COME TO THE MANGER: SEE GOD by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

Where is God?  Have you asked yourself this question lately?  That is the question I get asked when 20 children and 6 adults get gunned down in an elementary school in Newtown CT on a Friday in December. I am, after all, a pastor. 

People come to me for answers in the midst of grief and chaos. Why did this happen? Why does it keep happening?  Just a few days before we had 2 more victims in a shopping mall in Oregon. In August there was the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. In July the movie theater in Aurora Colorado. 

What is going on here?  There is a pattern. Pretty much every time, a hurting, broken person, often with some sort of mental illness, buys guns, again, often legally, and they kill people. 

And when this happens, we want to know where God is.  Where is God? I am here to tell you, that God is weeping right alongside of us. God is holding the grieving mothers and fathers, the sisters and the brothers of those children & adults. God is sitting with them in their homes, in that empty space once filled by the one who has died. Most of us have been there in that shock and grief of losing someone we loved.  God is there in the shock and horror as they grief. 

God was surely with that brave father of Emilie Parker who went on the news last night and expressed compassion for the shooter. God is with us in our shock and horror, trying to comfort us and give us the strength to get out of bed and face our fears. For those children and teachers, who will eventually have to go back to school at Sandy Hook Elementary School, God will walk with them. It will be scary, but counselors and teachers, parents, pastors & rabbis,  and grandparents will help them. And God will be with them. As we have already seen, we pull together as communities when these unthinkable tragedies strike. 

We are already hearing the stories of amazing courage: the teacher who hid her children and told the shooter her students were at gym class, and saved their lives. Another teacher, who locked herself in a tiny room with her kids and kept telling them that she loved them because if they died she wanted the last thing they heard to be her voice reassuring them that they were loved. Those children were saved. As far as I am concerned, that teacher was the presence of God for those children.  She was the voice of God. 

You see, God does not abandon us. God walks right here with us through these tragedies. I cannot explain why some people die young and some people live to be 100 years old. It appears that these 20 children and 6 adults died because of one of man’s horrible choices. The systems to protect him from himself, and to protect those 26 other people from his choices, broke down. We live in an imperfect world. 

We are in the season of Advent. We are preparing our hearts to receive Jesus, God’s love made real in the world. When Jesus came into the world, some people where threatened by the power of his love. Isn’t that weird? They saw the power of God’s love as a bad thing. You see love causes people to do crazy things. King Herod was really threatened.  He knew that there were prophecies that this baby would be a new King. He did not want a King because he was the King. Herod was crazy with power.

 By our standards, looking back, we would probably call Herod mentally ill. This is what he did. After Jesus was born, Herod wanted to destroy Jesus. So in order to try to get rid of Jesus, Herod ordered that all the boy babies in Bethlehem under the age of 2 be murdered. So his soldiers went through town. They went house to house and killed every little baby boy.  Sounds too much like Newtown, CT.  

Now Mary and Joseph had been warned in a dream about this, and they fled to Egypt just in the nick of time. Jesus was saved. But all those other mother’s babies were killed. Why? Why would Herod do this? Why did the soldiers follow those orders? Why would God let this happen? We are not puppets. God gives us free will to make our own choices. And Herod made a terrible choice. 

In Matthew (Matthew 1:18-24 for those following along on the web) we read these haunting words:

A sound was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and much lament.
Rachel weeping for her children,
    Rachel refusing all solace,
Her children gone,
    dead and buried.

Rachel is weeping for her children in Connecticut today. Our President said it well when he said, “Our hearts our broken.” The collective hearts of our country are broken today. “There is not a parent in this country who did not hug their children a little tighter on Friday night when we put them to bed.” 

          So the people closest to this tragedy need to grieve. They need to care for one another. Parents need to bury the dead. Another town in America will never be the same. A school full of children will have to go back to school at some point. The post traumatic stress will go with them. They will be wrapped in the arms of God. Pastors and rabbis, counselors and others will care for them and they will care for one another. Over time, life will move on.  They will see joy again some day.

