346 Changing Wine Into Water

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Changing Wine Into Water”, originally shared on January 15, 2025. It was the 346^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Jesus turned water into wine. Are we doing just the opposite? Today, we’re going to find out.

   We aren’t near the fire areas, at least not yet, but we did have some excitement at our home on January 7^th, a week ago yesterday, on the first night of the Palisades fire.

   James was over for dinner and, afterwards, we went outside to get the mail and see if the recycling container had been emptied from the curb.

   The wind was howling east to west, and gusting so much so that I could barely stand up at times, and we joked that we should form a human chain.

   The waste hauler had just passed by, going into our cul-de-sac, and I asked James if that was dust coming off the truck, but it was clearly smoke.

   We walked down to the truck, found the driver, and asked if he thought the truck was on fire. He said yes. I asked him if he’d like me to call 911, and I did. I told him that he was welcome to come to our house if he needed to get indoors and told him where it was located, but I think that he misunderstood and, as James and I were walking back to our house, the driver drove the truck in reverse and around the corner in front of our trees!

   Flames were starting to come out of the hydraulics area behind the cab. I asked if he could pull the truck forward a few feet to get away from our trees but not block the entrance to the cul-de-sac or endanger our neighbor’s trees, which he did as the fire trucks arrived.

   Then more fire trucks came, and ten or so sheriffs’ vehicles to close off the street.

   The firefighters had the truck driver dump as much as he could, and they began fighting the fire.

   I pulled out a hose in the front of the house and watered the foliage near the fire and the roof above it to shield it from the embers every few minutes. James kept an eye on the side of the house.

   The firefighters used water, and then foam, on the recycling and then they set a ladder up the side of the truck behind the cab and fought the hydraulics fire. In the midst of near hurricane force winds, they put out the fire.

   A tow truck eventually came, and Sally made coffee for the driver. The trash truck was hauled away, and a crew came to clean up the mess. They finished a little after midnight.

   The neighbors were out during the firefight, talking and keeping an eye on things, and the firefighters and sheriffs did an outstanding job of not only fighting the fires but also of answering our questions and concerns. It was going to be a long night for all of them.

   We have lived here for 37 years, and this was the strongest winds and the most excitement we’ve seen. 😊  

   The winds aren’t over, but the cleanup and fireproofing has continued since the first night of the fires.

   We are very grateful and ask that you continue to pray for those who have experienced devastating losses elsewhere. Over 10,000 structures have been lost. Our bishop lost her home. A colleague lost his. The president of another colleague’s nearby congregation lost hers. I attended our synod’s Zoom meeting to discuss the response we will make to the devastation, and the pastor of Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church in Altadena, where the Eaton fire is, the nearest fire to us, said that is looked like the church survived (she was still under mandatory evacuation) but that 80-85% of her church members have lost their homes.

   Sally and I went to mail a letter at a local post office on Monday and the woman behind the desk said that they had been visited all week by people changing their mail delivery address from Altadena to the homes of relatives in San Dimas.

   How can Christians respond to the fires that have devastated whole communities and put a deep mark on thousands and thousands of lives, many of which will remain upended for many months, maybe many years?

   The gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday gives us a clue, in John 2:1-11,

2 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ² Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³ When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” ⁴ And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵ His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” ⁶ Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷ Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸ He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. ⁹ When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰ and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” ¹¹ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

   This was Jesus’s first miracle, and John is the only Gospel writer to record it.

   John often calls Jesus’ miracles “signs”. What do signs do? They point to something else. Jesus’ miracles weren’t suspensions of the laws of nature. They were signs that pointed to the way God intended the world to be from the beginning of Creation, and to the way it will be again when Jesus returns and ushers in a new heaven and a new earth. John reports that this “sign” revealed Jesus’ glory.

   The world we live in today is not the way it’s supposed to be. Evil entered the world when humans rebelled, and continue to rebel, against God (see Genesis 1 and 2 to understand why the world is the way is is).

   Evil like brush fires exists because of human rebellion against God. We rebelled. We are no longer in harmony with God or with one another, or with anything else in all of Creation, even with Creation itself.

   What’s our answer? What is God’s answer? It’s Jesus. On the cross. For you.

