December 2005

ARTICLE TOOLS

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FROM THE HUMAN PERSPECTIVE, when you compare [God] to the other gods of the other religions in the world, you have to say our God is really sort of odd. He uses the most common of people, people that aren't any different from any of us here; he comes in the most common of ways, when by his Spirit an anonymous young woman is found to be with child. And the strangest thing is that he comes at all—he's not the Above-Us-God, too holy to come down. This God's love is so immense that he wants to come down. And he has proven his love by the fact that he did come down and touch our ground.
James R. Van Tholen, Where All Hope Lies

WE DO NOT BELIEVE that the virgin mother gave birth to a son and that he is the Lord and Savior unless, added to this, I believe the second thing, namely, that he is my Savior and Lord.
Martin Luther, "Sermon on the Afternoon of Christmas Day 1530"

DO YOU WANT TO SEE the humility of God? Look in the manger and see him lying there. Surely this is our God. Seeing an infant, I wonder how this could be the one who says, "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" I see a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Is this the one who is clothed in the beautiful glory of unapproachable light?

Listen! He is crying. Is this the one who thunders in the heaven making the angels lower their wings? Yes, but he has emptied himself in order to fill us.
Guerric of Igny, Liturgical Sermons

NOW IS THE TIME to sing, envision, enact, and retell a story of God coming unexpectedly in the worst of times as a baby born poor, born homeless, born to die that all human life might be transformed and dreams made real. It's God's Good News—but only because we already know the story of Easter. John H. Westerhoff III, A Pilgrim People: Learning ...