we learn something about the human condition and the way some people relate to one another. But there’s a flatness to those experiences because we aren’t really immersed in the situation. Live theater is better, but there is still a “fourth wall” that separates us from the action.

Jesus came to break that fourth wall, to immerse God in the messiness of human relationships. He came to satisfy God’s yearning for a close relationship with all of humanity.

God the Father was overjoyed at the birth of his son, so what did he do? He told everyone he could. He sent angels with a heavenly proclamation to the shepherds. They announced that today, the Messiah has been born. THE Messiah is the Anointed One, the singular person who ushered in a new age. The angels announced that the new age has begun, that THE Messiah has been born. God the Son has come to dwell among God’s people. God will no longer be satisfied with communicating through prophets. God has chosen to be with humanity to experience the joys and sorrows of this life.

Now, the shepherds could have thought, “Cool, the Messiah was born. But he’s just a baby. I’ll get excited when he starts doing something important, like fighting against the Romans or something.” But they didn’t. The shepherds knew intuitively that Jesus’s birth, the coming of the Messiah, God’s presence on earth, was important. They weren’t satisfied with head knowledge. They weren’t satisfied with information. They needed the transformation that comes with bodily knowledge and physical presence.

As I said, communication from a distance is fine for maintaining a relationship, but not for building one. The shepherds heard the announcement that God’s desire for closeness to humanity was so strong that God the Son came to dwell among us in the flesh. That provoked a desire among the shepherds to reciprocate, to seek that same closeness to God. They wanted to build a relationship with God that was closer than they could ever achieve through prayer.

So they rushed to Bethlehem to find Jesus lying in a manger. I can just picture it: Mary is exhausted from labor, Joseph is proud but overwhelmed with his new responsibilities, and here come some smelly, rough men who have been living with the sheep. But they were transformed first by their encounter with the angels, and then by their encounter with the baby Emmanuel, God With Us, the newborn king sent to change the world.

Jesus was born a king, but what kind of king? Tonight’s readings open with a decree from Caesar Augustus that all should be registered. That’s the kind of king that we are used to: when he says “go,” everyone goes. The Roman Empire, along with every empire before or since, was basically built on the threat of violence. What if Joseph had said that he couldn’t travel to Bethlehem because of Mary’s advanced pregnancy? He probably would have been arrested, flogged, beaten, imprisoned.

Is that what God’s kingdom is like? The same violent methods with different goals? No. God’s kingdom is rich relationships and deep love. God’s angel army came down to proclaim the dawning of the messianic age, armed only with love and joy. Jesus’s life was a testament to reconciliation, bringing people in from the margins to be a part of the community, healing the illnesses and moral wounds that kept them separated. Jesus came so that God could be in relationships that can only be built through physical presence, and to institute a kingdom that would be built on those deep connections.

But having taken on human form, Jesus’s life was finite. Even if he hadn’t been crucified, Jesus’s life would some day come to an end, and then God would no longer be able to have that same physical presence. Yet on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came and energized the early Christians and transformed us into Christ’s body. God can still be present in the world through us. We embody God. We are Emmanuel.

And so, we gather this evening. We have heard the proclamation that a child has been born to establish a kingdom of love, a kingdom of reconciliation, a kingdom of rich relationships, a kingdom of abundant life, a kingdom of joy, a kingdom of universal flourishing. We heard God’s proclamation, and so we come to be present with our newborn king. But remember that Jesus was already born 2000 years ago, and so we can encounter God’s presence any time we want. We can communicate with God any time we want, through prayer. But often, that’s about as satisfying as a phone call—good enough to keep a relationship going, but not to build one.

Building a relationship requires coming together, sharing a physical presence. Eating together. Laughing together, crying together. Sharing your lives. Jesus of Nazareth died two millennia ago, but Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. He lives on in his people. Whenever we encounter someone whom God loves, we can encounter God’s real presence. Who does God love? Everyone. Everyone. Everyone you meet can be your connection to God’s divine presence. The people gathered in God’s name are God’s divine presence. The poor, the homeless, the prisoner, the outcast—they are God’s divine presence.