   Christians used to get a lot of flack for offering “thoughts and prayers”, as if it was the most practically ineffective thing people can do in the face of real need.

   Prayer is, in fact, one of the most meaningful things we can do, not because prayer changes things. It doesn’t. God changes things, and prayer is our acknowledgment of that.

   What do Christians have to offer? Sadly, today, at least in the Western world, including the United States, not much.

   People who call themselves Christians often offer the counterfeit religion, though possibly the most popular religion in the United States, of Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism (Google it).

   We also often populate churches that are actually closed communities with an ingrown culture and language.

   We offer social service agencies that use religious language. We offer businesses that tell you what you want to hear, especially what you want to hear about yourself, and promise to make you successful or it’s your fault that you’re not. We offer bitterly nostalgic communities with legacy leadership longing for the past. We offer program churches where people can worship regularly and not understand the basics of what is being taught. At all.

   It has been very disappointing to me to encounter Christians who have attended worship services regularly for years, even decades, but who will encounter a calamity like death and reject the very things that could give them actual comfort because there is no actual faith, no living relationship with the one true living God, just a place-holder for their identity.

   I some ways, I believe, catastrophe is an amplifier of how we view the world. People with no faith ask, “How could a good God allow this to happen (particularly ‘to me’)? There is no good God” People who come into the same catastrophe with faith say, “I don’t know how I’d get through this without my faith.”

   As the Western world becomes increasingly secular, and our churches do little more than chase the acceptance that will never come, except on the world’s terms, we offer little to the world.

   We are now experts in turning wine into water.

   What can we do as the people of God?

   I tuned-in to our Synod Zoom meeting that asked that question recently, and it was, in my opinion, a microcosm of the mess we are in now. Too many leaders drifted, waiting for coordination. If an idea was offered the response was a classic creativity killer: “Would you be willing to be in charge of that?” Almost all the focus was on things that secular or specialized organizations are already doing and much better: food, clothing, shelter, mental health, information, resource sharing, logistics, and so on. 

   Someone did mention the possibility of offering chaplaincy in shelters, which is clergy-focused and already in place in some organizations.

   But there was very little focus on what we do best, what is the greatest need in the midst of disorder, and what we are called, equipped and sent to do.

   Christians live in two kingdoms. The kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God, and God reigns in both.

   Christians are serving and seeking to do God’s will in every aspect of the kingdom of this world.

   What is our contribution from the Church, the Body of Christ, the kingdom of God?

   First, to recognize that God works through some means in both kingdoms.

   I’ve often told the story of the guy who was sitting in his home one day when a Red Cross worker pounded on his door yelling, “The dam has broken. Get out! Get out now! We’ll help you.”

   The man replied, “Oh, thank you very much but I’m a Christian. I know that God will take care of me. I’ll be fine.” And the Red cross worker finally left and went on to the next house.

   The waters came and flooded the first floor of his house, so that he had to move up to the second floor. A guy in a rowboat came by and said, “Hop in, buddy. I’ll get you out of here.”

   “Oh, thank you,” the man said. “But I’m a Christian. I know that God won’t let anything harm me.” The man in the rowboat finally went on to other houses.

   The waters continued to rise, and the man had to crawl out onto his roof. A helicopter flew over and the crew spotted the man. They dropped a rope ladder and shouted, “Climb up and we’ll get you out of here. The waters are rising. This is your last chance!”.

   “Thanks for coming, but I’ll be fine. My faith is strong. I know God will take care of me,” the man shouted.

   The waters kept rising and pretty soon they rose over the house and over the man, and he drowned.

   When he arrived at the gates of heaven, dripping wet, he immediately demanded to be taken to the throne of Grace. “That’s kind of an unusual request but, OK.” St. Peter said.

   The man stomped through the throne room into God’s presence and whined, “You promised me! You said that you’d always be with me, no matter what. What happened?”

   “What do you mean,” God said. “I sent you a Red Cross worker, a rowboat and a helicopter.”

   God uses some means in a time of trouble in this world.

   Second, to bring a sense of perspective.

