Christmas Borning

Sermon preached Christmas Day


One image we see around Christmas time is of a person opening a book to share a story. Often the storyteller is in a rocking chair and there is a warm fire in a fire place. No fireplace this morning, but I am going to take the unusual step of reading you a story.
“Christmas Baptism” from The Good News From North Haven Michael Lindvall. The story is fiction, set in the fictional town of North Haven, Minnesota – near Mankato. The author knows something of which he speaks. Michael Lindvall grew up in small towns in Minnesota and the UP, and he is a Presbyterian pastor.

The Story (if you want to read the story, put "Michael Lindvall Christmas Baptism" into your search engine, you will find a number of places where it is printed - here is one: http://www.indianolapres.org/joomla/content/view/77/38/)

Christians trust and believe that in Jesus, the light of God’s love entered the world in a uniquely powerful way. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” We believe that “we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” We celebrate that at Christmas.
We also trust that this is not simply a past event. In a meditation on Christmas, the fourteenth century German Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart wrote this: Saint Augustine says that his birth is always happening. But if it does not happen in me, what does it profit me? What matters is that it shall happen in me. (Watch For the Light, December 1).
Light and life came into the world in Jesus. God still wants to bring that light and life to birth in the world through you and me, maybe in ways as quiet as standing for a child at baptism. Amen.