This year, 54% of Americans report feeling lonely. Being around people doesn’t always help. We can be in a crowded plane, classroom, or church, and still feel alone. We can be at a work party with colleagues and friends and still feel unseen. We can be gathered around a dinner table with our own families and still feel misunderstood.
But the miracle we’ve gathered to remember this Christmas Eve is that through Jesus, God reminds us that we are not alone. Instead of leaving us on our own, God physically moved right into the middle of our broken, lonely world. The word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. Jesus. Immanuel. God with us.
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This year, 54% of Americans report feeling lonely. Being around people doesn’t always help. We can be in a crowded plane, classroom, or church, and still feel alone. We can be at a work party with colleagues and friends and still feel unseen. We can be gathered around a dinner table with our own families and still feel misunderstood.
But the miracle we’ve gathered to remember this Christmas Eve is that through Jesus, God reminds us that we are not alone. Instead of leaving us on our own, God physically moved right into the middle of our broken, lonely world. The word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. Jesus. Immanuel. God with us.
Mark structured the first half of his gospel so that we would arrive at this moment of truth. The disciples have seen and heard enough. They should be able to answer the question that Jesus posed to them. “Who do people say that I am?”
Peter had been taught that the Messiah would be a royal figure, the offspring of King David, whom God would empower to deliver Israel from her enemies. The Messiah was, by definition, a winner. Peter acknowledges that Jesus is the Messiah, but Jesus goes on to say that he must “suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead.”
A Messiah was good news for sure, it was the news Peter and the rest of the Jewish nation had been longing for over 400 years. But a Messiah who turned himself over to the Romans? A Messiah who suffered and would be killed? A Messiah who got killed? And yet, Jesus insisted that it was good news; that he had come to save them all, not just from Rome, but also from themselves—to conquer sin, to defeat death, to restore and reconcile all things to God.
Haverhill Commons Church
This year, 54% of Americans report feeling lonely. Being around people doesn’t always help. We can be in a crowded plane, classroom, or church, and still feel alone. We can be at a work party with colleagues and friends and still feel unseen. We can be gathered around a dinner table with our own families and still feel misunderstood.
But the miracle we’ve gathered to remember this Christmas Eve is that through Jesus, God reminds us that we are not alone. Instead of leaving us on our own, God physically moved right into the middle of our broken, lonely world. The word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. Jesus. Immanuel. God with us.