   Almost everyone I’ve seen interviewed on TV has said, “We’ve lost everything, but it’s just stuff. We are all alive, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

   The actor Mel Gibson had a further perspective on the same experience. He said, “I’ve been relieved from the burden of my stuff,” a reflection, I think, on the words of Jesus in Luke 12:15,

¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

   What is life? It’s what we have to offer the world in times of trouble. It is, as Jesus said in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   Third, to name the Name of Jesus.

   Our hope does not come from within us, or from within our community. Our hope comes from outside of ourselves. It comes from Jesus, and He is already at work in the hearts of all affected by this current chaos. We just name the Name. No one else can do that but us, it is what we are best equipped to do. And we are not alone.

   We are in this rebellious world, but we are not of this world. We have been baptized. We belong to God. What do we bring to this chaos? Logos.

   “Chaos” is a Greek word that came to be an English word. The Greeks believed that the world is in a state of chaos, or disorder and confusion. “Logos” is a Greek word that means “The Word”. The Word brings order. At the beginning of the Gospel of John we hear Christianity’s answer to chaos in a text that is read every Christmas. It ends with John 1:14,

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

   Jesus restored at the cross the living relationship with the one true living God for which all things were created.

   I saw a story on KTLA-TV about a church in Altadena that held a high church worship service where members came together to worship as soon as the fires were somewhat under control. They said that they came because they just needed to be together. That is the Body of Christ, with Christ as the head of the body. That is an expression of our harmony with God.

   We offer worship, prayer meetings, Bible study for all ages, and time together in the presence of God.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, wrote the hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”, on the basis of Psalm 46, which begins with Psalm 46:1,

¹    God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble.

   Where is God? God is present in this time of trouble.

   We may be prone to transforming the power to change lives through Jesus Christ into some bland imitation of life that reflects the world. We are changing wine into water. We are sinners.

   But Jesus has redeemed us, lost and condemned sinners, and opened the way to eternal life in the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created.

   That is what we have to offer. That is what we say in a catastrophe: Jesus.

   He changes water into wine. 

345 Baptism in a Drought

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Baptism in a Drought”, originally shared on January 8, 2025. It was the 345^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Messiah drought? Prophet drought? God ended them with Baptism.

   Spiritual drought? God’s promise is Baptism. Today, we’re going to find out how that works.

   We have experienced a record-dry start to winter in Southern California. We are in what is considered a “moderate drought” and, there is a good chance that dry conditions will continue at least to the end of 2025.

   We are only a couple years past a severe drought that required water rationing. Every outdoor container at our house was open and turned up toward the sky to collect what little moisture fell. We kept most of our potted plants alive be watering them with buckets of captured shower water.

   But that’s not the whole story.

   About 65% of LA’s water comes from runoff from the melting snowpack in the Sierra Mountains in central California, and it is 80%-100%, and in some places 110%, of normal, so there’s that.

   That which we depend upon, though, comes from someplace else.

   That concept is at the heart of the blessing of baptism and of the meaning of the cross.

   This coming Sunday is the Sunday that marks the “Baptism of Our Lord” in the vast majority of churches throughout the world. It’s the first Sunday after the day of the Epiphany of Our Lord, a day that is fixed on January 6^th of each year.

   Have you ever watched or read a cartoon where a character is facing some dilemma? They think about it. Hard. Then what happens? A burning light bulb appears over their head! What was not clear is now seen clearly. Light has shined in the darkness. Something longed-for has become real, it has become manifest. They have had an epiphany!

   This Sunday, we will see the epiphany, the manifestation of Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry. It begins with his baptism, and it is a key to the beginning of our eternal lives.

   The reading from the Gospels that will be read this coming Sunday, Luke 3:15-17; 21-22, sets up the baptism with a description of John the Baptist, in Luke 3:15-17,

¹⁵ As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶ John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷ His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

   John was like the Federal Emergency Alert System that puts those banner messages on TV that are read with the same static-interference voice that we hear on the radio saying that this is what a real emergency alert would sound like.

   Or like the MyShakeApp in California that is designed to give us a little time to at least get under a table before an earthquake comes.

   John the Baptist wasn’t kidding around either, but he wasn’t the main event. He was the one who prepared the way for the main event.

