Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
The angel answered, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time.” Luke 1:18-20

In the Gospel of Luke, two births are announced. Before Gabriel brings the news to Mary of her miraculous birth, he visits Zechariah, an elderly priest in Jerusalem. He informs Zechariah that he and his aged wife will finally have a child, a son who will be “possessed by the spirit and power of Elijah.”

Zechariah and Mary respond differently. Both are presented with impossible good news; Zechariah asks “How can I be sure?” Mary asks, “How can this be?” Zechariah’s question seeks evidence to be convinced. Mary’s question expresses wonder.

Most of the time I feel like Zechariah. Academics tend to pride themselves on their doubt; it is an important tool in research. How do I know this universally assumed statement is true? What evidence is there for it? We analyze and pick apart and must persuade or be persuaded.

These are not bad things in themselves, but perhaps not the most appropriate way to greet an angel who just came from heaven with a message from God. Somewhere in the mystery of how we know things, we are expected to recognize that God should be believed when he speaks (and immediately my scholarly mind chirps up with, “Ah, yes, but how do we know it is God who is speaking?”).

The balance in the New Testament’s approach to doubt is struck between God’s mercy and exasperation. The man who asks Jesus to heal his demon-possessed son in Mark 9 declares, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Jesus responds by healing the boy. Zechariah demands a sign, and the angel gives him one: Zechariah is struck dumb the boy is born and named John. The sign is both proof and reproof, but it is given. Zechariah’s doubt does not deprive him of the gift.

This Christmas season, may we marvel with Mary’s faith at God’s gifts to us, but may we also know that when we doubt, God’s love is greater than our doubt. God’s redemptive purposes are greater than our mistakes and weaknesses, and like Zechariah, may we see God act in our lives, even when our stumbling threatens to get in the way.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” John1:1-5

When I was in college I had a smart and entertaining friend, Z, who was dissatisfied with our school. It was a conservative Christian college, and it could be a little stifling. She and I used to talk a lot about theology and politics and all the other issues that people talk about in college. She was impatient with the sort of faith platitudes many of our classmates seemed to subsist on, and we had a lot of stimulating discussions.

But as I got to know her better, I became more and more frustrated. Z saw the world in categories and generalizations, and the more we talked, the more I felt that she put me in a box, and then spoke only to the box. I don’t think she ever learned to hear me and see me as I truly am, but only as the stereotype she applied to me.

As I have gotten older, I have learned to see these conversations with Z as a kind of gift; thanks to her, I learned early on that despite careful efforts to express myself clearly, many people will hear only what they want to hear. Whether they want someone to agree with them or someone to be their pantomime villain, they do not allow any actual conversation to challenge the assumptions about the speaker that they started with.

Jesus is called in John’s gospel the “Word of God,” a title with a rich and multi-faceted history. The Word of God is the instrument of creation in Genesis 1; God speaks, and the world is made. The Word of God is God’s revelation through the prophets. Jesus as the Word of God is God’s perfect self-expression, God’s ultimate disclosure of who he is. And like many conversations, the word was misunderstood. The light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not understand it.

The tragic misunderstanding of that Word and the violent consequences in the Gospels are probably familiar to all of us, as is the redemptive purpose it had in the plan of God. Easter, after all, is the point of Christmas.

But misunderstanding the Word of God is not restricted to the first community Jesus came to. It has appeared again and again in church history. It appears again and again in each human soul. When confronted with Jesus Christ, the Word of God, we struggle to accept him as he really is, wanting instead to make him fit our assumptions. The frustration I felt with my college friend should serve to remind me how often I try to make God into what I want him to be, rather than who he really is.

Our own darkness cannot overcome the Light of the World. Our own misunderstanding cannot subdue the Word of God. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it. The God who resurrected the dead gives understanding, too.

This Christmas season may we seek to know Christ as he truly is. May we listen more than we speak, and hear rather than assume. May we honor each other in the same way.

We have had trouble potty-training JellyBean. She is three-years-old and now officially “toliet-training resistant,” according to our doctor. Last week she made big progress and finally pooped in the potty all by herself. There was much general rejoicing around here, and JellyBean, when congratulated, announced her inspiration: “Baby Jesus learned to go poo-poo in the potty.”

Well, he did. I don’t know exactly what they used for potties in first century Palestine, but he had to be trained to it like any other toddler.

This is the absurdity and mystery of the incarnation - that the infinite God who runs the universe became a squirmy, squalling baby who spit up and burped and messed his diaper, or whatever they used for diapers back then. Jesus lived as a man like anybody else, getting blisters, catching colds. Maybe he even needed glasses (back before there were glasses).