We are shocked. Those of us, who are parents, will be a bit shaken for a few days, but soon, we will forget. Life will return to normalcy. We will get busy with our Christmas plans. The news cycle will return to the fiscal cliff, or who will be the next Secretary of State, and the next thing, and for the most part, a school shooting in Newtown, CT will fade into the background.

Unless, we decide to change the world.  Because, you see, Christmas is coming, and we are followers of Jesus.

          You see, as followers of Jesus, we are called to respond to tragedies in the world with a two-fold response: acts of mercy and acts of justice. We are called to short terms solutions (caring for hurting, hungry, damaged people) and long terms solutions (what can we do to prevent this from happening again). We are called to offer care in the midst of a crisis, but we are also to look at the underlying systems that led to this crisis and ask ourselves: what can we do to prevent this crisis from happening again? 

With any problem in the world, a movement of change can be born when people are so passionate about something that they finally decide to DO SOMETHING. 

Have you heard of Amnesty International? They began with one man’s outrage and his courage to do something about it. After learning of two Portuguese students being imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom in 1961, British lawyer Peter Benenson published a newspaper article. That article launched the “Appeal for Amnesty 1961”, a worldwide campaign that provoked a huge response. This was the genesis of Amnesty International. They now have 1,800 staff members and hundreds of volunteers fighting for human rights  around the world. (http://www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/about-amnesty-international).

You just never know how a movement will be born.  As a result of the shooting in CT, someone, or a team, from The Village could decide to say enough, we’ve got to stop this.  We could really research the ins and outs of gun violence and give strength to a movement to do something about it. 

Gail Collins wrote in the New York Times “America needs to tackle gun violence because we need to redefine who we are. . . . We have to make ourselves better. Otherwise, the story from Connecticut is too unspeakable to bear.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/collins-looking-for-america.html?_r=0)

I agree with her. Someone has got to do something about the violence in our country. A movement could start right here today. You just don’t know. Actually there are already movements across the country. There is one right here in Toledo called the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence. We could join one of them and give our energy to them. We might help form the tipping point that would make the difference this time in this critical issue of our day.

You see, the power of God is just that amazing. When God works in us, God can take the most horrific tragedy and turn it into a power to change the world. That is the miracle we are waiting for this Christmas.

Remember, those of us that were here last week, wrote down something impossible in our lives that we want God to make possible, and we put it in the manger. Those notes are still there. I think we could certainly add the impossible problem of gun violence in our country. 

We need to take all those concerns to the manger as we wait for Christmas. We need to pray. We need to pray like we have never prayed. Our country is a mess.   Change this God, fix this, do something that lets us do something.

We have some really broken people around us as evidenced by the events of this week. And today we need some time to grieve with our brothers and sisters in CT and in other parts of the world where there is suffering.

But you know, we have some brokenness right in our own homes and families. And it is into our world, that God sends Jesus.   Jesus is coming into our brokenness to bring us new life.

God loves us and God’s love has the power to lift up the brokenhearted and soften the hearts of those who are filled with evil intentions. God has the power to change us. And God has the power to change the world through us. That’s why we come to this manger to see God.

So I invite you to the manager. Come to the manager.  Bring your grief, bring your brokenness and your hopes for the future. Come to the manager, ready to see God.

COME TO THE MANGER: See the Impossible by Cheri Holdridge (with the an assist by Kurt Young)

This story of the angel coming to Mary is so familiar. We hear it every year. And yet, when we read it, and really let the story sink it, it is so outrageous, isn’t it?  

Imagine this.  Mary is a young girl, probably only 12 or 13 years old, is engaged to be married. She is a virgin. And angel comes and tells her “you are going to have a baby, without ever being with a man. The father is going to be the Holy Spirit.  Your baby is going to be the Son of God. Haven’t you heard that your cousin Mary who is way too old to have a baby is now six months pregnant? If God can do that, then God can do this with you. 

