Hi everyone,
Welcome to worship for this 2nd Sunday of Christmas, landing on January 4, 2026!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the order and words of the service as well as the sermon, or you can just use the words that will appear on your screen. The sermon is also on this page below the video.
If you’d like to enhance your online worship experience, you are invited to have a lit candle in your space for the most of the service, and extinguish it when the altar candles are extinguished after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable, by having something small to eat and drink ready for consumption at the appropriate time in the service. Further instruction will be given then.
May God’s unending grace and love fill you with hope and joy, in this New Year and always!
Loving God, by the power of your Spirit, may the truth of your presence be revealed, that we might see your face in each other and know that you are with us always, through your Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
So I hope you’re all recovered from the crazy holiday season we’re coming out of. It’s always a bit harder, I feel, when Christmas lands mid-week like it did this time around, as in a way it feels more disruptive. Like when Christmas lands in the weekend or just outside it, then it seems like we have more time to prepare for our gatherings and various other things, and then more time to really rest up on the other end before we’re hit with life and routine again.
Like, I was just looking forward to the kids being off school so I could spend more time with them, and now they’re already back in school tomorrow. The past two weeks just flew by. And to make matters worse, it’s 2026! I’m sure it’ll sink in for me that it’s not 2025 anymore in like May or June, as I’m still getting used it to not being the 90s anymore. But my goodness, are the years going by quickly. I don’t know if it’s my middle age creeping in or what, but I find myself dwelling in my nostalgic feels a lot more lately. I mean, even more than before, for those of you who have seen the toys in my office…
What I mean is, with each passing year, I tend to look back at my life and compare it to where I am now. I think and reflect on what I’ve done to leave a mark on this world and my contribution to society in general. I’m fully aware and accept that I’m at a point of my life where there was more before then there will be after, and so I guess these thoughts are natural as my own mortality becomes more of a reality then some far fetched theory.
And I find that more often than not, as I reminisce and reflect, I admit that I can feel kind of… disappointed in myself.
I know, I know, I’ve done amazingly well, all things considered. It’s just that… well I remember back in high school we had to write out 10-year goals. I put all the typical things, like a high-paying job, a spouse of some kind, maybe a kid or two, a big house, and of course a high-performance sports vehicle capable of a sub-10-second quarter-mile. Pretty normal goals for a late high schooler if you asked me.
Well, 10 years had passed and at 27 I was living in the seminary dorm, single-ish as all heck, and up to my eyeballs in student loans even after selling my low-displacement, high 16-second car to help pay for it all. Not exactly what I dreamed of. And then even after seminary I kind of made new 10 year goals for myself, aaaand let’s just say my kids aren’t the genius child prodigies that were supposed to make me rich. So I guess I’m just bad at predicting stuff.
I should say that I don’t mean that my years have been a waste or that I don’t love my kids or that I don’t enjoy the giant behemoth of a van that I’m driving now. I don’t even mean that I’m unhappy with where I am in life. I’m just saying that often, especially at times like these when we just entered into a New Year which happens to be a significant birthday year for me, it’s really easy to just question. To wonder about what we’ve done, if we’ve done enough, and how we’ll be remembered. And maybe even… regret, as is the case for me at times.
Regret that I didn’t do more. Regret that I didn’t achieve more. Regret that I’m just not more. As in, not more compared to my peers, not more according to some of the expectations I’ve perceived from others, not more up against my own pseudo-goals that I’ve pseudo-set for myself.
Even as I was struggling with these texts we get today for this 2nd Sunday of Christmas, while I was doing research and studying trying to write this meh-at-best sermon, while I kept waking myself up while doing all of this, I couldn’t help but wonder why is it still so hard for me to write these things? Why do I still have so much trouble when it comes to sermonizing and preacherdizing (aside from the made up words)? Why does it seem like, even after nearly 2 decades of this role, am I not as good as I think I should be?
And to be honest, when we’re up against texts like this, it’s not hard to see why I was having trouble. Not only do we get these basically every 2nd Sunday of Christmas if we even observe it that year, but we also had this same-ish gospel reading on every Christmas Day and Christmas Eve, which we do get every year. I know, for Christmas Eve we only read it as we light the candles, but still.
It’s a familiar text, albeit a bit confusing as far as familiar texts go. And because of its familiarity and confusability, we might gloss over it and not really hear or look for what God is saying to us. Sure, it’s not exactly the same as the Christmas text as the first part is optional and so I opted not to use them today, and we get a few more verses at the end, but it’s still basically the same.
It’s like, yeah we know that in the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. We know that all things came into being through him. And we know that ultimately the Word became flesh. I mean again, this is what we talk about every Christmas so why do we need to go over it again just a couple Sundays after? No wonder we often skip this day in favour of Epiphany, which honestly I was like this close to doing because of this text.
But as I was feeling what I was feeling and reflecting on what I was reflecting on, this text… this oh so familiar and confusing text… jumped out at me. Or at least, one part of it did. In verse 12 it says that we are given the “power to become children of God.”
The power to become children of God?
But where, pray tell, does this power come from? The text says not from blood, not from the will of the flesh, not from the will of humans, but from God.
Sure, it says that we have to accept and believe that God’s Word made flesh has some good things to teach us, but that power still comes to us from God. We might question and be confused and maybe even doubt, but that power still is revealed to us in God. We might fail, be bad, and not live up to our goals and expectations, but that power still is given to us by God.
See in spite of all that we’ve done or left undone, in spite of where we are or aren’t in life, in spite of our age whether young or old or some weird hybrid of the two like I like to tell myself I am, God chooses us, calls us, and brings us into community.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t set goals for ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we will hit every target we aim for. This doesn’t even mean that we won’t have regrets. But it does mean that whatever failures we might find ourselves in, we continue to be welcomed into God’s kingdom. Whatever brokenness or pain we might feel, we are healed by God’s grace. Whatever bad feelings we might be feeling about ourselves, others, or the world in general, God still gives us the power to be children of God.
So I think it’s appropriate that we start this and every Christmas season with this text and end it right after the New Year with it as well. The Nativity show us who Jesus is as God with us, and then as we move into the rest of the year, it is revealed who we are as God’s children. And we are reminded that life, wherever it may take us, whatever it might throw at us, and whoever it gives to and takes away from us, isn’t truly life until we can grasp how we are flawed but forgiven, how we are saved in our struggles, how we are so imperfectly perfect and perfectly imperfect, but God chooses to be with us, care for us, and give us meaning and purpose anyway.
So as we move from this Christmas season into the time after the Epiphany, may we never lose sight of who we are and whose we are, that even when we feel like we’re not up to snuff, we can be reminded that actually, we totally are. All thanks and praise be to God. Amen.