One of my favorite authors, Charles Williams, argued that the Incarnation was not merely God’s back-up plan for a world gone wrong, but that the Incarnation was the purpose of creation. God made us to love us, and that love found its perfect expression when God became one of us at that first Christmas. That love was reaffirmed in the resurrection, when the incarnate Christ was raised from the dead to live eternity in his resurrection body (with scars!). That love will find its fulfillment when history reaches its conclusion at the marriage of Christ and his Church, when death is conquered, pain is ended and God becomes “all in all.”

Not only does this give me hope for the future, but comfort and reverence for life in my own imperfect body. The Incarnation has in some sense sanctified the human body, reminding us how precious it is to God. Because Jesus was born to us as one of the variations of ethnicity, sex or any other detail of embodied life, those details themselves become imbued with significance. Male or female is something to celebrate not only because God created it, but because God made it part of himself; Arab, Indian or Finn is something to honor because God chose to be born into a language and genetic group and make it part of himself. By becoming one of us in our particularities, God has honored those details and declared them worthy of love by all of us.

The divisions of humanity that are pictured as a result of sin at the tower of Babel have been redeemed by our embodied Lord. May we embrace and honor each other this holiday season, remembering that Christ, too, was one of us. And may we look forward to the day when we will worship him “from every tribe in every language.”

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.” Revelation 7:9-10

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21

When I was twenty-years-old, there was a woman I hated. I hated her for the most basic of reasons: she was mean to my mother. My mother was the pastor’s wife, and this woman (I’ll call her Bernice) was married to a prominent deacon. Bernice snipped at my mother, gossiped about my mother, and insulted my mother. It may be a sign of an easy life that the biggest reason I had to hate anyone was nastiness to my mother, but I knew I had to forgive this woman I hated.

Forgiveness is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. We believe that our relationship with God rests on forgiveness. We stand before God as people who desperately need forgiveness, and God gives us his perfect forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

Only God has perfect knowledge of good and evil. Only the infinitely loving God can offer forgiveness, and his reason for forgiving is for his own character as revealed in Jesus. Now that might not sound so great at first. It might sound like God’s being a little selfish. But consider — if forgiveness were based on our unreliable, imperfect character, then forgiveness would be just as unreliable and imperfect. Instead, forgiveness flows from the unchangable, perfect holiness of God, and God’s forgiveness is as mighty, as life-changing, as complete, as everything else about God’s nature.

Jesus is the means of our forgiveness. Jesus has stood in the way of God’s just anger at evil. Because our forgiveness has cost such a great price, forgiveness must characterize our relationships with all others.

And so I knew I had to forgive the woman that I hated for mistreating my mother. I knew that every Sunday I prayed a dangerous prayer. Every Sunday, we pray: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” What a terrifying prayer! My sister has for years, when they recite the Lord’s Prayer in her church, been sneaking in the words “better than.” Forgive us our debts “better than” we forgive our debtors. She understands the enormity of what we ask. She understands the danger. The health of our souls depends on the forgiveness of God, and we recognize and ask what Jesus has taught us: that if we deny forgiveness to others, God will deny forgiveness to us.

I can tell you with gladness that after several days of desperate, pleading prayer, God began to teach me how to forgive Bernice. Gradually, God surprised me with a new love for her, and eventually she became very dear to me. In fact, she was one of the first people back home with whom I shared the news that Az had proposed and we were to be married. I still think of her every time I use her wedding present. Our almighty, redemptive God turns even our sin into good, and the hatred I held in my heart became an opportunity for love and learning that I would not have had otherwise.

And so it can be for all of us. When we learn to forgive, we are drawn deeper into the heart of God. When we learn to forgive, we honor and imitate the God who has forgiven us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Forgiveness is a central Christian act. We can always refuse to forgive, but we cannot refuse to forgive and still be followers of Jesus.

But our ideas of forgiveness need two clarifications. First, remember forgiving does not really mean forgetting. God can choose to forget sin, but choosing to forget is not something typically within human ability. Forgiveness does not mean denying that someone has done you wrong, or pretending it doesn’t matter. That’s excusing. Forgiveness means letting go of hate. Forgiveness is the change from clinging tightly to your resentment to releasing it, with both hands open. You know you have forgiven when you remember what happened, but feel only joy or compassion or sorrow or gratitude.

Second, remember that forgiveness ultimately benefits you most, and refusing to forgive harms you most. Anne LaMott says that refusing to forgive is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. When you refuse to forgive, you are chained to the wrong that was done to you. The forgiveness Christ teaches is the key that unlocks you and sets you free. You forgive not only because God requires it, but because it is the only certain path to joy.

