A Message from the Pastor
Dear People of Advent & Christmas,
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus, Son of God.
Someone came to me recently with questions she confronted as she was reading A Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. She kept returning to the statement that she was no accident, that God was involved in every piece of planning about her creation and her coming into this world. She struggled with this concept and we talked about the issue of “predestination” & wonderment, that God is not a puppeteer.
Are we so important that God would actually deal with egg and sperm & manipulate so particularly, we asked? And if this is the case, did God so particularly work a creation that in many cases bore a less than perfect child.? Then we talked about a world that we are understanding to be a world that has existed for millions of years and did God have a particular hand in the creation of every human being in that time span? About 15 years ago another pastor & I addressed 20 Lutheran ethicists on these kinds of issues. For example, we dialogued about the issue of cloning and how rich people could have themselves cloned and make use of body parts for implantation when needed. If this should happen and probably already has, how is God involved in this? I put these thoughts into your lap to mull over with my visitor and with me.
But we are assured and confident in God’s work in giving us Jesus Christ, prophet, teacher, rabbi, the new Adam, mediator, Son of God, Son of Man, and finally Emmanuel. Matthew 1:23 says,
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and
bear a son, and they shall name him
Emmanuel,” which means,
“God is with us.”
Jesus indeed was no accident. Jesus was and is intentional
And so we wait during the four Sundays of Advent, wait with HOPE. We stand in a faithful way at the brink of a happening, a changing. We wait for the story to be told once again of the babe, the poor Palestinian peasant child, born poor among the poor and for the poor. We wait once again for the story of Mary and Joseph, the animals, the innkeeper, the angels song. And we as “the poor” wait as we ponder in our hearts what it means to be a receiver on this night---as we wait to receive the greatest gift of life itself. God has become flesh and dwells among us.