So tonight, welcome into God’s presence. May your eyes be opened to God’s presence in each person you meet, here tonight, as you go to your home or travel to far-off places, and each day as you encounter God’s beloved people in every walk of life. And may your lives be enriched with fulfilling relationships with God’s people, and through them, with the God who desires a deep and loving relationship with you. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 21, 2025, Fourth Sunday of Advent. Based on Isaiah 7:10-16.

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Let me start by reviewing where we are and what we’re doing. I’m working through the Old Testament texts this year, and in Advent, that means Isaiah. Isaiah was one of the major prophets. He lived and prophesied in Judah, particularly Jerusalem, during the eighth century BCE. The major regional power at the time was Assyria, who ultimately conquered the northern kingdom of Israel but fell short of conquering Jerusalem.

Today’s passage takes place about 15 years before Assyria invaded Israel and Aram. Still, the threat of a major superpower drove Israel and Aram to invade Judah. The “two kings” that Isaiah mentioned near the end of the passage were King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah of Israel. Ahaz was the king of Judah.

So that was the original context of Isaiah’s prophecies. But the hallmark of true prophecy is that it speaks to both the present conditions and eternal truths.

George Orwell was an English writer who lived in the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, which most of you have probably read or at least know in broad outlines. Animal Farm is a fable best read as an allegory for the rise of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. 1984 addresses totalitarianism more broadly. Published in 1949, it speaks to the motivations and methods of totalitarian regimes like the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and other fascists that emerged in the 1920s and ‘30s. He was writing specifically about the conditions that led to World War II and that continued in other forms after the war. 1984 is a cautionary tale that may have helped the English-speaking world reject fascism in the early days of the Cold War. And yet, it still speaks to us today. Orwell’s dystopia included secret police, media control, words and concepts that were not allowed to be discussed, and widespread government surveillance—features that we can see in authoritarian governments around the world.

A decade later, the Civil Rights movement took form in the US. I see Martin Luther King, Jr., as a prophet of the highest order. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail is an excellent rebuttal to moderation in the face of tyranny, and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech continues to inspire millions of Americans. Yet both were fundamentally grounded in the conditions he was experiencing and witnessing all around him. He was speaking specifically to the reality of African-American oppression in the 1960s. This grounding, paired with the movement of the Holy Spirit, empowered his words to both inspire his followers and transcend their time and circumstances.

In the same way, Isaiah spoke to his current situation, yet his words live on to speak to our conditions today. Let’s look at his prophecy in its original context. Judah was under attack. The northern kingdom of Israel had partnered with the Syrian kingdom of Aram to invade Judah. Could Judah stand against those two armies? People had fears and doubts.

Isaiah went out to a place sometimes called Fuller’s Field, where laundry was being done or perhaps where new fabric was being washed as the final step in its creation. Ahaz didn’t want a sign, but God gave him one anyway through Isaiah’s words. He said, “This woman will bear a child.” He said that her child would be a sign that God is with us. That is, the armies arrayed against Judah would not be victorious, because God is on our side. How long? How long would Judah suffer under the enemies’ siege? Not long. The baby would be born, and soon after, before he was a toddler who could feed himself and knew right from wrong, the armies would be vanquished.

Yet it would be a false peace, a false prosperity. The baby, and by extension all Judah, would eat curds and honey. That sounds good, right? But perhaps that would be all they had. Perhaps the land would be devastated, and Judah would have to survive on what they could find in the wilderness, or on sour milk. Isaiah was a prophet who mixed hope with doom. He persistently reminded the king and the people of Judah that they would be punished for their iniquities, but that the punishment would be temporary. They would suffer from the devastation caused by the various invading armies, but would ultimately be restored.

