Central Lutheran Church - Elk River

Christmas Magic and Messes with Pastor Ryan Braley

• Central Lutheran Church

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What if the most hopeful moment of the year isn’t pristine at all—but stubbornly, beautifully human? We take John’s bold opening—“the Word became flesh”—and bring it down to ground level, where sarks means breath, weight, warmth and the noise of ordinary life. No porcelain nativity here. We talk about the Logos, the logic and design of creation, moving into our neighborhood and sitting right at the table with burned dinners, crowded schedules and unresolved feelings.

We start with the wonder that lingers in snowfall, lit windows and the way people soften this time of year. Then we tell the truth about the mess: family tensions, grief that resurfaces, consumer pressure and cultural anxiety. From there, we open John’s language and unpack why incarnation pushes back against a split between “spiritual” and “material.” If God takes on real flesh, then God cares about bodies, blue‑collar work, appetites, art, arguments and rest. The nativity becomes a story of risk and grit—a teenage mother, a feeding trough, anxious rulers, and unexpected visitors—where the divine chooses inconvenience as the delivery room.

Along the way, you’ll hear a hilarious Advent candle fiasco, a fresh look at Jesus learning and laboring like us, and an invitation to spot grace inside your actual week. We offer simple practices: feel your breath, notice your weight on the chair, bless what’s on your plate, and bring your most tangled place to prayer. The light shines in darkness is not a slogan; it’s a present-tense promise for kitchens, commutes and late-night worries.

If this conversation helps you see magic inside your mess, share it with a friend, hit follow, and leave a review so others can find the show. And tell us: where did you spot unexpected grace today?

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SPEAKER_00:

God, we give you thanks this evening for your presence here. Thank you for this word to us from John. And we pray tonight that God you'd give us a keen sense of your presence here with us in this time and place, in this ordinary moment here in 2025 in Elk River, Minnesota. God would you overwhelm us with the gift of life tonight? Would you open our eyes and soften our hearts and resurrect the dead parts of us and the parts that have frozen over? Would you bless our time together tonight in Jesus' name? Amen. I may you be seated. Well, hello again. Merry Christmas. My name is Ryan again. I'm the pastor here. And uh one quick invite before we move on is we are gonna have a brand new sermon series the Sunday after the first of the year, so it's January 4th, and we're gonna do a new series, we're calling it Reading in the Dark, and we're gonna explore some of the more difficult or like harder to digest passages of scripture. So, for example, there's this one story in Genesis where God seems to command Abraham to sacrifice his own son, which is kind of weird, if you ask me. And uh so we're gonna talk about that. Or this one story where God hardens Pharaoh's heart. Like, why is God hardening anybody's heart? There's a bunch of these that are kind of hard to swallow. Like, what is going on there? We're gonna unpack as many of them as we can between now or between January 4th and Easter, or Lent, rather. So come be a part of it. If you're like if you've got lots of questions about some of these Old Testament or even some New Testament texts, come. It's gonna be awesome. So, but tonight I want to give you guys a sermon, and uh, it's called Christmas Magic and Messes. And if it had a subtitle, it'd be The Gospel According to John. Most times we read Christmas story, we read about Luke 2, the Gospel of Luke, but tonight we read from John's Gospel and uh yeah, Christmas Messes and Magic. Are you with me? I love Christmas time, like many of you, maybe, hopefully, I love it, and I love it for the most, but the most important reason is because I man, to me, Christmas is just so magical. Are you with me on that one? I like the energy. The first gathering, it was like whisper quiet. I was like, oh, I guess you guys hate Christmas. I'm sorry to hear that, but uh no, I love it. It's magical, and I don't know why, but for some reason, it's things seem possible at this time of year that just normally don't seem possible. Or maybe it's just that I look at the world differently. Like, I don't know, like I I love a good snowfall at Christmas time. It's just magical. I grew up in Colorado, and many times there in Christmas time it'd be like 60 degrees and brown. Like, I'm not doing that. I want it to be snowing and cold. I love the way the snow falls against the black night sky, just whisper quiet and lands gently along the sidewalks and the grass, and you can't even hear it land. I love it. It's magical. Or when you're driving around and you see the inside of a house from the road, and it's just looks so warm and cozy and inviting and safe, even though outside it's like sub-zero temperatures and dangerously cold. And if you were left outside, you'd probably die. But inside, it's pure magic. Are you with me? Uh and don't get me started on Christmas lights. I love them. They're pure magic. Hang up all the lights, do all the things, go to Bentleville, drive around the neighborhood. I love it. Do all the lights. I love it. My sister-in-law went hog wild in her house, and I love it. I'm here for it with the Christmas lights. It's just so great. And for whatever reason, I still can't explain it. People just seem a bit nicer at Christmas time. Anybody notice this? I have no idea what this is all about. My sister and I, for example, when we were kids, we hardly ever fought at Christmas time. In fact, we hugged once or twice. I remember at Christmas time when we were kids, it was a miracle. It was just so great. But I don't know why, it just fills me with hope every year. About 13 years ago, uh, we got into the Christmas tradition or the advent tradition of lighting the advent candles. And I'd never done it before as a kid, but we we bought our own advent wreath and had candles, and I was so excited because this is, you know, this is this wonderfully magical tradition where you count down the weeks up to Christmas by lighting all these candles, and you light the candle of hope and the candle of joy and peace and love, and the middle one is the Christ candle. You kind of count down the weeks, and I'm like, this is awesome. What a magical way to celebrate Christmas. So I get my kids together, but we're gonna do one of these. And we bought our own wreath and got our candles and got I got this devotional book that was this incredibly profound and deeply theologically rich book to read to my kids who are little. I didn't realize till later. I'm like, that's maybe maybe more of an adult book, but we'll it'll be fine. We'll try it out, it'll be fun. So that first Advent Sunday, we sit around the table, and I'm like, I'm feeling so inspired. I'm like, oh, the Spirit of God is uh with us, and I'm so excited. It's just magical. And they sit down, and uh they didn't share that spirit that I had at all. So I'm like, let's just read this you know reflection from this devotional, a lot of candle, and you'll be moved to tears, probably children. And they sit down and they were um a little squirrely that night. I was like, so right from the jump, I was getting a little bit frustrated. I'm like, hey guys, just quiet down, just listen. I'm gonna read you this moving text, and we're gonna light a candle, and you're gonna be, you're gonna see the you know, visions of heaven. It's wonderful. And they didn't stop being squirrely, they got even squirrely. And I'm like, hey guys, uh you know, guys, I'm trying to be cool because I'm a godly man, trying to keep it together. I'm like, guys, just seriously, God, keep it down. Quiet down, listen to what I'm saying. I'm your father, respect me, and this you know, beautiful devotional that I'm now realizing this is really kind of a boring book that I'm reading to them, but whatever. And so we keep going, and then they got even squirrely. And like now I'm like bubbling up inside, and they're testing my Christianity, you know what I mean? And I'm sure they're thinking in their own heads, we're gonna see if dad really wants to go to heaven or not. We're gonna see, we're gonna find out tonight. And I was like, guys, seriously, stop it! And now Katie's getting nervous. I can tell my wife, Katie's getting nervous, and just listen, dial in, lock in, we're gonna just one more try. And it didn't work, they got even squirrelier, and then I lost it. And I yelled, What is wrong with you guys?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm trying to bring the spirit of Christmas and Jesus' love to this house, and you don't even care. What's wrong with you guys, you heathen sinners?

SPEAKER_00:

And Logan, without skipping a beat, he must have been seven years old. He goes, without without missing a beat, he goes, Oh, but dad, this is just so boring. I go, you know something? You're boring. How you like that? So I grabbed the lighter, I lit the candle, I go, Jesus is coming, and I threw the lighter down and I walked off. Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. Yeah, because Christmas is also kind of messy, you know? Like Christmas is like this magical time, and it's also a messy time. It's one of the busiest times of year for many of us. Many of us rush from one party to the next, from one event to the next, from one thing to the next. We can barely catch our breath. We go to that same kid's concert we went to last year. It's it's you know, it's your neighbor's kid or your own kid or your nieces or nephews, and you go to it because you want to go and you feel obligated, but it's the exact same concert as last year and the year before and the 10 years before that. Same song, same jokes, just different kids up there. You're like, oh, here I am again. Yeah, and then we sort of cram ourselves into cars and drive to malls and fight crowds of people that we don't really like to buy gifts we can't really afford. Like, what are we doing out here, you know? I remember you going to Amazon if you're an Amazon shopper and you get the last minute to buy a bunch of gifts for folks you know don't deserve a gift, but you do it anyway, you're like fine. And of course, you have to have your Starbucks, so you stand in line that's 50 cars deep or 30 people deep, and you get your Starbucks, because without it, you'd have a you know a cardiac arrest without your Starbucks. All the while trying to keep Christ and Christmas, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, and then you realize too that beautiful snowfall where the snow just cascaded down so gently against that black sky and landed on the ground, whisper soft, that somebody had to shovel that now. It's probably gonna be you because no one else is gonna do it. And I'm like, oh, I gotta shovel and trying to convince yourself this is the most joyful, wonderful time of the year. And then you gotta go to a family gathering, which is mostly fine, but everyone has that one uncle, you know what I'm saying? Or that one brother-in-law who, you know, not me, of course, not my brothers. That one brother-in-law who does, you know, the brother-in-law things, you know, oh gosh. Maybe many of you too, like maybe you lost a loved one at this time, either this year or in previous years, and you just are reminded of how they're gone. Maybe growing up wasn't really that special for you as a kid. You didn't really have a good Christmas experience when you were younger, and there's that part of it too. And so we rush around and we empty our bank accounts, and we try to teach our kids to not be greedy all the while, knowing they're gonna be kind of greedy because it's Christmas, and you're on the verge of an argument everywhere you go. Maybe some of you got into an argument on your way here tonight, and you're like, oh dear God, not on the way to church, please. Like, what are we doing? Pastor Ryan's gonna know. It will walk, it'll be all over our faces. We had an argument five minutes ago in the car, and there'll be a light that will shine down in the middle of the service, and he's gonna know. You're like, it's fine, it's fine, everything's fine. Merry Christmas, everybody! Yeah, it's kind of messy, isn't it? It can be a messy time of year. Think of it at large, like at the world at large, the culture, the world we're in. It's this very strange time. AI seems to be coming after all of our jobs and keeps making those fake videos that we know are fake. I mean, they're fake, right? They're fake. Okay, just making sure. You know, we don't trust institutions much anymore. We're divided politically, socially, almost in every way. We're lonely, we're anxious. The teenagers won't stop saying six, seven. Good grief. My bad, my bad, my bad. And we're trying to find a way to keep Christ in Christmas and figure out what Jesus has to do with any of this stuff. This giant mess, this magical and messy kind of a time. What does this mean? And what does Jesus have to do with any of this stuff? This is why I love John's gospel and John's story of Jesus coming to earth, the Christmas story. He opens in a dynamically different way than Luke does. Luke has this quaint manger scene. There's no quaint manger scene in John's gospel, there's no manger at all. In fact, John begins with this very cosmic story that sort of sounds weird, a bit poetic, like what's happening? He begins by calling Jesus the Word. Here it is, in case you forgot it from earlier. He calls Jesus the Word. He says, Okay, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and he was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him the Word, and without Him the Word, not one thing came into being that was in being. Talk about a tongue twister there, John. Thank you for that. And by the way, for the Word, which he calls Jesus the Word, for this word, he uses a Greek word because he's writing in the Greek, and he I'm gonna teach you some Greek here tonight. He uses the Greek word logos. Everyone say logos. So you can just replace the word word with the word logos. In the beginning was the logos that we later found out as Jesus. Well, here's the crazy thing about this word. It's a bizarre word, but it's where we get the word in English logic from. And so logos in the Greek, into the Greek thinker, would have meant something like logic or intelligence or design or wisdom. Yeah, it's like the blueprint for all of creation, like the ordering of creation. So John is opening his Christmas story about Jesus by calling him the Logos. He calls Jesus the logic, the intelligence, the design, the blueprint of all of creation. And he says that somehow this Logos was with God way back in the beginning. It was God, and out of this Logos comes the entire creation in the cosmos. It's as though he's saying, yeah, what's about to come is the ordering of the world. Because we have to have proper order. And so God wants to establish proper order in the world. And he sort of does this when he creates the world. And if