The Eve of the Nativity (Christmas Eve), Year A (2025)

Isaiah 9: 2–7 / Psalm 96 / Titus 2: 11–14 / Luke 2: 1–20

 

This is the written version of the sermon given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in McKnightstown, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, December 24, 2025, by Fr. Gene Tucker, Interim Pastor.

 

“WHAT SORT OF A GIFT HAS GOD GIVEN US?”

(Homily text: Luke 2: 1-20)

The Christmas season is a time of giving, and receiving, gifts. Indeed, the retail establishments all around us have been encouraging us to buy gifts for giving at this time of the year for some months now. (Perhaps many of us are weary from the constant urgings to tap into the commercial aspects of this holiday.)

Since the secular observance of Christmas seems to overtake our attentions, perhaps it’d be a good idea for us to step back from all of that, inhale deeply, and set those things aside, that we may concentrate on the essential meaning of this celebration.

After all, the essence of Christmas, and its basic focus and meaning, is on the giving of the greatest gift that has ever been given to us: The sending of God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to take up our humanity, to live and die as one of us, to show us the way to the Father.

As we step back, perhaps it might help our own contemplation of God’s mighty act in sending Jesus to consider some of the ways in which this gift unfolded as our Lord grew up and began His ministry. It will also help us if we contrast His behavior and His attitudes up against the commonly-held beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of the culture among God’s chosen people in the time of His earthly sojourn.

We might begin with this radical truth: There are no outcasts in God’s kingdom. In the culture of the time 2,000 years ago, there were many such outcasts: The notorious sinners (like tax collectors), or the Samaritans, or those with diseases or who were poor. To the people back then, all those who suffered in some way were being punished by God for some egregious sin. To all such, our Lord says, “Come, God loves you.” To such as these, our Lord says, “You are not permanently beyond God’s ability to cure, to fix, to love.”

Our Lord came to break down barriers that separate human beings, one from another. Barriers of race, ethnicity, wealth or poverty, all were welcome in God’s kingdom. All were precious creations of God, God’s unique and wonderful work. Every single person was worthy of God’s love, and worthy of beginning a walk with God which led to a new, full and meaningful life. (After all, when we have a genuine encounter with God, we will never be in the same place as when the journey began.) The early Church grew, in part, because it offered a radical welcome to all sorts of persons: noble ones, slaves, rich ones and poor ones. God’s radical love, made known in Christ, was generously offered to all…as a result, many in the Greco-Roman world of the first century found worth, value, meaning to life and love, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

The Lord came, bringing with Him the ability to create, and to re-create. He fed large crowds of people. He healed the sick, and cured the lame. He delivered those who had become wards of Satan’s power. He demonstrated His power over the creation, stilling the waters of the sea. God’s power to create was – and is - made known in His work.

To God’s people back then, the coming Messiah[1] would be a mighty king like King David of old. He would come, riding into Jerusalem on a white horse, his sword held high. This Messiah came, however, riding on a donkey. This Messiah came, saying He had come to serve, not to be served. We see such servanthood in His death on a cross on Good Friday. This Messiah came to proclaim God’s love and God’s righteousness.[2]

Our Lord’s kingship ushers in a kingdom that will have no end. Unlike the earthly Messiah that many were expecting at the time of Jesus’ birth, the kingdom they were looking for would have, in the fulness of time, ceased to be, as the kings of Jesus’ line died out, or the kingdom was overcome by some event or another. But this heavenly kingdom, come to dwell on earth, not just in heaven, will have no end, and our Lord Jesus Christ’s kingship is everlasting, as the time will surely come when His rule and His lordship is acknowledged by all.

But perhaps one of the most significant aspects of our Lord’s birth is what it tells us about how God often operates. For every few knew of Jesus’ advent into the world. The shepherds knew, as Luke tells us, and those who attended to Mary during the birthing process. Joseph knew, and perhaps a few others. Not many, though, knew.

Oftentimes, God’s works quietly, in human hearts, that place where things change and can be changed.