Isaiah was largely correct. Oh, he had the timeline a little wrong, but he was correct that Israel and Aram would fail in their invasion, Assyria would fail in their invasion, and Judah would recover and be restored. Yet in other places, he prophesied that the covenant God made with David would be honored for all time and Judah would be an independent, holy nation ruled by David’s descendant. That turned out to be wrong. Judah persisted under David’s dynasty for another 150 years, but then was conquered by Babylon, never to return to its ancient glory.

After the exile ended, Jews were forced to reckon with the failed prophesies of Isaiah and others. They thought that their kingdom would be restored, but they remained a vassal state for hundreds of years. They achieved independence under the Maccabees, but that turned out to also be temporary. By the time of Jesus’s birth, the ancient prophecies could no longer be interpreted as foretelling a regular, worldly kingdom.

So, they re-interpreted Isaiah’s words to predict a different kind of kingdom and a different kind of king. Instead of a regular lower-case ‘m’ messiah, that is, someone anointed to be prophet, priest, or king, a normal thing that happened regularly throughout history, Isaiah and other prophets predicted a Messiah, with a capital M, the Anointed One who would restore the glory of God’s people. There were many different views on just who the Messiah would be and just what he would do. Some still held onto the idea of a worldly kingdom, and so many messianic movements arose to rebel against Roman occupation, all of which ended in bloodshed and destruction.

But others believed that the Messiah would institute a different kind of kingdom. They imagined that the Messiah would rule an eternal kingdom that transcends the evil and iniquity that they saw all around them. Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled this hope. During his life, many people thought he would lead a messianic movement like the others and rise up against Rome. Yet Jesus did none of that. He preached peace and reconciliation. He claimed that his kingdom is “not of this world.” He taught self-denial, forgiveness, and mutual support. He raised up the lowly and marginalized while chastising the rich and powerful.

Jesus was Emmanuel—a sign that God is with us, and God’s actual presence in the world. He was born in a time of turmoil to remind us all of God’s true nature. He was born in humble circumstances to remind us that Christ comes to us in the mundane, in the poor and oppressed, in those who live on the margins. He lived a simple life to remind us that we are promised abundant LOVE, not material abundance. He lived a life of service to demonstrate our call to mutual submission, serving and being served so that everyone can flourish. He died as he lived, a man of peace who refused to take up arms against those who rejected him. And he rose from the dead to demonstrate God’s transcendent power to conquer all of the sin and death of this world.

And yet, he did not come on clouds of glory to purge the world of evil and wickedness, as Daniel predicted. Instead, he ascended to heaven. Yet, he is still Emmanuel. Jesus Christ is still with us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, poured out upon his followers on the day of Pentecost and flowing through us all even now, two millennia later.

Jesus of Nazareth was a man who lived and died at the dawn of the common era, in an oppressed region of one of history’s greatest empires, a victim of the united forces of religious and government leaders who saw his message of hope, love, and equality before God as a threat to their power. Jesus Christ conquered sin and death and rules an eternal kingdom of peace, love, and reconciliation.

Yet we look around, and see that actually, the world order looks more like Rome’s empire of oppression than like Christ’s kingdom of love. What does that mean to us as Christians? Some say, in essence, that we need to fight fire with fire. The world is harsh and governed through power, so the church needs to be harsh and achieve power to impose our will on the world. But that is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught.

Instead, Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed: something small that grows and flourishes into something great. The kingdom of God is established not by force, but by persistent love. Not by vanquishing our enemies, but by reconciling with them. Not by destroying the wicked, but by healing them.

Christ ascended into heaven, leaving his Church to be his body. WE are Emmanuel. We are God’s presence in the world, a sign that God will always be with humanity. In fact, we are the only sign most people see. If someone is in crisis and looking for a sign that God still cares about them, the work that we do as a church may be that sign. Whether they are homeless or hungry, or grieving or in emotional turmoil, or striving to make a better life in the face of oppressive systems arrayed against them, we can be God’s presence in their lives and demonstrate that indeed God does care about them, that indeed God will provide for them and support their flourishing. We can be God’s hands and feet in the world, seeking those in need and doing God’s work, if only we see with God’s eyes.

