By the power of Christ, through cross and resurrection, we are forgiven. More pertinently YOU are forgiven. That’s the heart of the gospel and it’s why people like me won’t shut up about it.

But when I tell you you’re forgiven, whether from the pulpit or at the table, it’s not because you’ve somehow wiped your slate clean, or gotten all your ducks in a row. I am simply encouraging you to open your eyes to what you already have. 

To become what you already are: forgiven. 	

The great gift of ministry is that I don’t have to stand day after day, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. Instead I get to share the Good News, “your sins are remembered no more,” and then I get a front row seat to the power of the Gospel at work.

Become What You Already Are

It’s interesting, I think, how almost no one in the New Testament self identifies as a Christian. In fact, the label of being a Christian is a public one. That is, it is applied to those in the church by the world because the world can’t make sense of what the church is doing.

Today we take the practice of generosity as rather ubiquitous, particularly at this time of year, but in the first century it was inconceivable. And so, when people outside the church saw these individuals who were selling their possessions to help the poor, and people opening up their homes and tables to those who had no homes and had no food, they couldn’t wrap their heads around it. What kind of people would do such a thing? 

People who worship the King named Jesus.

Believe

Jesus is reminding us that no matter how broken things seem, nothing is so broken that God can’t make something beautiful out of the brokenness. There is no soil so ruined that God isn’t willing to toss another seed on it. There is no sinner so sinful that God can’t make a saint out of them.

Frederick Buechner said that the grace of God is the declaration that beautiful and terrible things will happen but we need not be afraid because God will be with us, always.

Advent, as we’ve been saying, is the time when time gets confused. We look backward, forward, and everywhere in between. But one thing that endures through time is the hope we have in the Lord. It’s that hope that sustains us through what is coming upon the world. The time being really is the most trying time of all, but we can look straight into the darkness because we know the dawn will break from on high.

Advent Begins In The Dark

John the Baptist appears in the middle of nowhere and says to the gathered people, “Here comes the Lord! Get ready to change direction, be surprised, all shook up, and turned upside down. Hills are coming down and valleys are filling up!”

In other words, when J the B shows up he says, “You can’t stay the same!”

God is up to something! God is on the move! And God is going to get what God wants. We, of course, can certainly put up a fight and make a mess of the whole operation. But God’s cut-and-fill operation is already among us...

You Can't Stay The Same

Willie Jennings says that Joy is an act of resistance against despair and its forces. 

Again, it’s not living in denial, it’s not pretending things are better than they are. 

The joy we speak of in the church is the knowledge that, like the crowds who gather to hear J the B, we really are a brood of vipers. Seriously, according to the witness of the Word we’re all on the naughty list. But the axe is lying at the root of the tree because God is cutting down our sin and using it for the divine bonfire the banishes the darkness forever. 

Firewood For The Future

Mary praises God through song for cracking open the heavens and pouring out justice on a world thirsty for it. She points to the power of the Spirit because her Son will relieve the proud and powerful from their self-righteousness, and He will fill the poor with more than money can buy.

And she sings of it already having happened because time is different with God. 

The incarnation is not God’s last minute hail Mary to fix the world. It is, was, and always will be God’s decision to dwell with us. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. God was always going to dwell with us because God always dwells with us and God will always dwell with us...


The Fullness of Time

The strange and serious proclamation of Christmas is that though things change, we’re always in the moment of Christmas. Even when we snuff out the candles, and get in our cars, and go to bed, we’re still in Christmas.

Because Christmas is the miracle of God making time for us...

The Time Being

Here’s the truth of Christmas, the great proclamation of the Gospel - God makes time for you and me. And not only that, but God has given us all the time in the world, redeemed our time and our foolish use of it because Christmas is the reminder of the lengths to which God was and is willing to go to give us the one thing we really need.

The wonderful word of Christmas is "with." God takes on flesh in Jesus Christ and moves into the neighborhood "with" us.

There is, of course, elements of “for” in Jesus’ life: Jesus is for us when he teaches and heals. Jesus is for us when he dies on the cross and rises on Easter. Jesus does for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

But the power of what God does for us is made manifest because God is with us.


The Wonder of the Word

The wild proclamation of the Gospel, made manifest in a baby in a manger surrounded by some certainly strange gifts, is that God knows everything about us, the resolutions we keep and break, and chooses to be with us anyway. 

You see, this odd God delights in getting down in the muck and mire of life to dwell among us. This odd God speaks and heals and teaches and preaches and reveals the truth that we all need but struggle to believe. This odd God even goes to the cross on our behalf, manifesting the paradoxology of the Gospel: There’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more, and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you any less...


Paradoxology

With the magi and the manger we discover how the kingdom inaugurated in Jesus extends even to the Gentiles.

And with the baptism in the Jordan we learn that we do not have the righteousness we require to acquire the kingdom, but that’s okay because Jesus fulfills all righteousness.

In other words, the heavens open at the river not just for Him, but also for all of us.

The River

thirty something pastor, podcast host, and fan of parables

You Can't Stay The Same

Taylor Mertins

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