   John came at the end of a prophet drought.

   The people of God had been waiting for the promised Messiah (the anointed one, the deliverer) for 1,000 years and received nothing but some encouragement from the prophets for the first 700 years. There was a Messiah drought.

   Then, there was no word from God to the prophets at all for the final 300 years, a prophet drought within the messiah drought. 😊

   Then John the Baptist shows up with a word from the Lord. The Messiah was close by!

   And then, the Messiah shows up where John was baptizing people in the river Jordan and is baptized by John. It was an epiphany! A manifestation!

   We see it in the rest of the text for this Sunday, in Luke 3:21-22,

²¹ Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, ²² and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

   What? Why does Jesus need to be baptized? What is he doing there? He is the Messiah, the Son of God, fully God and fully human being? He was around 30-years-old, and he had lived a sinless life. Why did He need to be baptized?

   The answer is, “He didn’t.” At all.

   Jesus was baptized as an example for us to follow, as a gift for us to receive.

   Like dying for us on the cross, it is a gift of God’s grace.

   Maybe you, too, have been baptized. But why?

   What is this baptism that Jesus extravagantly models for us?

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, describes it in his short manual on the basics of the Christian faith, “The Small Catechism”, from which come these FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions):

What gifts or benefits does Baptism grant?

It brings about forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe it, as the Word and promise of God declare.

What is this Word and promise of God?

Where our Lord Jesus Christ says in Mark 16:16, “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.”

How can water do such great things?

Clearly the water does not do it, but the Word of God, which is with, in, and alongside the water, and faith, which trusts this Word of God in the water. 

What then is the significance of such a baptism with water?

It signifies that the old person in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned through daily sorrow for sin and repentance, and that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written?

St. Paul says in Romans 6:3-4, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

   We have now passed though death into eternal life. And it happened in our Baptism as a gift of God’s grace! We don’t have to feel it; we just have to trust it.

   That which we depend upon comes from someplace else.

   Paul makes the connection between death and resurrection and baptism and holy living in Romans 6:3-4 that was quoted by Luther a few lines above. It’s followed by verse 5,

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

   We are, in the theme of a long-ago Lutheran youth convention, not “the walking dead’, but we are the “walking wet.” It has changed everything for us.

   It’s not about our decision for Christ. We are sinners, cut off from God by our sin. God has made a decision for us.

   Jesus was baptized, as with his crucifixion, to model his love for us in the face of our sin, our spiritual drought.

   Paul writes, in Romans 5:8,

8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 

   God models that love for us in the baptism of Jesus as an example for us to follow.

   Some people experience that baptism in a deeply profound way, as new life, because this is exactly what baptism is. And others feel no difference at all. Feelings are not the crucial element.

   It’s not the amount of water is the crucial element in Baptism either, just water and the Word. In fact, the earliest Christian art we have depicting today’s reading about Jesus being baptized, shows Jesus standing in shallow water and John the Baptist pouring water over his head. But I do think that immersion of a better symbol of dying and rising, and some Christians teach that it is the only way to be baptized. It clearly is not.

   I don’t think that we ever understand what happens to us in baptism, we can’t earn it, and we certainly don’t deserve it. That’s why we baptize infants (but later ask that they affirm the baptismal covenant to grow in the Christian faith as young adults, usually in the Confirmation ministry of a congregation). That and the Biblical witness that whole households were baptized, and whole households typically contain pre-adults.

   Many Christians can’t remember their Baptisms, and some say that they know that great things were done for them, but that their baptism didn’t make them feel any different.

   But, we believe that Baptism is an act of God, that it is accomplished by God whether we feel it or not, so when people are re-baptized because they want to speak on their own behalf, or have a renewal experience, it’s like saying that, “God didn’t do a good enough job last time, so we’re going to let God try it again.” It’s understandable to desire an experience to validate ourselves, but it’s misguided.

   It’s hard being a Christian in the negative gaze of the world, but we still do live in a largely Christian country in terms of our values.

   Even now, you just have to travel to a non-Western world, non-Christian country, and then return to see how deeply Christianity still influences our culture and our values.