Yet too often, we are like King Ahaz. We don’t really want to see with God’s eyes. Today’s passage opens with Isaiah challenging Ahaz to ask for a sign. Ahaz says that he won’t put God to the test, a disingenuous claim that reveals his faithlessness and his desire to trust his own wisdom instead of putting his faith in God. Isaiah reminds him that God is present whether we acknowledge Them or not.

We are all like Ahaz sometimes. We know what we want to do, and we don’t want God interfering in our plans. We don’t want to hear that we should leave a job that provides financial security at the cost of our soul. We don’t want to hear the cries of the poor and oppressed, who God desires that we would care for. We don’t want to know anything that might mean that we have to change the way we live, or who is in our life, or how we worship, or anything else. Change is hard—it’s so much easier to just keep doing something unsatisfying or even emotionally or physically draining than to listen for what God is calling us to do.

Or sometimes, we’re like Jonah. Ahaz tried to avoid hearing God’s will altogether. Jonah heard God’s calling loud and clear, and said “NO!” So often, we know what God wants us to do, but like a toddler we say, “NO I DON’T WANNA!” Change is hard, so even when we clearly know what God wants, we avoid doing it.

In one of the commentaries, I read, “When the church veers off in a direction of its own choosing, when it puts even survival ahead of God’s will, the path becomes murky.” We see that in practically every church and every denomination, with just a few exceptions. PC(USA) is losing members at a pretty good clip. Since our denomination was created in 1984, our total membership has declined from 3.1 million to 1.1 million. From 1984 to 2000, we averaged a decline of about 2% per year. Since 2000, the decline has just accelerated. Now we’re averaging more than 4% annual decline. I read a recent article that showed pretty much every Protestant denomination following the same trend, with only Assemblies of God and PCA actually growing. Even the Southern Baptist Convention has been declining since about 2008. What’s going on? I think we have collectively chosen comfort over looking for God’s signs and looking for ways to follow where Christ is leading.

Christmas is our annual reminder that Christ came to Earth to show us what it means to seek God’s will, to follow God’s signs, to live as God’s people. Jesus set an impossible standard, one that we can never achieve, but one to which we should always aspire. We are called to watch for God’s actions in the world and watch for ways to participate in the emergence of God’s kingdom. Whether we want a sign or not, God sends them to show us how best to support human flourishing.

Since Christ ascended and sent the Holy Spirit to energize us, we have been made living signs of God’s presence in the world. I leave you now with the famous words authored by Teresa of Ávila, a famous Christian mystic who reformed the Carmelite monastic order in the 16^th century:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Teresa of Ávila

Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 7, 2025, the Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Isaiah 11:1-10.

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Before we get into today’s text, let’s review a few things I said last week. Isaiah was a prophet in the 8^th century BCE, the same time as Micah, Amos, and Hosea. The Assyrians were on the warpath, ultimately conquering Israel but falling short of conquering Judah. In this tumultuous period, Isaiah preached against the injustice that he saw in the Judean society, while looking forward to a time when they would beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. He spoke of shalom, peace, wholeness—the way things ought to be.

So now on to today’s lesson. We all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong that is based on a deep-seated emotion: disgust. Disgust is basically a sensed violation of our boundaries. The most fundamental level of disgust relates to the things that should be outside our body versus the things that should be inside our body. That’s why sewers are disgusting, open wounds are disgusting, rotten food is disgusting, and so forth. Disgust is the solution to what has been called the omnivore’s dilemma. Humans can eat “everything,” by which I mean we eat both plants and animals. But which plants are good and which are bad? Which animals, or which parts of animals, are good and which are bad? Disgust helps us to choose, and was critical for early proto-humans 100,000 years ago. If you are too sensitive, you might miss out on the only food available and starve to death. If you are not sensitive enough, you might eat contaminated food, get sick, and die. Disgust is fundamentally related to keeping contaminants out.

