C. Christmas 2. 2010                                                   Christ Church , York     

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Words. We use words all the time – to communicate with one another; to express our deepest emotions; to admonish another. Words are powerful, able to build up or to destroy, to bestow value or take it away, to motivate or deflate. Words are never just marks on a page or sounds in the air. Rather they form and shape human community and help us to understand the world around us. Words shape the development of our personality, are critical to the development of our self-worth and are part of what makes us human.

Words are also important in the life of the church. Gathered here we speak to one another in words, sing out our words in song, read our words in Scripture and speak our words in prayer. In, through and by such words – spoken, sung and shared - the being of the church in this time and place is formed and shaped. For we Lutherans adhere to the understanding of lex orandi, lex credeni, that is what we speak we believe and what we believe we speak. Our very words express our deepest faith and our deepest faith calls us to speak out that faith in prayer and song. This should not surprise us because we also know from our Augsburg Confession that the Church itself is the creation of God's own word. For where the Gospel is purely proclaimed and taught, as our Confessions go on, and where the sacraments are rightly administered in accordance with that Gospel, there is the Church. The Church then is not a building, not just another club or an association of like-minded people, not an entity defined by a constitution, its style of worship, its quality of music or its ethnic traditions. Rather, the church is an event that "happens" in the midst of people when a word is spoken, read or preached and where the sacraments are administered in accordance with that Word. In the church then words are never just words. Words and particularly "the Word" of the gospel are the very life-blood of the church, without which it can no longer be the Christian church, for that Word and that Word alone is life.

Today it is Jeremiah who comes to speak this Word of life to his people! In many ways it seems out of character for Jeremiah, who spends much of his time ranting and raving about the sins of the nation and threatening them with God’s anger and judgment because of their immoral lives, their idolatry, their unfaithfulness to the covenant, and their infatuation with the ways of the world. But now Jeremiah comes to speak a different word, one where the rants and raves become the promises and offers of God's grace and mercy.

Today we hear the prophet announce that it is time for the people to rejoice and sing aloud their praises to God because God is going to do some wonderful things for them. Piling up one image after another, Jeremiah speaks of God’s love for His people – how God is the shepherd who will gather his scattered flock, the people of Israel; how God will turn their sorrow into joy bringing water into the midst of their desert-like lives; how their lives will be blessed with plenty and abundance; how their father will reclaim them and how they will enjoy all the rights and privileges of being the firstborn child. When these promises are fulfilled, the people will sing and dance, and celebrate like they have never done, for in that day their lives will at last be full and satisfied and there will be no more longing for something better. This is the Gospel. This is the Good News, the Good News which is God’s love for His people!

And what’s even more amazing about these words is that Jeremiah dares to speak them at a time when such words and sentiments seemed absurd. For these words were spoken at the time when the nation lay in rubble, when the Babylonians had swept into Jerusalem, burned the city, destroyed the Temple and carried off the king and the key leaders into exile. The nation was devastated. In the eyes of the world, Israel was a puny upstart nation that had been properly put in its place by one of the truly great nations of the ancient world. Nevertheless, even though Israel had deserved this fate, God still loves her. Even though there was no merit or worthiness in her, God cannot turn his back on her and promises to treat her with all the extravagant generosity and love He can muster.

Unfortunately the world has a difficult time understanding, let alone appreciating, this kind of love. For the love that God has for this world and for His people is love that has no agenda, no ulterior motives and no strings attached. Contrary to the love of this world - a love that loves only the lovable - this love loves the unlovable. In this love the beloved becomes lovable because of the love of the lover. It is the decision of the lover to love the beloved that makes the beloved lovable. Israel was in ruins, destroyed, exiled, and broken. There was nothing attractive about her. And what made her plight even more devastating was that she had brought this fate upon herself by thumbing her nose at God. Nevertheless, God chooses to love her simply because He wants to. Unlike the love of this world which says "I'll love you if you love me" or "I love you because of what you do for me," God's love embraced Israel even when she was most unlovable.

This is Good News! This is the Gospel! This is the good word that is at the heart of Scripture from beginning to end. From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to Moses, David, and the prophets, we see God's

Word shaping people's lives, rescuing them from their own follies, delivering them from the hands of their enemies, not because they deserve it but because God chooses to love them. The word of God is never just words. It is never just marks on a page or sounds falling from human lips. It is God in action, choosing to love and save a world that is in big trouble.

We are in the midst of Christmas, a season that is filled with an acute sense of fulfillment. The hopes and dreams of all the years have come to fulfillment in the birth of Christ or as Saint John announces, the Word of God has come among us. The Word that was there at the creation of the world, the Word that sustained the people of Israel through the centuries, the Word that revealed his loving heart repeatedly to his chosen people, has at last become one of us. "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"

Through this Word, God continues to do the unthinkable – to love the unlovable and that is the message of this season of Christmas, the message of the life of Jesus, the message which is at the heart of the mission of the church. In Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, we see that words are never just words but are the very means by which Jesus changes the world. To the people that the world discards as ugly and worthless - the blind, the deaf, the diseased, to these Jesus speaks His word and heals them. To those who were social outcasts, despised and rejected by the religious and social establishment, Jesus offers a word of welcome. To the twelve disciples, an unimpressive bunch of fisherman, tax collectors, and uneducated working folk, Jesus speaks a word of invitation, calling them to be his disciples. From Jeremiah to Jesus it has always been this way as the word of God makes something out of nothing, making that which was unloved, lovable, that which was diseased, healed. For this "Word made flesh," such words are never just words but rather the means by which He brings new life into the world.

That same incredible word comes now to take shape in our lives. As Saint Francis once said, "Preach the gospel always, use words if necessary." And we see such love lived when a husband tenderly cares for his bedridden wife, telling her she is beautiful and that he loves her. We see new life when a teenager, rejected by her friends at school, depressed and bedraggled, is hugged by her mother who wipes away her tears and tells her that she is the apple of her eye. Anger seems to be destroying a marriage. But then the wife hears from her husband words she can't ever remember hearing from him. "I'm sorry. Forgive me" and the angry debate melts into a forgiving embrace. Words are never just words. But such words filled with the love of Christ can and will transform this world.

When those Israelites first heard Jeremiah utter the words of consolation and hope, they must have thought he was crazy. Broken, disgraced, humiliated, and carried off into exile in Babylon , they had hit rock bottom. But these words were never just words. Rather they were packed power. They were comfort and consolation. They sustained them through forty years of suffering in Babylon and for centuries beyond. They brought them joy in the midst of sadness. And one day that same "Word became flesh and lived among us" in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This same Word continues to be among us in the mission and ministry of this congregation and Christ's church everywhere. This Word is the presence of the living God who comes to speak new life into our bedraggled lives. Jeremiah believed that the day was coming when this Word would finally make all things right for his people and when that day arrived, it would be a moment of joy, a time for dancing and singing and feasting and celebrating. That day is now here. Jesus, the Word made flesh, is alive and among us and in this Christmas season we celebrate this Word made flesh which has come to dwell among. For these words, the words of the Gospel are never just words but the very presence of the living, breathing, loving, almighty God who comes to bring us new life in Him and a time for dancing, singing, feasting and celebrating. For that Word and that life, we say thanks be to God! In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.