   But it’s more difficult to be a Christian when it’s easy to go along with a so-called “Christian” culture and to be affirmed for it, while not really knowing a living relationship with Jesus Christ. If we did, that would make us “counter-cultural”.

   It’s like being a fish in the water. How can the fish know water, except by not knowing it?

   How can we know what Baptism means when we don’t know that we need it, when we are living in a spiritual drought?

   I heard a story many years ago, but I can’t find the source, and I’ve tried.

   It was part of a science fiction story where God creates planets all over the universe and beyond and populates them with all kinds of living things, the pinnacle of which was a creature made for a perfect relationship with God on every planet, in perfect harmony with all of creation. God only required that the pinnacle of His creation not do one thing, so that they had an option to rebel. God created the option to say “No”, so that their “Yes” could mean something.

   This relationship thrived on most planets, but on some planets, people disobeyed God and evil entered their world.

   God came to each of those planets in the form of those creatures so that they wouldn’t be afraid, but might be drawn to Him, listen to him, repent, and live in perfect harmony with Him and all of Creation. And on every one of those planets, they did. Except one.

   On that planet, on a particularly rebellious and violent planet, the creatures there killed Him.

   When word of that got around the Universe and all of existence, all Creation was shocked, and no Creature wanted to come anywhere near that planet. And that’s why no creature from another planet has ever visited ours. 😊

   But we didn’t kill God. God gave his life for us. And when he was crucified, died, and was buried, God didn’t give up on us or stay away from us.

   God took his life back again, rose from the dead, and promised to start our eternal life here and now, and bring it to perfection in the life to come. He came to restore us to the state of being for which we were created.

   This, as Martin Luther said, is the word and promise of God.

   I read a little book once, when I was on a competitive adult swimming team on the psychology of competitive swimming called, You Only Feel Wet When You’re Out of the Water. The most memorable part of it, for me, was the title.

   It’s true, isn’t it? You don’t feel wet when you’re in the water. It’s your environment, it’s everything, it’s your atmosphere. You only feel wet when you are out of the water.

   In the same way, we receive everything important in life, forgiveness of sins, redemption from death and the devil, and eternal salvation given to all who believe it through our baptism, from outside of ourselves. It is the means that brings the benefit of the cross to restore the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created. It isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing that makes a real life, real. It is a gift from God. It is God’s answer to a spiritual drought.

   On the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian Church, this happened, in Acts 2:37-41,

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸ Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” ⁴⁰ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.

   We mays be in a spiritual drought today, but there is water enough for Baptism. That which we depend upon comes from someplace else.

   Receive a new environment for your life. Repent and be baptized if you haven’t yet received this gift and live into it if you have. Invite friends and family to do the same. How will they know unless you tell them?

   God ends spiritual drought with the promises of Baptism. 

344 It's New!

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “It’s New!”, originally shared on January 3, 2025. It was the 344^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We’ve begun a new year! So what? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I began this new year with a bad cold, and Sally’s took great care of me. That’s why we’re getting our video/blog/podcast uploaded late this week.

   A colleague, unaware of my illness, posted an appropriate prayer on Facebook with these words above it “When a man gets a cold.”

   The prayer itself was labeled, “A Prayer for a Person Near Death.”

   I won’t argue with that. Except to say that I heard of a study that said that men experience things like the common cold differently than women. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m going with it for now. 😊

   Anyway, the new year has begun and it’s already a doozy. A mass shooting in New Orleans, a deadly fireworks explosion in Hawaii, gang killings at a memorial birthday party in New York, and a suicide and explosion in a Tesla Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, are the stories that have dominated the news at the beginning of 2025. 

   A “new year” sounds like a fresh start, like happy days are here again, or at least are coming. But is New Year’s Day any different than New Year’s Eve?

   Maybe for those who partied too hard on New Year’s Eve it is. But in general, not really.

   In fact, this year, the slogan I’ve seen most often associated with the new year is, “Let’s Survive in ’25!”

   Kind of a low bar, don’t you think? 😊

   Maybe not. We’ll see. But, as I’ve said many times, we may not know what the future holds, but we do know Who knows the future.