Then the key words -  Nothing is impossible with God. God needs you to serve all of humanity in this way. How about it?”  Outrageous, right?  Scandalous?  But the most amazing part of the story comes next. 

Mary says: “Okay. I’ll do it.” She says with the strength and calm of a mature woman: “Let it be with me just as you say.”  She does not have a hissy fit. She does not stomp around and pout like some. She does not say, “I’m sorry dear angel, I think you must have the wrong person.” She does not argue. She does not cry. She does not get depressed, or angry or sad. 

What kind of young woman must of God found in Mary. How hard must God have looked to find her? My friend Mike Slaughter writes about Mary in his book Christmas Is Not Your Birthday. Mike says that Mary “had a proactive faith. A person with a proactive faith doesn’t live in the paralysis of doubt and disillusionment. Instead, a person with proactive faith actively pursues God’s redemptive purposes and presence in the midst of any situation, even when doing so doesn’t make sense.” (p. 30). Do you have a proactive faith?  

She wasn’t afraid. She did not doubt. She put her trust in God. Oh, how I would love to have that much faith.  God asked her to do something that the day before, she never could have dreamed would be possible.  It would have never crossed her mind.  Oh, what a difference a day makes. Then God made the impossible, possible. God wants to do the same thing with each one of us. God wants to make the impossible, possible through each of us.

Last Sunday night, I watched that CNN Heroes program on TV. I love that show. Every year they pick about ten amazing people from around the world who are heroes. They do unbelievable work to help other people. The winner for the night was a woman named Pushpa Basnet in Nepal who has created a home for children whose parents are incarcerated. She discovered that children had to go to jail with their parents.  Until she created the home these children, they had to go to jail with their parents. Her story was such an inspiration. Against impossible odds she has created a loving home for 40 children. I watched as I heard story after story of fantastic people who do impossible things to make the world a better place for other people. God uses them to do impossible things, to spread love and compassion and mercy.

Then I started thinking of people I know who do impossible things in their lives. Do you know people like that? I thought of Debbie. Debbie is my husband Kurt’s cousin. All Debbie wanted since she was a little girl was to get married and have kids, but it was not happening for her. Debbie was 39 years old and still single with no children. She did something very out of character for her. She walked into a clinic and made arrangements to have a child by in vitro fertilization.  This was out of character for her and her family.  

When her son Ben was 5 years old Debbie got asked out on a date by someone at work name Brian. It kind of threw her off kilter because she had kind of settled in to her life as a single mom. But she took a chance and went out on the date. Brian and Debbie got married when  Debbie was 49 years old. 10 months later Brian was diagnosed with cancer. It soon became clear, the cancer was terminal. He died 5 months later. We were all so horrified for Debbie. 

Why would God let this happen? After all those years of being single? To have been blessed to find a father for her son, only to have the father ripped away by cancer. How could this be? A woman with no faith would have found it impossible to live through this experience. But Debbie had a deep faith. She would not become paralyzed by anger and resentment. Do you know what she told me? She said, “I am so glad that Brian and I found one another because I would not have wanted him to go though cancer alone.” 

Of course! The words spoken as someone who loved her husband, and who trusted and God would see her through the impossible. She misses Brian.  But, this past summer Debbie road something called the Pelatonia (pella-tonya), a bike ride to benefit cancer research at the James Cancer Hospital at The Ohio State University. She biked 50 miles and raised $2400. She said she did it to pay it forward for all the people who cared for her and for Brian. 

She continues to do the impossible as she moves forward in life without Brian, giving thanks for the short time she had with him. She believes that God sent Brian to her and to her son Ben as a precious gift. It is hard to live without him, but she does not regret the short marriage she had with him. She did the impossible and lived through his death, and now she is not giving up on life. She is living a full life with a positive attitude, giving thanks to God for the blessings in her life.

