Begins As Us: Ends As Him
Nicholas Connolly
Pastor of First and Grace United Methodist Churches
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2009
Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-20
The early Christians transformed a pagan festival of the sun returning to the north, into a celebration of the Sun of Righteousness coming to the world. Have we come full circle? With the diversity of faith expressions and being politically correct, we are back into simply having this time of year be a warm, festival of light, losing the sense of "holy day" in "holiday." Perhaps we might take the usual greeting at this time into, "Happy Holy Days," or "Holy Happy Days"! Like a black hole that sucks light into itself, so does the worldly, consumerist culture suck light back to itself. If we are to be agents of radiating light, then we are to take seriously the powerful assertion of Jesus in Mathew 5:14, "You are the light of the world."
God in Jesus has come to us at our very beginnings-conception and birth-while taking us to God's end-resurrection after sharing in the death that apparently ends our lives.
It's time for all the doing of the Christmas season to cease and to begin to allow God do some doing. It's like a cog railroad, that runs from what is moving beneath it. God's grace and energy moves beneath us wishing to take us to where God what like to lead us. By letting go and allowing God to move, we find ourselves appreciating the old time Greyhound commercial "Sit back and leave the driving to Us!"
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