   Yet, it has often been discouraging for me to see how quickly people who have been at least nominal Christians for many years will abandon the real comfort that God gives to all who will receive it and replace it with the hollow expectations of this world.

   For example, the Christian celebration of Christmas is not a day, or even just the night before a day, but a season, as in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. The Christmas season runs from December 24^th to January 5^th, from Christmas Eve to the Eve of the day of the Epiphany of Our Lord.

   Christmas Day, December 25^th, happened over a week ago. For an increasing number of people in our world, that was it. Christmas was over. The presents were opened and are now put away. The lights were taken down and packed-up. The decorations are history for another year.

   Some people held out until New Years Day, but even then the tree already seemed a little out of place, and now it’s down and it will be out with the next trash pick-up.

   Even some Christians ended Christmas on Christmas Eve.  “We didn’t have a Christmas Day worship service,” they say, “because, well, it’s a lot of work and we weren’t sure people would come even for a Christmas Eve service, much less for a service on Christmas Day, because people are busy and have out of town family and guests to take care of, and we need to put stuff away when we have people to do it, or just we don’t care about Church seasons”, and so on.

   For others, Christmas is over when the season of commercial preparations for parties and shopping, and presents ends, and then when it’s done, it’s really done.

   In fact, some businesses and TV programs marked the 12 days of Christmas as a countdown to Christmas.

   So, now Christians have Christmas pretty much all to ourselves and those with whom we share it, until January 6^th!

   There’s no more holiday stress. The long nightmare of expectations and over-indulgence is over.

   Now we know the Christmas blessing and we open our hearts to receive it for these 12 whole days and share it with the world!

   So continue to have a Merry Christmas, continue to sing the Christmas hymns and carols, and don’t be embarrassed for celebrating Christmas as a Christian.   

   Be counter-cultural. Don’t take down your Christmas tree, your lights, or your decorations yet. Leave them up until January 6^th, and be a witness if you are asked why, or when you get funny looks. 😊 

   As baseball legend Yogi Berra said, “It ain't over till it's over.” 😊

As Jesus said, in Matthew 5:14-15,

   ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

   Be a witness. Be a reflector of the light, the light that came into the world, the light that is Jesus Christ.

   John describes it in terms of the birth of Jesus, in the reading from John which some churches will not have heard read yet, but will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 1:1-18. In John 1:3-5, we hear,

³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

   A new year is an astronomical description. It does not mean, by itself, that anything of substance is going to change. But it is a point at which people consider making changes to their lives. People will make resolutions, most of which will be gone by spring.

   Advertisers use the word “new” to appeal to our desire to have something that is the best, something that other people don’t have. “New” products only have to be slightly different than their “old” version. “New” suggests youth and optimism, because we automatically associate “new” with “better”. That is the myth of human progress.

   We like the idea of a “new” year even though we know that it will bring humongous challenges.

   This year, why not consider something significant: a new life? A life that can only come from God.

   What difference will it make?

   I read a story a few weeks ago about a pastor who was asked to preach and lead worship in a small church way out in the boondocks. He was invited to have breakfast before worship in the cabin that was the home of one of the church members.

   Before the meal, the preacher asked his host if he would offer a blessing.

   The man agreed and began, “Lord, I hate buttermilk.”

   The preacher shifted a bit, but the man continued, “And, Lord, you know that I hate raw white flower. And, Lord, you know that I especially hate eating lard.

   “But, Lord, you know that I do love biscuits.

   “So, as we enjoy these fresh biscuits here on this table, made out of buttermilk, raw white flower, and lard, we ask that, when we have challenges in our lives, we remember that we just might not know the whole story yet. Let us continue to live as your people, and to remember what the Bible says in Romans 8:28,

²⁸ We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

   And all at that table said, ‘Amen’”.

   This year, let the “new” in the new year be you.

   Open your heart and be made new. Jesus said, in John 3:5-8,

⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

   You belong. You belong to God. God has died for you, only be transformed by God’s gift.

   Richard Halvorsen, who was a Presbyterian minister and served as the Chaplain to the United States Senate in the 1980’s and ‘90’s once said,

“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture.   And, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.”

   In this new year, be a part of a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ.

