Text: Luke 2:1-20 I grew up with parents who loved Christmas. And I am married to someone who loves Christmas. Yet, the way that Jennell and I experienced Christmas morning as children were light years apart. I was the youngest of two sons and inexplicably while my older brother slept and snored on the night of Christmas Eve, I stood on Christmas watch. Finally, after several false starts when I was summarily sent back to my room until a decent hour, Dad’s blinding bright mov

Text: John 1:1-5 The Presbyterian pastor and novelist, Frederick Buechner sends us this Christmas gift: “The young clergyman and his wife do all the things you do on Christmas Eve. They string the lights and hang the ornaments. They supervise the hanging of the stockings. They tuck in the children. They lug the presents down out of hiding and pile them under the tree. “Just as they're about to fall exhausted into bed, the husband remembers his neighbor's sheep. The man asked

Texts: Micah 4:2-3; 5:2-5b The first carol I can ever remember singing as a child is “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” At that young age, I had never been to Bethlehem. I didn’t even know where it was, but I loved the word pictures it painted as I sang. Not until many years later did I learn that Phillips Brooks wrote this carol for children at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Philadelphia after he returned from a pilgrimage to Bethlehem in 1865. Even prior to the Covid pand

Text: Luke 3:7-18 Holidays make me nostalgic. Remember the good ole days when we did not have a collection of masks and bottles of hand sanitizer in our homes, littering our cars, and awaiting us at the entrance to the church? Remember the good ole days when we did not think twice about going to a movie theater or to a crowded concert or sitting inside a restaurant or attending a Christmas party and singing carols at the top of our lungs? Remember the good ole days when we de

Text: Luke 1:67-80; 3:1-6 The weekly Advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love do not align well with our world. Today, we lit the Advent candle of peace and then heard words of peace that were set in a time of incredible violence and crushing political oppression. For most of my life, “peace” has been followed by two words “through strength.” The age-old script is simple enough. The way to achieve more peace is through more violence, more arms, more war. It is the same age