The story of the First Sunday after Christmas is the story of a child becoming part of a new family. But the child isn’t Jesus, and the family isn’t the Holy Family: the child is me! And, lest you think the bubble of my ego has finally burst, the child is also you, and you, and you—because the story of the First Sunday after Christmas is the story of the adoption of a whole host of children from all sorts of families into the one family of God.

There’s something I love about reading the most cosmic and story of Jesus’ birth at the quietest service of the church year. On Christmas Eve, we celebrate the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, with a whole crowd of people singing carols that revel in the familiar details of the scene: the shepherds keeping watch in the fields, and the angels singing in the sky, and the babe lying in a manger. And then on Christmas Day—after the shepherds have gone home, and so have the crowds—a small handful of us come here to ponder the mystery of the Incarnation, “the becoming-flesh” of the Word of God.

We all know the story of Christmas, in its ancient and its modern forms. We know about St. Mary and St. Joseph and St. Nicholas; the donkey and the journey and the sleigh. The shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night, and the children in the pageant dressed up like cows. The angels singing in the heavens as the babe lies in the manger; and the angel sitting atop the Christmas tree as the presents lie beneath its boughs.

We all know the story of Christmas, in its ancient and its modern forms.

But what’s the story of the day after Christmas?

John the Baptist is an unusual man. The story of his life couldn’t be more different from what any of us experience day to day. And yet, of all the people in the New Testament, John the Baptist has an experience of God that’s the most similar to ours.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:4–13)

I almost want to end the sermon there, with Saint Paul’s beautiful words, written to the members of the early Christian church in Rome. He had never met them, but you can feel the love and compassion in his words. What a beautiful way to mark this Advent season of hope. In fact, it hits three of the four Advent themes that I learned as a child, when we were taught that the four Advent candles symbolized hope, peace, joy, and love. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace,” Paul says. And in this dark season, who doesn’t need some of those?

But peace, hope, love, and joy are not the only Advent themes. Advent is a season of contrasts: of hope and warning, peace and chaos, joy and fear. It’s a season that’s suspended between the First Coming of Christ at Christmas and the Second Coming on Judgment Day. Advent is a season of “duality.” And for me, nothing symbolizes this better than the fact that there are actually two different sets of themes that have been assigned to the four Sundays of Advent: while many of us may have learned the four themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, there is an older, traditional set of themes for the four Sundays of Advent: those were death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Two rather different moods.

Well, the cardboard cornucopias and tin-foil turkeys have been banished from the shelves. The first snow flurries have fallen. The Christmas tree is up in the window across the street from my office—in fact, the Christmas tree’s been up in Thompson Square for about three weeks by now! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and so I want to turn my attention to the question I know that we’ve all been pondering since last December: What’s the difference between Jesus and Santa Claus, anyway?

This isn’t how the story’s supposed to end.

At least, this isn’t how the story of a hero on the rise usually goes. At some point, in the long process that leads from his betrayal to his trial, from his arrest to his death, something is supposed to happen. Jesus is supposed to act. In the Marvel version of the Life of Christ, this should be the climax of the first issue: at the moment of greatest sorrow, when it looks like all hope is lost, that’s when the gamma radiation is supposed to kick in, and Jesus is supposed to swell into a big green Hulk and tear the Cross apart.

People come to church for various reasons. But not many people come to church because they want to suffer more. Some appreciate the chance, once a week, to sit in a beautiful place, to listen to music and poetry, and to be at peace. Some want to make the world become a better place, and know that the church is committed to peace and love. Some people who come to church because they want their families to be shaped by service and prayer, or because they want to pass on some of the comfort and joy they’ve found in their faith to their children. And there are many other reasons, as well: from a deep relationship with Jesus or a curiosity about the Bible to the simple need to be with other people. But I’ve never in my life had someone shake my hand at the door and say that they’re here for the first time because they want to be “hated by all.” (Luke 21:17) I don’t know what I would say. “I’m not sure anyone here is going to hate you, this morning, but—do you want to come to Coffee Hour? There might be leftover pie.”

We sometimes think of the saints as the superheroes of the faith, the extraordinary subset of Christians who actually manage to follow the challenging way of life Jesus just described. These are people like the soldier Saint Martin, who cut his own cloak in half on a cold winter’s night to share it with a poor a man begging on the street. People like the martyrs of the early church, who were reviled and defamed, and finally put to death when they refused to give up their faith, but prayed for those who persecuted them, all the same. People like Saint Francis of Assisi, who never hesitated to give to everyone who begged from him, even though he had already given away everything he had. Our calendar of holy days commemorates too many saints for me to name, and admittedly, some I can barely pronounce. (My apologies to St. Mechthilde of Hackeborn.) We can’t always commemorate each one individually, but on All Saints’ Day, we recognize All the Saints at once.

But the “saints” are not only these famous figures. In fact, the Bible never uses the word “saint” as a title for a single person. The Biblical authors always use the plural form, “the saints.” And this doesn’t mean a list of named saints—Mary and James and Paul and John. “The saints” means the whole body of “the holy ones of God.”