Beck pointed out that Dec 28th is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the day on which many churches remember the children who were slaughtered by Herod in his effort to kill the newly born “King of the Jews.” Perhaps it does not make sense to talk about forgivness on a day commemorating horrible evil. Forgiveness starts small. C.S. Lewis once said that if we want to learn to forgive, we should probably start with something easier than the Gestapo.

Sometime this week, you will probably come across someone you resent. Maybe it’s that woman who’s always rude to you, or that guy who takes up two parking spaces at work, or that mom who’s always bragging about how much better her kids are than yours. How do we learn to forgive?

First, pray. God loves us and wants us to know him, and often waits to give us what we need only so that we will learn to ask. God loves a prayer from a person longing to learn how to forgive. Remember the words from our assurance of pardon in 1 John 1:9: if we confess our sin — even the sin of hate — God is faithful and just to forgive it, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The prayer “Teach me how to forgive” is a prayer God loves to answer.

Second, act. Even if you don’t feel forgiveness in your heart yet, do forgiving things. I don’t mean put on an act or pretend to be something you’re not. But our life in Christ is sacramental, and sometimes we receive grace not only through believing but also through doing. Do something nice for the person you resent. Show them some new courtesy or unexpected kindness. Go out of your way. You don’t need to explain why you’re doing it. You may be surprised how this begins to change your heart.

But realize when we follow the Christ who was born to be our forgiveness, we may not necessarily earn friends. When I was in seminary, the local paper published an astounding story. The son of a local pastor had been murdered. The pastor, after much soul-searching and agonizing, had forgiven the murderer. The pastor visited the murderer in prison. He continued to meet with him after he was released from prison. I will be quite honest with you: I cannot imagine learning this kind of forgiveness. This pastor understood something that most of us see only glimmers of: he understood the heart of Christ, and he imitated it. To many people this kind of forgiveness is an offense, a cheapening of the life of his son. In fact, the forgiveness was so alien and impossible to the pastor’s wife, that she divorced him. She could not forgive her husband for forgiving the murderer of her son.

Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman who hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II, tells a similar story. She was imprisoned in a concentration camp called Ravensbruck, but survived. After the war, she traveled the world, telling people that she had been to hell, and Christ had been there with her. After a sermon she once preached on forgiveness, a man came up to her and reached out to shake her hand. She recognized him as one of the guards at the concentration camp, and he asked for her forgiveness. Corrie gave it to him.

I cannot presume to tell you how to forgive such enormous things. I have never been faced with them. But when I am completely unable to forgive, I know this. When we are confronted with evil, God is still in charge. When we are confronted with an evil so terrible that we do not know how to forgive it, we remember that God punishes sin. Within the will of God, there will be justice. I stru
ggle with great anger in my heart against men who commit violent acts against women. When I am confronted with knowledge of such an act, I find great release in reading aloud one of the “impreccatory Psalms,” like Psalm 69 which prays, “Pour out thy indignation upon them, and let thy burning anger overtake them.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man imprisoned and executed for resisting the Nazis, comforted himself with these Psalms of anger. When you cannot let go of your anger, put all your anger into that Psalm, and read it aloud to God. Release your anger to God.

When our anger against evil is just, but threatens to overwhelm us and embitter us, we can bring that anger to God. Knowing God will act on God’s own anger against evil, frees us from the anger that has enslaved us. The Christian doctrine of hell is a belief that embarrasses many Christians today. In the past it has often been used in the service of Christian self-satisfaction, a religious way of saying “My stuff is better than your stuff.” But the purpose of this doctrine is not self-satisfaction, but the vindication of God’s justice and comfort for the afflicted. There is an ultimate reckoning. Our anger can be transformed to pity for the person whose evil acts make him or her an object of God’s wrath, when we have learned humility and gratitude and joy for our salvation from it through Christ.

So let us celebrate the salvation from sin we have through Christ, through whom God offers forgiveness to all. Let us also share that forgiveness.

In all of history, only one child chose the mother to whom he would be born, and he chose her knowing that she would have to watch him die.

Dorothy Parker, the caustic writer and poet of the Algonquin Round Table, once wrote a Christmas poem differing widely from her usual style.

Prayer for a New Mother

The things she knew, let her forget again-
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.

Parker’s poem humanizes Mary, removing her from the halo-lit pageant of our imagination and placing her solidly in the world of real motherhood. Mary was a real mother just as Jesus was a real son; they had the fears and concerns of ordinary life. Anything else would be a denial of the Incarnation. Parker’s poem reminds us that for every Christmas there is a Good Friday.

But after Good Friday comes Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection. Death is not the end. It was not the end for Jesus, and it is not the end for us. May we live this Christmas season and the coming New Year comforting our heartbreaks in the hope of the Resurrection.