2020 Worship Guide

Page 22 2020 Worship Guide LINCOLN DAILY NEWS December 2, 2020 Surprised by the Incarnation — God with us Pastor Adam Quine / First Presbyterian Church in Lincoln I n a back alley, to a poor unwed Jewish girl, came the Incarnate One—the fulfilment of humanity. This didn’t happen in a prestigious palace or an ostentatious country club. Are we surprised? God always chooses to the poor. God sides with the oppressed. Why? Because God’s involvement with humanity is about liberation. Incarnation is liberation. Not restoration. Or even reformation. Faced with tyranny with the empire’s knee on the necks of the oppressed, God hears their cries and responds. Intervenes. Enters history to move a powerless people to a place of promise. Liberation. The Incarnation calls you and me—calls out to us—to suffer with God against evil in our present age. We are midwives to another world. Co- creators with the Creator who chose us. In the face of injustice, just as God did not sit aloof up there, so we must not be aloof down here. The story of the Divine goes Creation, Liberation, then Incarnation. Creation. Liberation. Incarnation. Incarnation does not mean simply that God became Jesus; God said, “Yes,” to the material universe. The Incarnation is the Divine’s “Yes,” here and now. The Incarnation is political, because it is historical. In the Incarnation comes a renewed way of ordering ourselves, which is what politics means. The Divine in Christ didn’t come with pomp and circumstance but instead came quietly and humbly to an oppressed people. In Christ, we see Herod, and Rome, and all empires since then — who have made CONTINUE