Sermons by Vicar Vicky Carathanassis (Page 4)

So I sat down to do my sermon prep and was super pumped. “I’m going to preach this on New Year’s Day! Starting off the new year doing church-y stuff, how neat! Don’t really know what the readings are, but Name of Jesus sounds cool.” And even though it was still 2022 at that time, I was really carrying a lot of “new year, new me” energy. This year I’m going to get in the habit of managing my time wisely, so I’m not going to procrastinate till the very last minute! Let’s leave those past habits behind, and try something new! I am ready to be dazzled! Show me what you’ve got lectionary…

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…