What is the impossible challenge that you are facing in your life? It might be something big, like Debbie’s.  I look around and I know many of you are facing a challenge. Or not. Honestly, I feel like I face impossible challenges in the tasks of living every day. How about you? 

I face the impossible task of getting two children to go to school when they don’t want to. I face the impossible task of writing a sermon on weeks when I don’t feel inspired, but I know you will be here waiting for one.  I feel the impossible challenge of Being creative when I am out of juice; or Forgiving when that person has done the same thing to me over and over again; or Speaking my mind and standing up for myself to someone who does not respect me; Or trying to get my side of things across to someone who is so self absorbed it feels like such a waste of time to talk to them;  How about this impossible challenge – trying once again to break on old pattern or habit? Or heal a broken relationship with a family member.

What is your impossible challenge? Because here is the message of this Advent season of waiting for Christmas: God wants to send Jesus to help us face our challenges. God wants us unclench our fists, take a deep breath, to open our hearts and make more room for the power of love to come into our world.  The love of Jesus to fill us up. That is how we will have the strength of character to face those impossible challenges of life. 

Mary was the first one to do it. The angel told her that God wanted her to literally make space in her body to be the mother of God, so that the world could receive the child of God. She could have resisted. She could have tried to run away. She could have refused, and God might have decided to move on to another young woman because God would not have wanted the Mother of God to be someone who was not ready. But Mary trusted God. And because of her faithfulness, we all received the most wonderful gift in the world. 

What gift do you need this year? What is the impossible challenge that you are facing in your life? The challenge you can meet only with God. Maybe it is one of those every day impossible challenges that is wearing you down. 

As the band comes up here to sing a song about Mary, I want to ask you to try to identify for yourself one impossible challenge in your life. You’re not going to have to share it with anyone; this is just for you. Remember, the angel said, “Nothing is impossible for God.” What is your impossible challenge that only God can make possible this Christmas?   

COME TO THE MANGER: EXPECT A MIRACLE by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

The four candles of the Advent Wreath tell us we are under four weeks away from Christmas.  During this season, called Advent, we prepare our hearts to receive Jesus again. Every year at Christmas, we celebrate the birth of God coming into the world in human form. We repeat the ancient story because it never gets old. God loves us so much that God refused to stay far away in some heavenly location. God chose to take human form and come to the Earth to show us just how much God loves us.

Do you know, do you understand that God sent Jesus for you? That’s what Christmas is all about.  That the Christmas Miracle. Every year, as followers of Jesus, we open ourselves up again, to make space for God’s miracle to come into our lives. 

We come to the manger, that humble place where Jesus was born, and we join Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds and the Magi, in being filled with awe.

What will you do to get ready?  What will you do to make room for Jesus, the Miracle and Surprise in your life for Jesus to break with a Christmas miracle?

I want to tell you a story today, about a family who got a huge surprise from God. Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth lived when Herod was the ruler over Judea. Zachariah was a priest. He was doing his duties as one of the priests in his town, and his turn came to have the honor of entering the holy of holies in the Temple. When he went in to burn the incense, he got a big surprise. An angel came and spoke to him and said: “You and Elizabeth are finally going to have the child you have been waiting for all these years. She will have a son, and God is instructing you to name the child John. John will be very special. He will herald God’s arrival in the style and strength of Elijah, soften the hearts of parents to children, and kindle devout understanding among hardened skeptics—he’ll get the people ready for God.” (Luke 1:16-17). 

Well, Zachariah thought that was the craziest thing he had ever heard and he told the angel so. Because Elizabeth was WAY too old to have a baby.  The angel of God does not take kindly to people who do not listen to God’s message. And so the angel said to Zachariah, “Since you won’t believe, then you will not be able to speak until the child is born.”

And sure enough, Zachariah lost his voice. He had to use sign language to tell the people, who were impatiently waiting for him to come out. He went home, and it was not long before Elizabeth realized, at her very old age, that she was indeed pregnant! 

