I imagine that many of you have already taken down your Christmas trees, packed away the nativity sets, and turned off the holiday music for another year. Christmas and Advent are over—it’s time to move on to the new year, right? As Adam Hamilton says in his book Incarnation, “The answer is no on two scores.” Jesus’ story continues in Matthew and Luke in what are known as the “infancy narratives.” These stories continue the Christmas themes before moving on to Jesus’ ministry. We’ll be looking at some of these (like the one below) in the coming weeks during our “Time for a Reset?” worship series. On coming to the house, [the wisemen] saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Matthew 2:11 Hamilton also says that another reason Advent and Christmas aren’t really over is that Christmas is just the beginning of Jesus’ story. Since we celebrate Jesus’ birth at the end of the last month of our yearly calendar, it’s easy to put Advent and Christmas away with the decorations and move on to the new year. But Jesus isn’t just the “reason for the season.” While Jesus is the long-awaited King, the Savior who will save us from our sins, Emmanuel—God with us, The Light of the World that the darkness cannot overcome, and the Incarnation of God, there is another title for Jesus that is used more often than any other in the gospels and by Christians in the early church. Hamilton reminds us that “the earliest Christian creed was simply the phrase, ‘Jesus is Lord.’” As the apostle Paul writes in Romans 10:9, If you confess with your lips that Jesus is the Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. We find our identity in Christ not only by singing the words “Joy to the world, the Lord is come” at Christmas, but also by living the words “Jesus is Lord” each day with our prayers, words, and actions. If you haven’t taken down the tree, packed away the nativity set, or turned off the holiday music yet, I’d invite you to spend some time pondering the fact that Jesus is Lord before you do. This isn’t an excuse to put off getting your house back in order after the holidays, but perhaps a reason to delay it and savor it before you do. “Joy to the World, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King. Let every heart, prepare Him room”—not just for Advent and Christmas but throughout the year.
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Pastor CathyPastor Cathy has been appointed to Tyner UMC since July 2019; she also is a part-time writing instructor at Bethel University in Mishawaka. Archives
July 2022
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