But humans are adept at converting a literal, practical tool into an abstract idea. If you read the Torah with disgust in mind, you’ll see that it’s lurking behind much of the Law of Moses. Kosher laws are mostly about disgust—which foods are “clean,” and which are not. Many of the laws around sexuality are based on disgust. Then there are rules about who is acceptable in the holy community and who is not—abstract extensions of the disgust principle.

The way disgust works is most obvious in the rules around leprosy. If you came in contact with someone leprous, you “caught” the uncleanness. So too if you touch a dead body or various bodily fluids. A clean person becomes contaminated by contact with someone or something unclean. There is no safe dose of uncleanness—the smallest amount contaminates the whole. We are wired to keep out contaminants, including people who “contaminate” God’s holy people.

It wasn’t until I read about disgust that I really understood the difference between an honor-shame culture, like ancient Israel, and an innocence-guilt culture. Shame is related to disgust. If you experience a boundary violation, you are disgusted, and so you incur shame. That’s why rape victims incur shame in so many cultures—not guilt, because they didn’t do anything wrong, but shame because they were unwilling participants in something disgusting. Shame and disgust are deep-seated emotions. By contrast, guilt is a cerebral notion, which relates to fear rather than shame.

Today’s lesson starts with a discussion of a righteous judge, one who renews the Davidic covenant to rule God’s people with justice. I already read the opening from the NRSVue translation, which is very good and the main translation I use. But I often consult the New English Translation, or NET, which has a slightly different philosophy and copious translator notes. Here are the first few verses from NET:

11 A shoot will grow out of Jesse’s root stock,

a bud will sprout from his roots.

2 The Lord’s Spirit will rest on him—

a Spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom,

a Spirit that provides the ability to execute plans,

a Spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord.

3 He will take delight in obeying the Lord.

These are some very different fruits of the Spirit. Paul wrote that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But Isaiah wrote that some fruits of the Spirit are EXTRAORDINARY wisdom, the ability to execute plans, and absolute loyalty to the LORD. Wow! That’s fantastic! I feel like Paul’s list is more internally focused, dealing with the heart, but Isaiah’s list emphasizes God’s action in the world. Like the ability to execute plans—which plans? Ones that come from extraordinary wisdom and loyalty to the LORD.

Jesus was this tender shoot that sprang from the stump of Jesse, on whom the Spirit of the LORD rested, a Spirit of extraordinary wisdom. Jesus was a doer, not just a talker. He spent his brief ministry traveling far and wide, healing people wherever he went.

But not just healing them—restoring them. Think about the times Jesus healed lepers. Under the Law of Moses, when Jesus touched a leper, Jesus became unclean. The uncleanness of the leper would spread to anyone who came in contact with them. But Jesus operated against disgust, against contamination. A book I’m reading right now calls this eucontamination, where “eu” means “good.” Rather than the disgusting uncleanness contaminating the clean, Jesus’s purity cleansed what was disgusting.

We see this again and again throughout the Gospels. Remember that certain people are considered unclean, too. But Jesus ate with them, with tax collectors and sinners. He let a sinful woman anoint his feet. Again and again, we read about scribes and Pharisees chastising Jesus for violating the boundary between clean and unclean, between pure and disgusting. But in His wisdom, Jesus demonstrated that His purity overcomes all uncleanness. Jesus purified and sanctified anyone who came in contact with him. His goodness and love are like a reverse contaminant, a eucontaminant that pushes out all uncleanness. Just as a small amount of something disgusting can ruin something good, it only takes a little bit of Jesus’s purity to purify those who are touched by Him.