God interrupted her ordinary life with a miracle!  As the story goes on, the baby was born. Zachariah and Elizabeth say that the baby is to be named John. This goes against tradition because there is no one names John in their family line. Once the baby is named, Zachariah gets his voice back. God blesses Zachariah for his faithfulness! The Angel said John becomes the one who will prepare the way for Jesus. He is Jesus’ cousin.  Elizabeth is the cousin of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  John would be John the Baptist, the one who heralded the arrival of Jesus. 

Now, what does this story tell us? At any moment God can break into our bland, boring lives with a miracle too, do you believe that?  But we have to pay attention. We have to be watching and waiting for the angels who may come to us and tell us that God wants to do something for us. When Zachariah was in the temple, he was watching and waiting for God. He was praying and he was listening for God. Here’s the secret - We can’t hear God if we are so busy rushing around all the time, if we are so busy that we can not make space for God. That’s what advent is about – taking time to stop and pay attention for the signs that Jesus wants to come into our lives.

But there is another level to the Christmas miracle.  God may just want us to be the workers of miracles for one another. You see, we are followers of Jesus now. We may be the only Jesus that some people see. We ARE the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. And so God may be showing us situations where WE need to ACT as God’s instruments of love in the world – to change the world. And in this Christmas season – we need to pay attention to those signals too.

You see, when God sent Jesus into the world, God was sending God’s love into the world in human form. But love has always been in the world. God’s love is in every one of us. Each one of us is a creation of God. God is love and God’s love is in each one of us. The miracle is when that love breaks out, and when it grows through us and in us and spills over into the world. 

At Christmas, God feeds our natural ability to love. Let me give you an example:

Did any of you see this picture on the internet this week? A police officer in NY was walking on his regular beat in Times Square, and came across a homeless man sitting on the street with no shoes. The officer, Lawrence DePrimo, said he was wearing thick socks and boots and his feet were cold. So he walked into the nearby shoe store and bought the homeless man some boots and socks and gave them to him. 

It just so happened that Jennifer Foster of Florence, Ariz., was visiting Times Square with her husband. She spotted the shoeless man asking for change. She snapped a photo of the good deed and the thing went viral. Two million people have viewed picture on the internet. It warmed our hearts. We want to see this kind of generosity. We want to be like this 25 year old cop who still lives with his mom and spent $75 to buy boots for a homeless man. Officer DePrimo said he still carries the receipt in his bullet proof vest to remind himself of people in need. He wants to remember that we want to help one another.

Here is another story. On Friday night, for The Village’s monthly service project we went to Food for Thought. Every Friday night they meet at a church in Oregon and make 350 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They bag up chips and cookies and make sack lunches. Then another group of folks goes down to a parking lot across the street from the public library and passes them out on Saturday morning to people who are hungry. 

This was my first time to go help on Friday night, we’ve gone many times on Saturday morning. We had 18 folks from The Village help. The place was packed. Their web site says it usually takes them 1 ½ to 2 hours to do the job. We were done in 45 minutes on Friday. The leader said Friday was an anomaly. He said some weeks at 6:00 there are four people there. They just never know how many folks will show up. He said for us please to come back. Probably they had lots of folks because it’s December and everyone wants to help near Christmas time. There were probably lots of teens who needed to get in their service hours at the end of the semester. It was a Christmas miracle. The love was everywhere. Pat said: “This was the easiest service work I’ve ever done.” Earlier in the week she had been teaching inner city kids how to kayak. That was not so easy. 

Many people will be generous this month. And I want to encourage you to be generous this month too. We have a goal to raise $5000 for our “Hope for children Near and Far offering.” Our offering will help provide job training for children at the Fairfield Children’s Home in Zimbabwe who turn 18. Our offering will provide Christian education for our own Village Kids right here. We have only raised $1150 toward our goal so far, so we still have a long way to go. I hope you and your family as you plan your Christmas gift giving are thinking about what you will give in order to make our Christmas miracle happen right here with our offering.