For, the gift of Jesus Christ, God’s gift to you, to me, and to each and every person who invites the Lord into their hearts, is a gift from the heart of God to your heart, my heart, a gift that is offered to all and received by faith.

AMEN.

---

[1]   The title “Messiah” is derived from the Hebrew word meaning “anointed”. Christ means the same thing, coming to us from the Greek.

[2]   Critical to our understanding of God’s nature is that God is a righteous and holy God, but also a loving and merciful God. Martin Luther’s faith journey came, in time, to this recognition. Lutherans have, ever since, offered this understanding as a gift to the wider Church and to the world. 

Advent 4, Year A (2025)

Isaiah 7: 10–16 / Psalm 90: 1–7, 18–18 / Romans 1: 1–7 / Matthew 1: 18–25

 

This is the written version on the homily given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in McKnightstown, Pennsylvania on Sunday, December 21, 2025, by Fr. Gene Tucker, Interim Pastor.

 

“PREPARATORY STEPS”

(Homily text: Matthew 1: 18–25)

Whenever we think about doing something, or building something, there is a pattern to the process from conception to the finished task/product that – in most cases – unfolds. It looks something like this: We conceive of an idea or something that would be useful to have/do or make use of; we think of what it will take to bring this concept to reality; we gather the resources we will need to make it happen (people, raw materials, etc.); and then we create whatever it is we have in mind.  Usually, after it’s all said and done, we step back to see how well the concept worked out in real life.

That same process is – at its heart – the process that Matthew describes as he tells us about the work that God had to do in order to get Joseph ready for the coming of Jesus.

In the mind and heart of God, a concept arose which had to do with the saving of humankind. This concept is an old one, for God had been about the business of saving His people for quite a long time before the birth of Jesus. Consider, for example, Noah and the Great Flood: Essentially, this is an account of one of God’s saving acts. Or consider the parting of the Red Sea so that God’s people could pass safely through the waters on their way to the Promised Land…that is another of God’s saving acts. We could also mention the return of God’s people from exile in Babylon, which is another of God’s saving acts. (These are just some examples in Holy Scripture.)

Matthew’s concern is to show the process by which God brought about the birth of Jesus, from the conception of that divine idea, to the enlistment of Joseph to assist in that plan, to the birth of Jesus. Matthew’s concern is to focus on the work God had to do to get Joseph ready for this event. (Luke’s focus is on the things God had to do to get Mary ready for the birth…we will hear that account on Christmas Eve.)

As we look closely at the text, we see that God’s intent is to continue to save His people. Jesus[1] is the name by which the child will be known, a name which means “God saves”. Matthew explains the meaning of the holy name, to be sure that his readers and hearers have the basic premise of God’s plan clearly in view.

What God intended to do in the sending of Jesus is a continuation of what God had been doing for a very long time. (See the list, provided above.) God had been about the business of preserving His people…we could say that one of the attributes of God is that He saves. But now, God takes a major step, depending not on discernable actions (like providing a way to survive the flood, as with Noah, or by parting the waters, as with Moses and God’s people), not depending on the words, testimonies and warnings of the prophets, but now in the sending of God’s very self. That’s why Matthew tells us that Jesus will be Immanuel, meaning “God with us”.

In the fulness of time, God chose Joseph and Mary to be the means by which His plan would become reality. As in most any plan or conception of something, resources would be needed in order to make the plan into reality. God needed people to bring about the human side of this plan to save people…he chose Joseph and Mary.

We will understand what Matthew relates to us more clearly if we take a moment to understand the customs of courtship, engagement and marriage in the culture of the time, which differ from our customs and practices today.

A couple, desiring to be married, entered into a betrothal, an engagement. This was done with a ceremony, which became a binding one, one that could be ended only by a divorce. During this time, the man and the woman were called “husband” and “wife”. However, the betrothal did not allow for the consummation of the marriage and the possibility of conceiving children. That stage would wait until the marriage, itself, took place.