One of the advantages of track and field as a sport is that I could tell you, at any given point in time, exactly how good I was. There are numbers still etched into my brain from track meets that took place when I was a teenager. I can tell you, to the hundredth of a second, my fastest-ever mile time, or how long it took me to run the only half marathon I’ve ever run, both fifteen years ago. The same is true, I think, for golf, where your handicap tells you exactly how you measure up.

But there is no easy way to calculate a “moral handicap,” to look at your life and know exactly how close you come to being on par for the course. You can’t measure your strength of character like you can measure the strength of your limbs. It wouldn’t make sense to say that fifteen years ago, you once prayed the rosary in 4 minutes and 36 seconds flat.

In the most important parts of our lives—in the questions of ethics and character and faith that really matter in the end—there’s no easy way to measure how good we are. And if we don’t trust that we are good enough, there’s always a temptation to prove that at least we’re better than someone else.

A long time ago, in a country far away, a young man tricked his father into writing his older brother out of his will. The brother was understandably upset. He started plotting his revenge, and their parents—desperate to avoid bloodshed and maybe a little unwilling to hold the man accountable for what he’d done—warned the young man about his brother’s plans and sent him away.

Time passed. The two brothers grew up. They married, and had children, and each one prospered in his own right, acquiring the herds of animals and families of followers that made you an influential man in those nomadic days.

The term “wellness” has really taken off over the last few years. It’s common now to see “health and wellness” paired, where “health” means being in sound physical and mental condition, and “wellness” means something vaguer, but more holistic. So, for example, the “health center” at my alma mater, where you could go to the infirmary when you were too sick to stay in your dorm alone, or you could see a therapist on a regular basis or, now has a “wellness center” where you can go for acupuncture or massage. But wellness isn’t just a nice add-on. Wellness is a big business. People are spending more money than ever chasing after improvements to their health, sleep, nutrition, fitness, appearance, and even mindfulness. And I didn’t make up this list—these “six dimensions of wellness” came from a report published last year by the management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company about the booming growth of what’s now a $2 trillion wellness industry.

The great Saint Francis of Assisi, whose memory we celebrated yesterday by blessing cats and dogs, was said to have possessed a faith so moving that he inspired the birds to sing in praise of God, a faith so strong that he eventually came to bear the marks of the cross in his own hands. In isolated churches in the small hill towns of Appalachia, certain preachers show their faith in God by handling poisonous vipers, trusting that God will protect them from harm. Many a Pentecostal preacher has displayed a pile of crutches or of walkers or of wheelchairs that their faithful followers no longer needed due to the power of their prayers.

But I’ve never once heard a story of a Christian whose faith so strong that she could uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.

Have you heard the song that comes from today’s gospel?

                        Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham,
                        Rock my soul, in the bosom of Abraham,
                        Rock my soul, in the bosom of Abraham,
                        Oh, rock my soul.

This song has been recorded by Peter, Paul & Mary and by Elvis, and it’s been sung in children’s ministries around the world. The tune is simple. The lyrics consist of a single line. If your Children’s Choir can’t memorize this, they’re not going to be memorizing anything. It’s popular, it’s sweet, and it is, without a doubt, one of the most subversive songs in history.

And I mean that in the best possible way!

For a long time, I’ve had the idea of writing a book called The Jesus MBA, offering some practical advice on money management from the world’s wisest man. In my imagination, it falls somewhere into that nebulous genre at the intersection of personal finance, self-help, and pop Christianity that seems to generate endless numbers of book sales. You would learn through parables instead of case studies; guys would start wearing sandals and robes instead of Patagonia vests. I really think it would be a hit.

There’s just one problem: if you follow Jesus’ business advice, you’re probably going to get fired. And maybe go to jail.

Jesus tells these two parables in today’s gospel to show us what God’s forgiveness is like. When we go astray; when we fail to walk in Jesus’ way of love; when we do not love God with all our hearts, or we do not love our neighbors as ourselves—God doesn’t respond with wrath. When your willpower fails you completely, and you can’t stop yourself from slipping back into the same broken patterns as before, God looks at you and sees a lost sheep, who needs to be brought back to the flock. He doesn’t want to scold you, or to punish you—he wants to pick you up, and lays you on his own shoulders, and he rejoices, because what was once lost is now found. When you are convinced that you’re not good enough, when you feel that vague sense of constant guilt, God is looking at you like you’re a precious coin; God treasures you enough to stop everything and search for you.

So, I have a confession to make to all of you: my family and I are still in denial that it’s September, and so we stole away out of town for another short weekend the last couple of days. And we had a lovely time; and that’s what I have to confess to you, my deficiency as a disciple in recent days. I do not, in fact, hate my family.

Maybe I shouldn’t make fun of what Jesus says. But you have to admit that today’s Gospel sounds more than a little absurd. Three easy steps to becoming a disciple: 1) hate your family; (Luke 14:26) 2) prepare yourself for execution; (14:27) and 3) give up all your possessions. (14:33)

There’s something a little ironic about Jesus’ exhortation to humility in our Gospel reading today. Most of the time, when we say that someone is “humble,” we mean something like “modest” or “not boastful.” Humble people don’t speak very highly of themselves. They avoid fame and notoriety, especially if it comes from talking about how great they are.

What they don’t usually do is to go around saying things like, “I am the light of the world,”