you're like me, we need proper order. Any type A persons in the room tonight? You love proper proper order? Yeah, that's what he's talking about. The blueprint of creation, the proper ordering of the world. Because we need order in the world. We love order, at least I do. Can I get an AML on that slide? Yes. So good. Oh, I feel like I'm at peace in my mind and things are all no. No. Nope. Immediately, no, no. This is not good. I can't do this. Okay, yes, this is way better. This is so good. Yeah, proper order, peace. Satisfying as the young kids is utterly satisfying. This is so good and beautiful. Nope. What madman painted this line? Who did this? It's terrible. I can't stand this. I can't even look at it. Oh, yes, this is way better. This perfect framing of this cloud with the twig and the sta. I love it. This is a proper ordering of the world. This is so great. No, no. Come on, we're not savages. Who did this? What monster eats their Kit Kat like this? You are not welcome at my house on Christmas dinner. I'm telling you. This is not okay. And if you do this, don't tell me that you do this. Yeah, God wants to bring proper ordering to the world. And so he sends the Logos, the logic, the intelligence, the design into the world. And then John goes a step further. He says, This logos, the ordering of the world, becomes a human. What? What does the logic and the intelligence and the design, what might the ordering of creation look like in a human? He uses one more Greek, well, I use a lot of Greek words, but I'm gonna teach you one more Greek word. He uses the word sarks, by the way, which I'll get to in a minute. But he says the word, the logos, has become flesh and lived among us. Now Eugene Peterson writes a paraphrase of this, and he writes it this way the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. The Christmas story, by the way, is not God visiting earth, it's God moving into the neighborhood. Here on earth, moving into there. To dwell there amongst us. Flesh and blood. This is radical. Again, John uses the word sarks. Everyone says sarks. That's the word for flesh or for flesh and blood. And so uh it means flesh. Now, but here's the crazy thing. Uh sarks is really a crude or crass, it's a messy way of saying flesh. It's not a quaint, romantic, beautiful, you know, rose petal. It's it's a very crass, messy way of saying flesh and humanity and flesh and blood. And John says that's what happens in the manger. Jesus is the Lagos, the logic, the ordering of the world, God coming to earth in this sarks in flesh, this crass, messy human body, the grittiness, griminess, earthiness of being a human being. That is Christmas. Yeah. That the Lagos, the ordering of the world. God has become this gritty, grimy human being whom we call, of course, Jesus. Now I've been trying to petition Hallmark to make a theologically accurate card. I say, look, Hallmark, can you please make me a card that looks Christmassy, but that says something like, hey, happy the logic and design of the cosmos has become Sark's Day. I thought it was awesome. And they keep rejecting me. Like, Ryan, that's a terrible idea. I'm like, fine, I'll do it myself. Hey, chat. Chat, please generate for me a beautiful Christmas card, Hallmark style, that says, Happy the logic and design of the cosmos has become Sark's Day and make it Christmassy! Yes. Eat it, Hallmark. What's up now? How you like me now? I'll be selling these out in the lobby after the service. You want to grab one? Yeah, that's the Christmas story. The Lagos of God, God Himself, has become gritty, grimy, human, flesh and bones, and blood, and kidneys, and toenails, and hair, and desires and wants and needs. Which also means that somehow the divine and the physical have come together. And the spiritual and the material have been joined together in this baby Jesus. You might say this way the magic and the messiness have come together in this baby Jesus, in this story in the manger. Now, there were a group of people who didn't like this. They were called the Gnostics. And if you forget this five minutes from now, it's totally fine. But just know this: there were these folks who were kind of religious folks, and uh they were called the Gnostics, and they believed that you could never join the physical and the divine. That the spiritual and material never came together. They were separate things. In fact, they were opposite things. In fact, the spiritual was good, so the spiritual was holy and sanctified and good and beautiful and clean. And the physical, like your body and burritos and you know, grass, these were like, these were bad things. They were not as good. And not just that, not that just not just the opposite, but they were like things to be delivered from. They'd be rescued from. And the implications of this are incredibly profound. What it means is that, like, and by the way, Gnosticism has filtered its way down into Christianity in a variety of ways, even it's around today, if you can look closely enough. And so they said the implications are like, hey, the material has nothing to do with the spiritual. God has very little to do with anything material. God is not that interested in your fleshy bones, body, your desires. He doesn't really care about your bodies, your job, your eating, what you eat for food, and sex and play and suffering, and and uh, and you know, dancing and football and fishing and arguing. God doesn't really care about any of that. Those are things you need to be delivered from, to the more higher, sanctified spiritual things. And so we're left to believe that, oh, God has nothing to do with my ordinary everyday life and my interests. These are so many things to be delivered from. Now, it also implies that if you're gonna look for God and find God, you better look in the most spiritual places. Like church. Uh yeah, if you want to find God, look for Him in church or while you're praying. But it better be a spiritual prayer. You better not be doing anything else where you're don't be eating while you're praying, you'll ruin the prayer. Get that food out of your mouth, kid. And salvation is not God healing our lives or this place and time. Salvation is escaping out of here, going somewhere else. We even wrote a song about it. Uh, fly away. Oh glory.