   Repent and open your heart, your true self, to God’s transformation today. Live as someone who has received the gift of new life as part of God’s people, as in 1 Peter 2:9-10,

⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰       Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

   Make the new year a year of significance. We have good news to share! Life can change for the better. Jesus will do it if you let him in. The deepest darkness is overcome by the light. Christ is born! Our redemption is nearer now that when it was first proclaimed!

   Let’s live into this new year with a new focus on the awe and wonder of the love of God. Let us be reflectors of the light that is Jesus Christ, share the Good News of new life, and bring a focus on a living relationship with the one true living God in Jesus Christ this year, forgiven and reconciled with God and with one another.

   Let’s live in Christ in this new year as a new creation, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17,

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

   This year, let’s be new.

343 An Irrelevant Christmas

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “An Irrelevant Christmas”, originally shared on December 25, 2024. It was the 343^rd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We are celebrating a birth today that launched the most important events in human history, and it happened through a young woman whose place in human history was otherwise irrelevant. Today, we’re going to find out how that worked.

   Pastor Rick Warren once said that God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called.

   Sometimes, that happens in unexpected ways.

   I read a story the other day about a famous doctor who was being given a tour of the Tewksbury Institute, a combination physical and mental hospital, in Massachusetts.

   At one point, he bumped into an elderly floor maid and then struck up a conversation to cover his embarrassment.

   It turned out that the maid had worked there almost from the beginning.

   She took him down into the old basement and showed him some small, rusty, prison cells.

   She pointed to one and said, “That’s the cage where they used to keep Annie Sulivan.”

   “Who’s that?”, the doctor asked.

   She said that Annie was brought in as a young girl because no one could do anything with her. She’d bite people and throw her food at them. She’d thrash around and scratch, and no one could examine her.

   So, one night, the floor maid baked Annie a batch of brownies after work. She took them to Annie’s cage and left them where she could reach them. Then she said to her, “Annie, I baked these brownies just for you. I’ll put them right here on the floor and you can come and get them if you want.” Then, she said, she got out of there as fast as she could. 😊

   The maid said that Annie ate the brownies, and after that she was a little bit nicer to her. So, she would talk with her, and even got her laughing once.

   One of the nurses saw this and the medical and psychiatric staff asked the floor maid if she would help with Annie, and she did. Every time they wanted to see Annie, she would go into the cage first and explain what was happening, and why, and she would stay with Annie and hold her hand.

   That’s how they discovered that Annie was almost blind.

   After they had worked with her for a tough 12 months, the Perking Institute for the Blind opened a place for Annie and she was able to study and to learn, and eventually she became a teacher herself!

   One day, Annie came back to Tewksbury for a visit, and the director talked with her about a letter he had just received.

   A man had written to him about his daughter, who was totally out of control, almost like an animal. He wrote that she was blind and deaf and mentally ‘deranged’. He said that he didn’t know what to do, but he knew that he didn’t want to put her in an asylum. He asked if anyone at the institute knew of anyone who could come to his house and work with his daughter, Helen Keller. Annie Sullivan went to that house, and she became Helen’s lifelong teacher and companion. Her story became a Broadway play, a television production, and an award-winning movie, all called “The Miracle Worker”.

   Helen Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and in 1904 she became the first deaf and blind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She graduated cum laude. She wrote 12 books, was a prolific speechmaker, was a vigorous social activist, and received many awards. In 1999, she was  listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th century and as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. She was a witness for a kind of broadly mystical Christianity.

   When Helen Keller was nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954, she was asked who had had the greatest influence on her life, and she said, “Annie Sullivan.”

   But Annie Sulivan said, “No Helen, the woman who had the greatest influence on both our lives was a floor maid at the Tewksbury Institute.” I couldn’t even find that floor maid’s name.

   That floor maid may have thought of her life as being irrelevant, but without her there would have been no Helen Keller.

   Billy Graham grew up on a dairy farm in North Carolina during the Great Depression.

   He grew into his teenage years as a popular, athletic, young man with movie star looks. He enjoyed having fun. Some might say that he was a little wild. His father was concerned about him.