No wonder, then, that Joseph is in a tough spot. (So is Mary, by the way.) For the traditional culture of the time forbid conceiving a child except within the context of marriage.[2] In fact, the Law of Moses prescribed the death penalty for being pregnant without the benefit of marriage. (Notice Joseph’s compassion for Mary…he decides to spare Mary from the punishment usually prescribed for violating the Law’s requirement…he chooses to “divorce her quietly”, which might be a way of saying that Joseph decided to essentially consign Mary to a state of permanent house arrest.)

In order for God to prepare Joseph for his role in God’s plan, some clear message that is unmistakably from God would be needed. That mechanism was a dream, whereby God tells Joseph that Mary hasn’t violated the requirements of the Mosaic Law at all...the child she has conceived is of divine origin.[3]

As part of this plan, as in any plan, the people involved need to “buy into” the plan. Matthew tells us that Joseph does so, eventually taking Mary as his wife.

One of the key understandings of theology, which is (at least in part) the study of God’s nature and God’s ways of acting, is that for God to be God, He will act in similar ways in our time as He has done in the past. (Holy Scripture is, at least in part, a record of God’s actions among human beings in times past…today’s Gospel reading fits squarely into that understanding.)

God’s acting in our lives fits into the pattern which we described earlier: For each of us, God has a plan in mind for our lives. God then informs us in some way of those plans. We are asked to “buy into” God’s plan. We are then asked to act on God’s plan (which might involve change, or it might involve some sort of risk).

Perhaps then, we might reflect on the ways in which God is asking each of us to find out what God’s plan is for our lives (which might change as time goes along), then to be willing to accept God’s plan, and then, finally, to do what God has in mind.

To do so is to find our truest and fullest self.

AMEN.

---

[1]   The Hebrew version of the name is Jeshua.

[2]   Our own culture today has lost much of this sense.

[3]   The role of the Holy Spirit, which Matthew tells us, was key to God’s plan, might be difficult for us who are Christian believers today to understand, for we understand quite a lot about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit’s work, and so forth. But it would be well for us to remember that the understandings of the Spirit, the Spirit’s relationship to the other two Persons of the Holy Trinity, and so forth, were new concepts for early Christians, such as those who read and heard Matthew’s Gospel account. In time, as the Church reflected on God’s actions, it came to the mature understanding of the identity and the work of the Spirit, and the Spirit’s relationship as part of the Holy Trinity.

Advent 3, Year A (2025)

Isaiah 35: 1-10 / Psalm 146: 5–10 / James 5: 7–10 / Matthew 11: 2-11

This is the written version of the homily given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) in McKnightstown, Pennsylvania on Sunday, December 14, 2025 by Fr. Gene Tucker, Interim Pastor.

 

“FAITH: BUILT WITH PATIENCE, PERSEVERANCE AND EFFORT””

(Homily texts: Isaiah 35: 1–10, James 5: 7–10, and Matthew 11: 2-11)

Ever give any thought to the things we use in everyday life, the things that make life easier, more comfortable, or better? Each and every one of those things, whether it is the food we eat, the homes we live in, the vehicles we drive, or the tools we use, each and every one of these things came to be because someone took the time (and the imagination) to conceive of them in the first place, and then those who came up with the ideas also created ways to construct or bring into being those things. Finally, someone also had to do the work needed to bring the raw materials needed to a finished product.

The bottom line, here, in each and every case, is that the things we benefit from having, eating or using, none of them came to us in their final form. They all began as raw materials of some sort or another. Just about all of them did.

That same truth also applies to our Christian faith: The faith comes to us as raw material, a gift from God (I am sure that Martin Luther would agree with this assessment, for it is he who said “Sola Grazia” (God’s grace alone).

But then, you and I are called – by virtue of our Baptisms – to work out that gift of faith, to come to understand it in all its fulness and in all the ramifications for change in our lives that genuine faith requires, to undergo the rigorous process of being transformed into the image of Christ. Put another way: You and I have work to do.

Our appointed lectionary readings for this, the Third Sunday of Advent, are well-chosen.