unknown:

Fly away.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Gnosticism. And our bodily desires, the things we want or like, and our daily routines, these are simply burdens to transcend. But that's not the Christmas story. It's just not. God has become gritty and grimy human flesh in the form of a baby that we call Jesus. If you're looking for God. Yeah, look for him there. Look from there, that's where he is. Right in the middle of the grit and the grime and the messiness of this story. And the Sarks. By the way, Sarks, I I can't help but think about this word a lot. Sarks flashing with a gritty, grimy. Do me a favor, would you put your hand in your stomach and take a deep breath? Do you feel that? Do one more. Now wiggle your toes a little bit, wiggle your toes. Do you feel them? You feel those toes down in there? Yeah. And now feel the w the bench or the pew or the chair beneath you. And feel your weight kind of pressing into that. You feel that weight? That. That starts. Weight and gravity and warmth and breath. And your pancreas and your stomach and you know all these things, your hair. Yeah, God becomes just like you and I. And he meets us in this mess that we call the sarks. That's the Christmas story. Here's the hard part, though. We don't like to talk about the messiness of the Christmas story often. It's usually some cozy, quaint scene where they're all in the nativity scene. It's a silent night, a holy night. Everything's just perfect, you know. Nobody's arguing. Uh the angels are singing, and they all everyone, everybody, all the people have these golden halos that are polished to a sh beautiful shine. It doesn't smell like animals at all. It smells like roses or like fresh deodorant, like teen spirit. That joke is from my Gen X was in the house. Maybe some Nirvana live albums playing in the background. Yeah, no one's complaining. Everyone's having a great time. Joseph's hair is perfectly quaffed. Mary's body is somehow miraculously back to her pre-baby form overnight. As though she didn't just grow and push a baby out of hell. You know what I'm saying? Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. All the moms in the room, no, that that ain't happen. That isn't how it happened. That ain't true. No. Yeah, because that's what we want, but it's not really what happens. Instead, the logos of God, God, the ordering of the universe, becomes a baby, flesh, grit, and crime. Yeah, born right in our midst to a teenage girl who's poor and barely married, and just to travel a long distance away to go get her senses taken. And so she shows up there and they have nowhere to put her. So she gets this, I don't know, it's a barn or a stable or something like this, a guest house with animals, because they have nowhere to put her. And so she goes back there and gives birth to a baby somehow and survives, and the baby survives, and they put this baby in this feeding trough. Yeah, feeding troughs are what animals eat out of. Like it's like this cement thing that animals drink out of. Like, what are we doing? This is the logos of God. You throw them in a feeding trough? And then the first guests that come onto the scene are these dirty shepherds who probably smell bad and don't even bring any gifts. Thanks a lot, fellas. Thanks for nothing. And by the way, Jesus was a Jew, and the king of the Jews wanted to kill him. What? That's a messy story. By the way, those in power will often do whatever they can to maintain their power. Can I get an amen? Then finally, some guests do show up with gifts, but they're not here to expect it's a bunch of Eastern Zoroastrian magician type peoples who don't belong in the story. Like, what are those weirdos doing here? They don't belong at Christmas dinner. Yeah. And the Logos, God is born right into our midst, right in the middle of us. Right here. Right in the mess. The whole thing is messy and magical. That's what Emmanuel means, God with us. Yeah, this baby gets it right here. Yeah. And Jesus, the baby, the logos of God, the ordering of the universe, who comes in this greedy, grimy Sark's flesh, like you and I with a pancreas and eyeballs and eyelashes and ear hair. That baby had to learn how to talk and crawl and walk, had to learn how to be a