   In May of 1934, a group of businessmen from nearby Charlotte, North Carolina got permission to hold a prayer meeting on the Graham farm where a prayer was offered that God would call someone from the Charlotte area to preach the Gospel to the world.

   That same year, some friends talked a reluctant 16-year-old Billy into attending a revival meeting that was being led by a travelling evangelist, Rev. Mordecai Ham. Billy Graham would later say that he became a Christian at one of the evening events during that revival.

   Billy Graham grew up to preach the Gospel on every continent and in most countries of the world. He was the friend of presidents and royalty and regular people alike. He had strict accountability requirements for his staff, and there were no scandals associated with his worldwide evangelistic mass gatherings for which he secured the cooperation of churches of all kinds. He pioneered Christian media. He founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the World Emergency Fund. He founded “Christianity Today” magazine, which is still highly influential today.

   Millions of people around the world know who Rev. Billy Graham is, but Rev. Mordecai Ham is pretty much unknown today. He may have thought that his life was irrelevant to the world, but without him, there would have been no Rev. Billy Graham.

   Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a young woman, unmarried in a Patriarchal culture in an almost unknown country to the world. It was occupied by the Roman Empire, which was just the most recent of many empires that had occupied Israel for almost 1,000 years. She could have been as young as 12. Try and wrap your head around that for a minute

   Mary was pregnant, and Joseph, who had a legal relationship with Mary that was not yet marriage, knew that he was not the baby’s father. In those days, Joseph could have had Mary put to death for the shame she had brought upon them and their families. But Joseph who, like Mary, had been visited by an angel (a messenger from God) believed that Mary, a virgin, had been made pregnant by the will of God.

   Just then, everyone in the country was ordered to go to their family’s city of origin in order to be registered by the occupying Roman Empire. The Romans wanted to make sure that everyone was accounted for at tax time.

   Mary and Joseph traveled the 90 miles to Joseph’s family town of Bethlehem, by donkey and on foot, in Mary’s ninth month of pregnancy. They arrived and found that people coming into town from all over the country had taken all the rooms. It’s almost inconceivable, though, that Joseph’s relatives couldn’t have found someplace for them. But the out-of-wedlock pregnancy had shamed the family.

   It was not likely that there was no room for them at the inn, but that there was no room for THEM at the inn, or anywhere else with the family.

   They found some shelter in an enclosure for animals and, having no place to put her baby, Mary wrapped him in tight bands of cloth and laid him in the container from which the animals ate their food.

   This is how God, who created everything that exists from nothing as an act of God’s will, was born as Jesus, who was fully God and fully a human being.

   Mary the earthly mother of Jesus, is pretty well known throughout the world today.

   But she would have been utterly irrelevant to history except that she was obedient to God’s will. And that made all the difference.

   It doesn’t matter if we are irrelevant to the world.

   All that matters is that we are so relevant to God that he came from heaven to earth to be born for us, to give his life and to take it back again for us, and that he will come again to take us to be with him forever.

   Christmas is the story of the power of those who the world sees as irrelevant.

   So, this Christmas, be like the infant Jesus. Depend only upon God. Turn to Him and receive His power, for when we are weak, then we are strong.

   Tonight, we may be able to see the moon. When we see the moon, we see the same moon, in the same phase, as everyone else in the world. We see the same moon that Jesus saw when he was born over 2,000 years ago. Mary saw that same moon, and Joseph, and the shepherds. We all share that common experience.

   But the bond that we have with Jesus is even stronger, infinitely stronger, than the shared experience we have with all people of looking at that same moon.

   Today, we celebrate the common relationship we have with God, given to all who will receive it, because Jesus was born in order to restore that relationship for which we were created as an act of God’s will. The relationship that only comes from God.

   And anyone can share that good news with people they know who need to know about Jesus. We only need to listen to the voice of God and follow Jesus to do great things.

   It doesn’t matter if you think that you are irrelevant to the world.

   Let us be like the shepherds who first saw the baby Jesus. They may well have thought that they were irrelevant, but today we know their witness, as in Luke 2:20,

²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

   Share that same good news during this Christmas season.

   The Christmas story is filled with people who were irrelevant to the world, but the power of God enabled them to do great things.

   As Pastor Warren said, “God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called.”