Christmas message from The Rev. Alan Akridge, Saint Mark's Episcopal, Brunswick, Ga

[In case it is too cold for you to get out on this Christmas Eve day, here is a message from afar.]

Merry Christmas!

Dear Parish Family:  

Did you read what I read?  In the gospel above, the shepherd's respond strangely to the announcement that the savior of the world, the messiah, had been born.  Their response is peculiar because there's a catch!  They are told that the savior's  nursery is a BARN and his crib is a HAY TROUGH.  Their response is that they "...went with haste..."  

Do you think what I think?  If are like me, then you can admit that at least a small part of you would have scoffed at the announcement that the savior of the universe had been born in the local equivalent of Sterling behind the Friendly Express (nothing against Sterling or Friendly Express)!  

Do you hear what I hear?  But also if you are like me, then you can relate that THIS pattern is exactly how God works.  It seems God is always picking up the little people and turning them into Big People.  Moses was a criminal foster kid from a slave people running from the law.  David was the runt of the litter whose own dad almost didn't acknowledge him, etc. etc.   It almost seems as if God favors the ones that everyone else ignores.  

Do you see what I see?  Still, if you are like me, then you are a bit cynical about the announcement because the world seems too tragically broken to be fixed from a hay trough in no-where'sville.  It just doesn't make sense that a nobody with nothing is going to be able to save us all.   

But, and here's the  Amazing Grace, if you are like me, then you also see the GREAT GOOD NEWS reminder in every December 25th.  

This Good News is that the ultimate proof of God's power is precisely:

·  that even the smallest most vulnerable human

·  from the smallest most oppressed people

·  from a tiny nowhere town

·  who's parents aren't anyone special

Is STILL big enough to beat all the powers of darkness and all the brokenness under heaven and all the hurt that we cause one another.    

Then, amidst all this too-ing and fro-ing (like me) we'd all come to see  exactly what the Shepherd's saw.  

A child, lying in a manger, and saving the whole universe.

Merry Christmas,

Fr. Alan+

 [The Rev. Alan Akridge, Rector, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Brunswick, Ga]