teenager, had to learn what six, seven even means. He never figures it out, by the way, which proves that not even God knows what that means. Last time I swear, I promised on. And he has to learn how to be a manual laborer. Did you know that Jesus was what we call a tecton in the Greek? Often we're told he was a carpenter, but there aren't many trees in Israel. He was probably a stonemason. There's stones everywhere in Israel if you've been there. He was probably a stonemason. He was a manual laborer. Can I get an amen from all the blue-collar workers in the house tonight? Yeah, let's go. All right, fellas. And ladies. He has to learn what kind of music he likes, what kind of food he prefers. He probably argued with his parents a little bit here and there. Sinlessly, of course. Oh, you don't believe me? Well, there's a scene where years later where he's at this wedding with his mom, and his mom comes, like, Jesus, they're out of wine. Do something about it. And Jesus, like any maybe young adult, no offense, but says to his mom, Woman, don't bother me right now. This is how I imagine him saying it. And his mom, who was as tough as nails and was this God-fearing Jewish woman, knew better. So she mean-mugged him and said, Turn to the servants, because she knew her son would eventually sort himself out. Whatever he says, do whatever he says. Because he uh is acting out of like a fool right now, but give him a minute. And she leaves, and of course, he does it. He does what she asks, and he turns water into wine. Yeah, the Lagos enters right into our mess. Right there, right there. If you're looking for God, look in your messes. So we might see him. He might have just been born into those messes. He's kind of comfortable there. He likes being in the middle of everything like this, you know? Yeah, which means a couple things. One, if you're looking for more magic this Christmas, remember, God himself has been born into this world, this world. And it's present here right now. Maybe we just don't see it. Maybe we walk by burning bushes all the time and just don't see it. Maybe we need new eyes to see the magic and the mystery and the wonder all around us and the way the wind blows and the trees, or the way a bird soars on the wind, or the way a baby smiles and somehow brings your soul to life. Yeah, maybe we need new eyes. Secondly, it means this uh whatever mess you have in your life, my prayer for you tonight is that Jesus will be born once again in that space. You might say it this way: that you would have eyes to see that he's already there. He's not somewhere else. So maybe we need some more sarks in our life this Christmas. Maybe it's okay if you burnt the chicken dinner, Christmas dinner, and you weren't really prepared with all the things, and your kids are running around and kind of being chaotic. And because maybe Jesus is there. He's there when your kids aren't really paying attention during the devotional time, or when you're rushing from this thing to that thing, or when you feel like everyone's being too greedy and the world is lost, it's mine. Ah, Jesus is right there. Here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna we're gonna sing a song. I want to ask you tonight. Uh, one, we'll sing a song, we'll pass around some offering globes if you want to give to Central. All the money that we that is given through tithes and offerings and gifts goes to the mission of Central. So thank you for your generosity. Um, but we'll do that, we'll sing a song, we'll pray and do communion. And and when you do, when you when you sing this next song, I want you to close your eyes. And and whatever mess you have in your life right now, and if you're like me, you probably have a couple of them, so just pick one and ask Jesus to be born once again into that mess. Because the gospel is not that you go to Jesus, but Jesus has come to you in your mess. So find him there. And you come forward for the meal and you open your hands and you ask for the wafer and the wine. Yeah, this is the gift of life. The God who raises the dead. Yeah. So tonight may you remember that the logos of God, God Himself has become flesh, gritty, grimy flesh. And may you find God tonight in your messes. Amen.

Head Shot

Ryan Braley

Host