Sermon for January 5, 2025

 January 5, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

John 1:1-18

On Friday, I invited two friends to come to my house to cut out stars, to enjoy some cookies, and to be together.  You might be feeling some pity towards me right now, that my idea of fun is to cut paper into star shapes with my friends.  But of course, the advantage to paper cutting and cookie eating is that we can also have great conversation.

One of my friends talked about a retreat that she led, where one woman asked why God doesn’t speak to us the way God once did.  My retreat leader friend asked the group of 100 women to raise their hands if they had ever felt God speaking to them in some way.  About half raised their hands.  Then she asked how many of them had ever told anyone about the experience.  Most hands went down.  

As we think about stories of God speaking to us, we might be on the look out for burning bushes or angel choirs.  But as I think back to our collection of Gospel texts in recent weeks, I’m struck by the variety of ways that God does speak to us.  Let’s consider our readings from Advent to Christmas.  Before we move away from our Advent to Christmas journey, let’s look back, to see the types of crucial information that we’ve been given, to think about the ways that God might be communicating, and how we can train ourselves to pay attention.

Think back to that first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when we gathered to hear the apocalyptic message about signs in the sun, moon, and stars, about people fainting with fear.  It’s interesting to look back to see what all has happened geopolitically since then.  Take, for example, the fall of the dictator of Syria—should we be fainting with fear or will this be a new opportunity for peace?  Is this a sign of redemption drawing near?

I am not a person who sees God speaking to us in terms of geopolitical developments like this one or any other.  But I do see the value in using these upheavals to remind ourselves of what the Gospel lesson of the first Sunday of Advent told us:  stay awake, because the day of redemption draws near.  We live in a time where it may seem that geopolitical turmoil is the only constant across the world, and we might get used to this background noise of governments overturned, civilians slaughtered.  Let us use the news to remind us to stay alert, to pray, and not to let all the news of world events weigh us down.

As we think back to our Advent time together, we might remember the Gospel readings focused on John the Baptist, who preached a message of metanoia, of turning around, of renouncing the lives we had been leading.  Does God still deliver messages through fiery prophets like John the Baptist?  Certainly.  But in our world where more and more people can find a megaphone, it can be hard to discern if we’re hearing the voice of God or someone who wants us to turn our lives upside down for reasons that will ultimately lead us away from God as we turn to more and more distractions.

By the end of Advent, we found ourselves in communities very different from the wilderness where we traveled to hear John the Baptist.  The fourth Sunday of Advent reminded us of the importance of intergenerational community, of new life in unlikely wombs and the ways that believers young and old need each other to help discern how God is speaking.  That need didn’t end with Elizabeth and Mary, and it didn’t end when Jesus entered the world to become flesh.  God still speaks to us through our communities, through friends and mentors, through the lives well lived that shine as examples for us.

Christmas Eve tells us of the reason for all this watching and waiting—the kingdom of God, breaking into the world.  Shepherds hear the angel’s message, and they don’t deliberate about what to do next.  They go to see the wondrous event.  Some of us will get this kind of message from God—we will hear of something amazing happening, and we will go and see.  Some of us will stay by the manger, pondering these things in our hearts.

Epiphany reminds us that God’s message may come in small ways that are easy to miss.  It would be hard to miss an angel visitation or an angel choir—but many did.  However God’s message to the magi comes in the form of a new star.  They are the ones who hear this message because they are the ones who have been studying the sky, keeping watch at night.  They know that something new has appeared.  Epiphany reminds us of the need to raise our eyes from the minutiae that can consume us, the need to stay alert as we study the expanse of what we don't fully understand, as we appreciate the mystery. 

It’s a delicate balance, all these ways of being alert and awake.  Some of us have been trained to keep our heads down so that we don’t attract the attention of those who would harm us.  And yet, if we do that, we may miss seeing those on the margins or in the wilderness, like John the Baptist who call us to new ways of being true, of returning to the life of flourishing that God intends for each and everyone of us.  If we keep our heads down, we may miss out on the connections that we can make within our families and communities that will help us discern the path that can lead us to a more authentic life with God.  If we keep our heads down, we may miss the angel and star shaped messengers that tell us that God is still at work in the world, doing a new thing.

The star you hold in your hand may not be giving you the message you hoped to hear.  Is it the message that you need?  Or do you want to pick your own star?  If you want to sift through other messages and choose a new star, that’s fine.  Discernment between choices can work that way too.  Or maybe you don’t want a word at all.  Maybe you’d prefer this angel made of scraps of cloth and foil to carry with you into the new year.

Wise people year after year are led by that steady voice that tells them to look where they haven't found success before or to keep looking even when it seems futile. Wise people are the ones that find a way to ignore what the world tells them should be important, who stake out their part of the sky to watch and to wait.  

As we prepare to leave our Advent to Epiphany journey, the message I hear is one of God reaching out to humanity, again and again, as we see in today’s Gospel, God becoming flesh and moving into the neighborhood, as Eugene Patterson puts it in his translation, “The Message.”  In the last six weeks, we’ve seen God use different ways to communicate in the hopes that something penetrates and gets through.  God still works this way today.  Maybe it’s geopolitical change that gets our attention or terrorist attacks or other types of death.  Maybe it’s something different in the natural world.  Maybe we will hear God in the voice of a fiery prophet or in the greeting of a family member.  Maybe we will find God as we ponder our impossible blessings and try to make sense of it all.  Maybe God’s voice will come in a majestic form, like an angel choir, or in something smaller, a yearning that can no longer be ignored.

And of course, our Advent to Epiphany journey reminds us that all along the way, God will try a new way of reaching out.  Those of us who are watching, waiting, listening, staying open—we will be more likely to be the ones to greet God, our God, who longs to gather us back from all the ways we have been in exile.

To hear the preached version of this sermon, go to this post on my YouTube channel.