The ancient prophet Isaiah points us to the vision of God’s kingdom, come in all its fulness. This is the ideal, God’s will for the world and the people who live in it, that divine ideal come in all its power and in all its gracious intention for God’s creation and for the people who live in it. (Recall that one of our Advent themes is that we are called to prepare ourselves for our Lord Jesus Christ’s eventual return in glory, at which time Isaiah’s ancient vision will become reality.)

But that glorious vision requires effort on our parts to prepare ourselves for its return, and to show to the watching world around us what that vision looks like, so that when it comes, people will recognize it. Put another way: You and I have work to do. So, then, the Letter of James encourages us to be patient, to do the will of the Lord while we are able to do so. Put another way: We have work to do.

Our Gospel reading recounts to us the efforts, the perseverance and the work that St. John the Baptist faced as he called God’s people in the time of our Lord’s earthly visitation to repent of their sins, to set aside any notion that simply “going through the motions” of relating to God was good enough. Notice how our Lord describes John: “What did you come out to see? A reed shaken by the wind?” Perhaps what the Lord is telling us about John’s ministry is that John’s calling wasn’t an easy calling. Indeed, it wasn’t. John was called to work to prepare the way for the Lord’s coming. There was work to be done. The task of waking God’s people up in that corrupt time was an enormous one, but John’s voice and mission is clear: He called people to confess their sins, their wayward ways, and their ideas that outward observance alone was “good enough” to curry favor with God.

It would be easy to think that God’s perfect world will come instantaneously and without effort. Indeed, some Christians seem to encourage such an understanding, as they proclaim that once a person has been “saved”, their life will become one of pleasantness, ease and joy.

The reality is, however, radically different. For when we enter the waters of Baptism, then it follows that we must do the work that God calls us to do, to allow the Holy Spirit to begin the process in us of becoming more and more transformed into the image of Christ. This is a process known as “sanctification”, being made holy. Oftentimes, this is a slow process, not unlike the refining process that ore undergoes in order to be refined into the metal that results. No wonder that Holy Scripture refers to this as “silver, refined seven times in the furnace” (see Psalm 12:6).

Furthermore, once God’s saving work begins in us, there will be opposition, perhaps such as that that John the Baptist faced. There will be the ways and the behaviors of the world around us that beckon to us, calling us to behave like people who do not know God or God’s ways. John the Baptist, most likely, knew a lot about that dynamic in his time and in his ministry.

So, then, we might say that the process of salvation, of receiving God’s saving grace is like this: “I have been saved, I am being saved, I shall be saved”.[1]

In other words, once we come to faith and enter the waters by which we die to our old selves and are raised with Christ in a resurrection like his[2], we are claimed as a child of God. But then, the work begins, the work to allow God to rework and remake us, more and more, little by little, into His image. Finally, then, we come to God’s ideal, that time and circumstance when we enter God’s kingdom, come in all its fulness, joy and wonder.

Come Holy Spirit, and lighten us with your celestial fire, that we may be refined, like silver, into the image of your beloved Son.

AMEN.

---

[1]   I’m not sure who originated this saying.

[2]   This is St. Paul’s description of the meaning and importance of Baptism. See Romans 6: 3–9. 

Advent 2, Year A (2025)

Isaiah 11:  1-11 / Psalm 72: 1–7, 18-19 / Romans 15: 4–13 / Matthew 3: 1–12

This is the written version of the homily given at Flohr’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA), in McKnightstown, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, December 7, 2025, by Fr. Gene Tucker, Interim Pastor.

 

“THE PROPHETS’ VOICES CALL OUT TO US: “TURN AROUND!””

(Homily text: Matthew 3: 1–12)

Some years ago, there was a long-distance truck driver who, while driving in the western part of the country, steadfastly followed his GPS-directed navigating device. Following the directions faithfully, he found himself deep into the woods in the mountains, on a one lane, dirt road. The news story about this event related that the truck driver had to walk miles and miles to get back to civilization, where he could get help.

Though, perhaps, many of those who heard the news story might have wondered how someone could depend so completely on a navigation tool as to miss the fact that he was heading, more and more, into the wilderness, and not to wherever his destination was, still, as we live life, we encounter those who seem to be just as lost. The difference is that they are headed in the wrong direction in life, they just aren’t driving a semi-truck.