As you prepare your heart to celebrate Christmas I want you to ask yourself a question. Are you ready to experience a miracle this Christmas? Zachariah and Elizabeth never could have imagined that God would give them a child at their old ages. So the miracles that God has in store for us, are probably so amazing we cannot even imagine them. Are you open to God? Are you listening to God? Are you making space to listen to God?  Are you watching and waiting for something wonderful and amazing that God wants to do? You just don’t know how God might want to use you to make this world a better place for yourself or someone else. 

And when God blesses you, will you use your gift to bless others? You see, Zachariah and Elizabeth received a wonderful gift of a child but they had to share him with the world. They could not keep him to themselves. God gives us many gifts, but God usually asks us to use those gifts to bless others. 

Christmas is just a little over three weeks away. In this season of Advent, it’s our time to watch and prepare. We just don’t know what God has in store for us.  But I do know this. God’s love is coming into our lives in a big way. God wants to bless us in a big way. And God wants us to bless other people in a big way. The gift of Jesus is a miracle. And when we receive Jesus he will use us to works miracles in this world. So friends, get ready. Get ready to work some miracles. God blessed Zachariah and Elizabeth with a miracle and God wants to do the same for us. So watch. And open yourself. Expect God’s miracle. Be ready to be a blessing to this world, this Christmas.  It’s going to be amazing. Amen.

What Kind of King is Jesus by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

Do you remember playing “Follow the leader” as a child. Usually a group of kids move around a room in a line with the leader marching, or hopping, climbing over or under things. Kids clamor to have the honor of being the leader. Everyone wants to be the leader. But, of course, we cannot all be the leader all the time.  A leader needs followers, so we take turns being followers.

In the real world, we follow leaders too, don’t we? So we want good leaders. We want to follow a leader who cares about us, and who understands the big picture. Now we understand that there are political leaders in our country, and as good law abiding citizens we live with the rules our elected leaders make.  But as Christians, we also follow Jesus. And ultimately, we choose to follow Jesus. We choose Jesus way for our life and it takes priority over anyone else who tries to get us to follow them.

This can cause conflict sometimes – trying to follow Jesus in a world where human leaders also have authority over us.

In our scripture for today, Jesus comes into conflict, not an unusual thing for Jesus to be in, with the political and religious leaders of the day. At the time, they had kings. Jesus was becoming a powerful leader. And the king was threatened by Jesus. You see, the people wanted to follow Jesus. And the king knew there could not be two kings.

The scripture passage for today, John 18:33-37 for those following along on the from afar, is right before Jesus is going to be condemned to death. There is this back and forth with Pontius Pilate. Pilate gives the crowd a chance to have Jesus pardoned, because there is this tradition during Passover that one criminal can be pardoned. But the people say: “If you pardon this man, you’re no friend of Caesar’s. Anyone setting himself up as ‘king’ defies Caesar.” (John 19:12).   Here’s the highlights of the scripture:

Pilate has asked Jesus if he is trying to be the King of the Jews.  ³⁶ “My kingdom,” said Jesus, “doesn’t consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king.”³⁷ Then Pilate said, “So, are you a king or not?”

Jesus answered, “You tell me. Because I am King, I was born and entered the world so that I could witness to the truth. Everyone who cares for truth, who has any feeling for the truth, recognizes my voice.”  (John 18:36-37)

You see, Pilate is trying to pin Jesus down. Make him either save himself by saying he is not a king; or get Jesus to condemn himself by admitting he wants to be a king. But Jesus says: “my values (meaning God’s values) are not the same as yours, Pilate. I am not the world’s kind of king. I am a different kind of king.”

Then Jesus tells us why he came. “I came into the world, a king, to witness to the truth,” (meaning the truth of God’s ways).And Jesus says that anyone who cares for God’s truth, will recognize the voice of Jesus as their king.

