Sermons by Vicar Vicky Carathanassis (Page 4)

Well we may still be a week out from Christmas, but today we read the entire Nativity story in the gospel of Matthew! It’s ok if you missed it, it went real fast, just a single verse and not even a whole sentence long. “But he, Joseph, had no marital relations with her, Mary, until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.” That’s it! That’s the whole story! There’s no away in the mangers, no “no room in the inn for travelers weary” no “certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay” no “angels we have heard on high” Matthew doesn’t even specify what time the birth took place so no “O Holy Night” either. Thank God for Luke, otherwise we’d be really short on Christmas carols…

Now I could understand a knee jerk reaction to this reading being something like “really, more John the Baptist?  We did that last week!”  And we did, but last week we talked about him baptizing people in the Jordan River, declaring the kingdom of God to be at hand, that the one more powerful than him who will baptize them all with the Holy Spirit is coming, so get ready!  And today we skip about 1/3 of the gospel of Matthew just to continue journeying with John…

So I’d already made up my mind I was going to preach on the Jerimiah reading, and I opened it up and started reading and instantly felt super guilty because…last time I preached I told you all that “woe” means like yikes. And…that continues to be true, when it’s a New Testament reading and the word is being translated from Greek. But Jerimiah’s in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament so we’re translating that word from Hebrew. And when it’s coming from Hebrew it’s more…an audible sigh, dismay, lament even. These are the feelings bestowed on those shepherds this morning…