To such a lost, confused and misdirected way of living, God appointed and sent His spokesmen (and women, I suspect) to point out to those who were heading in a wrong direction, away from God, that they should “turn around”, and head in another, more-godly, direction. We’re talking, of course, about the prophets in ancient times, and those with prophetic voices in all times and places, those whom God appoints to be heralds of God’s will and God’s ways.

This morning, we remember and honor the life and witness of St. John the Baptist, who was many things to us Christian believers: For one thing, he seems to be the culmination of a long line of Old Testament prophets. For another, he spoke clearly and forcefully to the leadership of God’s people in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, a group of leaders who were just as lost and misdirected as that trucker we talked about a moment ago. For another, he was the one who prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry to begin.

We owe John the Baptist a great debt for all that he did, witnessing to God’s ways, rather than to human pride and earthly wisdom. We owe him a great debt for preparing the way for the Lord.

John the Baptist (or Baptizer, as he is also known) fits the mold of the Old Testament prophets, of whom he is the last representative.

He is counter-cultural, hanging out in the wilderness, which is a place where one often finds God, but which is also a place where society’s trouble-makers ply their trade.

He was rebel, leaving the career path that would have been expected of him, having been born of a father who was a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem. For, you see, as the son of a priest, he would have been expected to fulfill his own priestly duties in the Temple once he reached the age of thirty. Instead of encouraging the faithful people to undergo the ritual bath[1] that was required prior to entering the Temple’s precincts, he stands in the Jordan River, inviting people to wash themselves and be cleansed of their sins. John has cast aside any sense of mere formal religious observance: His voice calls for genuine and deep repentance, a turning around so as to face God squarely, to see what God desires rather than to harbor any pretensions that human beings are so good at creating for themselves.

Matthew’s account of John’s ministry informs us that two groups of the leadership of God’s people 2,000 years ago came to the banks of the Jordan to check out what John was doing. One group, the Sadducees, were a priestly group, to be found in the Temple in Jerusalem. (One wonders if some of them remembered John, and perhaps, thought that he was a promising young man “gone bad”.) The other group was a lay group known as the Pharisees. Oftentimes, these two groups differed in their perspectives, but – it seems – when there was a challenge to their leadership, their positions of power and influence, and their prerogatives, they could find a way to work together. (That, of course, is the truth of our Lord’s betrayal, trial, suffering, execution, death and resurrection.)

“You brood of vipers,” John says these two groups of proud, self-satisfied people, who prided themselves on their heritage as children of Abraham, “Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come?”  “Bear fruit that is worthy of repentance”, he continues, adding “The axe is laid at the root of the tree….all that does now bear fruit will be cut down.”

He is – in essence – telling these two proud, self-satisfied groups of leaders that they are full of wickedness. (Remember that, in Holy Scripture, snakes are the personification of evil…recall the account of the Fall in the Book of Genesis.)

Old Testament prophets were often very plain spoken in their condemnation of the waywardness of God’s people. John is cut from the same cloth.

Human pride is a troublesome thing. It blinds us to the ability to see ourselves as God sees us. We’re much like that truck driver we talked about at the beginning of this sermon: He was so careful to follow all the directions that he heard that he was oblivious to the fact that he was completely and utterly lost, in the wilderness. Human pride does the same thing, for it encourages us to look only at ourselves, and often with satisfaction. Human pride  leads to the same destination: Being utterly lost, and out-of-touch with God and God’s will.

In every age, we human beings, we Christian believers, need to hear the voices of the prophets of old, and the prophetic voices in our own time, those who faithfully stand in the tradition of faith we have inherited. Those voices of old and the voices of today call us to look around and to turn around, to lay before God all that is unseemly, all that does not befit the attitudes and actions of those who claim the name of Christ, all that does not commend the faith that is in us to an unbelieving world around us.

Come then, Holy Spirit, enable us to turn around, and to look around, at ourselves and at God.

AMEN.

---

[1]   Known in Hebrew as the Mikvah.