Peter, James, and John are up on a mountain having this amazing, mountain-top experience and the other nine male disciples, plus the women, miss it. Not only do they miss it, they spend the whole time trying – in vain – to cast out a demon.

“It is what it is” is a thing people often say when a situation is bad but they have decided they are not going to do anything about it. Nowhere in scripture does God ever say “It Is What It Is.”

The person of Jesus Christ is still the word of God who is more powerful than the stories you tell yourself about yourself or the stories others tell about you.

Jonah thinks he’s better than other people because of his ethnicity and his religion… but let’s be honest; we all have a little bit of Jonah in us.

Even if we don’t have the spiritual gifts someone told us we’re supposed to, God loves us anyway.

The story of Herod and the babes of Bethlehem is likely fictional, but it’s true in that it’s the story of a powerful person who is afraid bringing death. It happened in the days of Herod, and it’s happened probably every year since.

For God to become human would mean God learned, and not only that, but God learned from people – and from people who didn’t have perfect theology.

Our homes, our lives, and our worlds are in chaos and turmoil. John’s Version (in The Message reads, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” Not a perfect neighborhood or an ideal neighborhood or a neighborhood with a white picket fence, but into the neighborhood exactly as it is.

Mark’s version of the incarnation has none of the things we expect from a Christmas story – no shepherds or magi; no angels or Bethlehem or Caesar Augustus. What Mark does show us about God become human is God taking on incredible vulnerability. The song Rev. Schell references at the end of the service is…

Joseph had good reason to doubt the explanation of Mary’s pregnancy given by the angel in his dream. The four women in Matthew’s genealogy might provide context for how he decided the virgin birth was worth risking being wrong about.