Jesus confounded the leaders of his day over and over again. They couldn’t pin him down.  He went against the norm.  Jesus is like the person who stayed home on Black Friday, to have an extra day of family time or to go visit the sick, when everyone in the world knows that you should go shopping on Black Friday. You go on Thanksgiving night too. Never mind that means people who work retail have to work on Thanksgiving. Our economy depends upon it. Even our political leaders will tell us to shop.

But Jesus would not follow the values of the world. Jesus was focused on one thing: showing people the love of God. When we follow Jesus in his ways, it makes us counter-cultural.

Think about it, over and over again, we see this inability to play by the world’s rules.  He loved what I like to call the least, the last and the lost. He loved the people that the leaders of the world viewed as throw-aways.

In worship, we showed a video of a tent city in New Jersey.  People needed affordable housing and a group of 75 people who are living in tents outside the city. They are the working poor.  The cost of living is $23 per hour for housing, but the people there are making $8 per hour.  This is the kind of place I believe Jesus would spend his time if he were here today. If he were a king of anything, I think he would be king of the tent city in that video.   There is one of these in Toledo, Ohio today. 

I feel pretty confident that if God sent Jesus to the Earth today, this tent city is the kind of place Jesus would go. He would not go to the White House, or to Wall Street.   He wouldn’t start there.  And yet we call him a King.  We call him our leader.

Today, is the day on the church calendar called “Christ the King Sunday.” It’s the day we try to wrap our minds around what sort of King Jesus is.  A different sort of king is what Jesus is. Because, you see, this is our calling here at The Village, “to follow Jesus and change the world.” We have decided that he is our leader.

His mission was puzzling to the people who lived when he first came to Earth. They were expecting a political and military leader who would overthrow the ungodly leaders of their day – by force.

Jesus kept talking about being a servant leader, and loving God. He had this idea that he could change the world by spending time with the people I like to call “the least, the last and the lost.” The people society would call misfits. Because you see, these are the people who most need God’s compassion and mercy.

Those other folks in power? Well they needed God too, but they needed to be made humble before they would open themselves to God.

So, as we read this story, I wonder where do we put ourselves? Are the we least, who are grateful for Jesus, because he comes to show us that we still matter to God? Are we the people on the outside of society.  Or are we those with power and privilege, who need to listen to Jesus as he reminds us that in letting go of power and privilege, and acting as servants, that we will truly see God?

I think each of us has been both of those people at one time or another. We have experienced being on the edge of society, and being without. And we are also people of privilege when compared to the rest of the world. When we have privilege and when we have abundant resources, Jesus says that we have the responsibility to use that privilege and those resources to care for the least.  

In either position, we need someone to follow. In the old days they used the title King. For us, we need a leader. We need someone to look up to, who shows us the way to live.   We can’t always make those choices on our own.

Jesus wants to be that leader for us. Our question is this: how will we follow Jesus? What actions do we take, and will we take, in our daily life in order to walk in the way of Jesus?

Today we are one month from the celebration of Jesus’ birth. As we prepare for Christmas, I wonder, how will our traditions and our activities help us follow Jesus? I started thinking about our family’s Christmas traditions and how do they cause us to follow Jesus.  For example, does making cookies help us follow Jesus? Possibly. If it means we spend time with children in making them together, or if we give some of them to someone who might be lonely or sad this year at Christmas – as a way of saying: we care about you and we wanted to bring you this homemade gift. Making cookies probably does not help us follow Jesus if it stresses us out and we are just doing it because we have always done it, and we really NEED to eat all those extra calories this month.

So, how will we follow Jesus as we celebrate his birth?  I want us all to ponder this question: how will I follow Jesus as I celebrate his birth?  You can share your ideas and thoughts here or anywhere on the web.  What are the ways we can help to do this or would like to do this?

At the Village this year, we will be reminding people that this is not your birthday, it’s the time we celebrate Jesus’ birthday.  We will be working on spreading Jesus love and compassion in Toledo and around the world this Christmas.