Ready or not ready, Christmas is here. I wish for each of you a peaceful, joyful Christmastide. May God open your heart to hope. May God open your heart to peace and to wholeness. For Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus Christ, was born into our world so that we could find wholeness. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,” say the angels to the shepherds. Savior can mean “rescuer,” but it can also mean “to heal; restore, to make whole.” Throughout his lifetime, when Jesus heals people, he often says to them, “Your faith has made you well.”  The word “well” finds its origin in the same word as “savior.”  Your faith, Jesus tells us, heals you; saves you; makes you whole.  “To you is born this day in the city of David, the One who will make you whole.”

Don’t we all want to be whole? Scarred perhaps. Limping a little from life perhaps, and longing for the holy, for Emmanuel, for God with us. Longing for wholeness. The celebration of Christmas, in our culture, ends at midnight on December 25. But for those of us seeking wholeness, faith, and hope, Christmas is not a date; it is a way of living, one day at a time, making room in our hearts for Jesus’ birth, every day. Christmas is the walking a pilgrimage walk, always, letting God be Emmanuel in us. Jesus invites us to take our longing, our grief and anxiety, our woundedness, our yearning for hope that might have been stepped on along the way, and open all of that up for Jesus to enter into it. Jesus meets us there, bringing the wholeness that only he can bring.

For you this season, I pray the gift of hope, and the palpable sense that Jesus is standing right at your heart, waiting to be invited in to your whole life, to the joys and sorrows, messiness and dreams, offering healing, offering wholeness.

Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year to you.

With love,

PS: Thanks to the Rt. Rev. Jake Owensby, bishop of Western Louisiana, for the inspiration of “savior/wholeness.”

PPS: Don’t forget about our no-rehearsal Epiphany Pageant on January 4 at the 10:30 service!  All children are welcome. Costumes available to be chosen this Sunday, December 28. Or, create a costume at home. See you there!