Pastor’s eNote: Weekly Update

Christians hold a strange tension in this life: the here and the not yet. We affirm that the Kingdom of God is here among us and in us. Jesus said as much in Luke 17:20-21. At the very same time, we confess that the Kingdom of God is not fully here yet. One only needs to look at the symptoms of the broken and sinful world we live in each day. God’s reign and rule are both here and not yet.

Both agnostics and atheists alike level the accusation that either there is no God or that God is grossly negligent based on the world as we see it today. The late atheist, Christopher Hitchens said, “The atheist proposition is the following: most of the time, it may not be said that there is no god; it may be said that there is no reason to think that there is one.” Like many of you, I have been in discussions with those who cannot conceive of a God who either allows or inflicts the suffering we see today.

This is why the season of Advent becomes so very important to us. It reminds us of the tension of the “here and not yet.” The mystery of this truth helps us to see and experience the working of God’s Spirit in ways our imaginations have not truly grasped. We are in between.

The coming of Jesus in the flesh tells us that God comes to us in human history as a human. (Philippians 2:5-11) His first coming defeats sin and its resultant curse: death. Because of Jesus’s death and resurrection, we now become the Body of Christ. We are Jesus in the flesh. Advent and Christmas remind us that God comes in human form. What God seeks to do in this “here and not yet” time is same as always. Ours is the work of enfleshing God’s presence in the world.

Looking for more grace? Looking for more love? Looking for more peace? Looking for more mercy? As the followers of Jesus, we look to the Holy Spirit to show us how to be all those things. We reveal the presence of God here and point to the God’s world of the not yet. If we are doing exactly what God seeks for us, we will be the reason, in Hitchen’s words, “to think that there is one [God].”

Advent and Christmas are a cause for joy and peace only if we hear the message of God’s call to be salt and light in the world. Friends, in all the madness of this world and this season, don’t miss the miracle. There was a miracle 2,000 years ago. Is it still a miracle unfolding today? He is the reason for the season. So are we.

Grace to You All,

Pastor Craig Brown

(December 16th, 2025)