Perhaps this past year has prompted the recognition that God is not the tame projection of our highest hopes and dreams. Instead, he is the one who uses even his foes to make a point.
Christmas is, therefore, the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, even while he awaits a number of years to gather his disciples and inaugurate his preaching of the kingdom.
I’d like to offer a short reflection on the theme of “worldliness” as it appears in his later work and how that’s connected to an item of his Lutheran heritage: the theology of the cross.