Taylor Mertins

Revelation 21.1-6

Notice: it is not just a new heaven that John sees, but a whole new earth. Revelation, then, is the final declaration that matter matters.

Remember, whenever Jesus waxes lyrical about the kingdom of heaven, he does so with earthy and earthly terms. The kingdom is like a mustard seed, it is like yeast mixed with flour, it is like a party with food and wine and dancing.

Remember, when Jesus is resurrected on Easter, he returns to the displaces embodied, sharing food and drink, the incarnated Good News.

Remember, when the church grows during the Acts of the Apostles, it’s not because they were pining after the pie in the sky after they die, but it grows because Christians took seriously the material world and how the sharing of goods could make life better for others.

On earth as it is in heaven.

Do you see? Revelation reminds us that the new heaven and the new earth isn’t just something that will happen, it is something that happens right now. We have access to how beautiful the world could be in water and bread and cup.

Acts 2.1-4 & Romans 16.25-27

The Bible is, as Barth loved to say, the strange new world of God. With every page we discover more and more about the wild and wondrous God we worship. And in no place is this more evident than the Acts of the Apostles, and the various epistles. For, the eruption of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost sends reverberations through the church that we are still feeling today.

God is on the loose!

Mark 1.1 & Mark 16.1-8

“When the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing left to say.” - Sam Wells

Genesis 12.1-3 & Malachi 3.1-2

The Good News of the Gospel for each and every single one of us, is that God meets us in the midst of our sins, not our successes. God meets us where we are, not where we ought to be.

Israel’s story, both the person and the people, reminds us that God comes to us in our weariness and our woundedness. God delights in keeping up the covenant even when we fail to do our part.

Ultimately we are as helpless as Israel, hobbling around with our hips out of joint. We can run away as far as we can for as long as we can, but one day God will catch up with us. God will grab hold of us. And God will tell us who we are...

Genesis 1.1-5

Imagine, one day, you receive a strange delivery. A trunk. It’s heavy and you can feel and hear all manner of objects inside tossing about as you drag it inside. You open it and discover a great cacophony of items. Inventories. Diaries. Poems. Creative writing assignments. Blueprints. Photographs. Letters. Various genealogical records. Drawings. And on top of it all is a note from your great-great grandfather. All it says is, “This is who I am.”

The Bible is like that treasure trove of a trunk, given to us by God, in order that we might know more about the One in whom we live and move and have our being.

Luke 2.1-14

Christmas is not just about remembering an event in the distant past.

Christmas is the celebration of a miracle in our midst.

Christmas isn’t just where we come from, Christmas is who we are, here and now.

Yes, it is finished, as Jesus says from the cross. Easter is the exclamation point on a sentence that begins long before the Incarnation of Christmas. But our knowledge of this power, our knowledge of salvation, our faith in the grace made flesh is Jesus in a miracle that has meaning for us in this very moment.

As Martin Luther preacher in many of his own Christmas sermons, “The nativity of our Lord happens again and again everywhere the Gospel strikes at the heart of a person.”

In other words, despite what the Grinch might realize by the end of his story, Christmas is actually about the presents, or at least the present of this present moment.

Titus 2.11

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.

Luke 1.67-80

The scriptures, the sermons, the songs, they are all about getting us to catch a hint of God’s more, a glimpse of the light that shines in the darkness.

Dr. Seuss got it right - Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.

Luke 1.46-55

The incarnation is not God’s last minute hail Mary (pun intended) 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.

And yet, Mary's song threatens those in the positions and places of power because it calls into question their power. Long before the cross stands on the horizon, Mary’s song reminds those with ears to hear that her Son’s kingdom is not of this world. Things are getting flipped upside down. Which sounds like Good News when you’re on the bottom, but bad news when you’re on the top...

Luke 1.26-38

The One born to Mary comes to embody a peaceful way of being that transcends all of what we think or know because Jesus takes us from where we are to where we can be.

Mary, in receiving the visit of Gabriel and the promise he holds, goes from nobody to somebody, blessed, fortunate, given a job to do in the story of salvation. Even in her ordinariness, her youth, her singleness, perhaps her embarrassment and consternation, she is called by God anyway, singled out to bear the savior of the world into the world.

This is why Mary is often referred to as the first disciple. She is the first to be called by God to take part in the good news-ing of the world. And she is the first, when called by God in this way, to say, "Let thy will be done."

Notably, she prays that prayer long before her Son does.

Mary has faith.

Perhaps therein lies the Good News for all of us today. We don’t need the perfect holy resume, we don’t have to come from the right family, or have the right job, or the right income. Lowly as we are, God chooses us anyway.

How unexpected.