In our house, we have a little system for Christmas cards. It’s pretty simple. When you get a Christmas card, you save the card and the envelope, put the card back in the envelope, and place it in a little basket. That basket goes up into the attic. Then, next Christmas, the basket comes back down, and you have all the names and addresses of the people you’re supposed to write Christmas cards to.
I’m sure there are better ways to appreciate Christmas cards—hanging them up, sitting with them, actually reading them slowly. But I’ll be honest: it’s a busy time of year, and I don’t usually do that.
And in many ways, messages from a distance—Christmas cards, greeting cards, emails, text messages, even greetings to one another on the street or in passing, like we just did—“How are you?”—these are the mechanics of social convention. There’s a greeting, and there’s an expected response. Often, those responses are hardwired into us. We say, “I’m doing good,” even when that’s not true. We send back a Christmas card, even if we haven’t talked to the person all year—and probably didn’t really look at the card they sent us. We say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” We get an invitation to a party and feel expected to RSVP, to show up, to do all the things that socially adjusted people are supposed to do.
But not every message—and not every greeting from afar—is actually asking for a polite or mechanistic response.
Today we have three readings, and in every single one, there is a message from afar.
Isaiah travels to Ahaz, the king of Jerusalem, with a message from God. Ahaz’s initial response is frankly the polite, socially expected one: “I don’t want to tempt God by asking for a sign. No, no, thank you.” It’s the spiritual version of “Oh, please don’t go out of your way.”
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul is trying to get through to a rowdy Christian community marked by turmoil and infighting. So Paul ramps up his greeting—naming his authority, situating himself carefully—using social and religious conventions to try to elicit the response he hopes for: obedience, respect, attention.
And then we have Joseph. His first “message” is the discovery that Mary is pregnant. His initial response is also socially appropriate and morally upstanding: to quietly break off the betrothal and slip away in the night.
But none of these messages are actually asking for that kind of response.
The message to Ahaz, the message to the Romans, the message to Joseph—each one is asking for something deeper. They are not asking for an RSVP. They are not asking for “I’m doing fine, thank you.” They are not asking for a polite nod or a deferred response.
They are asking these people—Ahaz, the church in Rome, Joseph—to show themselves.
That’s the thing about messages from afar: even when they are invitations, even when they are asking for something more than a smile or a wave or a Christmas card in return, it’s easy to miss that. It’s easy to respond mechanically. To do what’s expected.
That Christmas card from someone you haven’t talked to in a long time might actually be an invitation to reconnect—not just a reminder to put them on your list for next year. That invitation to lunch or to a holiday party might be more than someone filling seats—it might be an invitation into the life of someone who doesn’t want to be alone this Christmas. When someone asks you, “How are you?” or “Do you have plans for Christmas?” they might actually want the real answer.
But because messages arrive in familiar forms, we give familiar responses—and miss the deeper invitation underneath.
This is the good news of what we are about to celebrate this week.
What makes Christianity so distinct is that God does not rely forever on messages and messengers alone—prophets, seers, letters, poetry, even Scripture itself. As holy and necessary as those are, the profound claim of Christmas is that God decides that messages from afar are not enough.
So God shows up. God enters history. God takes flesh. God becomes present.
So there can be no misunderstanding about what all those messages were leading toward. The point of Scripture, the point of prophecy, the point of this story is not for us to respond politely—to say, “Isn’t that nice,” sing a carol, light a candle, set up a nativity, and move on.
If we read Christmas as a greeting card from heaven, we miss the point entirely.
God is so serious about this invitation that God becomes present—because when God asks, “How are you?” God actually wants the real answer.
This is the beauty of Jesus’ ministry. It’s not a traveling roadshow—“God is here, God is here, come see me.” It is God entering human life not to offer greetings alone, but to invite us into God’s very life, God’s very presence, God’s very heart.
At Christmas we talk a lot about the presence of God. But preparing for God’s presence is not about feeling a certain emotion. It’s not about ecstasy or spiritual overwhelm. It’s not about doing something mystical.
The 17th-century mystic Brother Lawrence said that practicing the presence of God is very simple: don’t flee. Don’t run away.
God’s presence is already here, inviting us in. To practice God’s presence doesn’t mean feeling joy all the time. It doesn’t mean giving the theologically correct response. It means staying—right where God is.
And that means acknowledging that God’s presence may be asking for our presence.
Not just polite niceties. Not just correct answers. Not just candles and nativities—good as those are. Jesus did not come into the world just to offer greetings so we could wave back.
Jesus comes to invite us to his table. To his life. To his heart.
“Do you have plans for Christmas?”
“Do you have someone to be with?”
And the mystery of the incarnation is that we, too, become bearers of Christ’s presence. We become temples of the Holy Spirit.
So I want to leave you with a very simple invitation.
This holiday season, what would happen if you didn’t assume that Christmas cards, texts, emails, and greetings were just social niceties? What if you treated them as invitations? What if the card you received—or the message you sent—was a doorway into someone’s life?
And when you ask someone how they are, what if you did what God does—taking one extra step to let them know you actually want the real answer?
Politeness is not the depth of presence Christ offers us.
And if nothing else this Christmas, remember this:
this story is not a greeting card from heaven.
It is God wanting to be in your life—
in this world,
in your world. Amen.