There are plenty of metaphors for disgust, so I thought I should develop one for eucontamination. Consider a group of people all washing their hands. One option is to have a large bowl of water. Now, how many people need to wash their hands before you would question the wisdom of sticking your hands in the bowl? Just thinking about it makes me a little queasy. I guess it depends on the people, but regardless, once someone gets their hands clean in it, the water is dirty, right? Maybe a little bit dirty, maybe a lot, but I don’t really want someone else’s dirt on my hands. That’s the logic of disgust, the logic of contamination and uncleanness.

The other option is a sink with running water. As the clean water flows over your hands, all of the dirt and grime flow down the drain. Your uncleanness does not spread up through the tap to the source. The source remains clean and pure no matter how many people are washed by it. Everything disgusting is washed away.

So too, God’s abundant grace cleanses us all. Justice rolls down like water. Righteousness is an ever-flowing stream. The river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Nothing we do can pollute the stream. Nothing we do is too disgusting for God’s grace to wash away. Nothing, nobody, is ultimately unclean in God’s holy kingdom. Not because anything or anyone is kept out, but because all who enter God’s kingdom are cleansed by God’s abundant grace.

This is the Peaceful Kingdom that Isaiah described. A righteous, equitable judge—our Lord and Savior—will rule over it. At His command, wickedness will be cast out. What’s left will be complete reconciliation. No longer will there be predator and prey—the wolf shall live with the lamb, and the calf and the lion will feed together. God’s abundant grace will wash away any fear, any violence, any covetousness that would disrupt relationships. True peace, shalom, will hold sway.

But the kingdom of God is at hand! Today is John the Baptist Sunday—happy Advent, you brood of vipers! Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! John stood in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, preaching that God would separate the good from the bad, the righteous from the evil, the clean from the unclean. He wasn’t wrong, exactly, just a little incomplete. Yes, God will separate the righteous from the evil, but not by casting some people into eternal conscious torment. Rather, the purifying eucontamination of Jesus Christ will purge the evil from everyone and everything, leaving only righteousness. As Solzhenitsyn famously said, the line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart. Jesus’s purifying, sanctifying grace is more powerful than any evil in our hearts, able to purge us of all wickedness so that we are made worthy of entering His peaceful kingdom.

But again, the kingdom of heaven has come near! We are already being purified and sanctified. We are already welcome in God’s eternal kingdom. And we are called to bring others into the kingdom by channeling God’s grace and letting it flow through us and over the world.

We, the Church, are Christ’s body. The logic of contamination and disgust say that we need to keep out the “wrong type” of people. The tax collectors and sinners of our age. We see this logic at work in almost every church, only with different boundaries. Some will say that you’re excluded if you believe the wrong thing. Some will exclude you if you are in the wrong kind of romantic relationship. Some will exclude you if you question authority. Some will exclude you if you vote the wrong way. Some will exclude you if you dress the wrong way, or have tattoos or piercings.

But we are Christ’s body. Who does Christ exclude? Nobody. By God’s grace, we are all purified and made worthy of full inclusion in Christ’s body. Nobody can corrupt our holiness. Nobody can make us “unclean” in Christ’s eyes. And so, our task is to seek those who have been excluded from other manifestations of Christ’s body—other churches in our community or around the world that have drawn boundaries where God does not.

We are channels of God’s grace. We are called to seek those who need to be welcomed in from the margins. We are called to seek those who disgust us, for whatever reason, because they are clean in God’s eyes. We are called to share God’s ever-flowing righteousness and let it wash away all of their shame.

The revolution will not be televised. Prophets are not interested in spectators. Jesus came to call us to action, to transformation of ourselves and the world. We are expected to participate in the flourishing of God’s kingdom, here and now, in each of our hearts, in this church, in our community, and throughout the world. We have been made clean and pure, holy parts of Christ’s body, so that we can do Christ’s work in the world, bringing everyone into God’s eternal, already-but-not-yet kingdom that is emerging among us. Let us seek this day, this Advent season, and all through our lives to share the abundant, ever-flowing grace that has washed over us and that promises total transformation and reconciliation of Creation. Amen.

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