In this chapel‑style podcast episode, Chaplain Rick Lee James delivers a Christmas sermon titled “The God Who Lets Us Carry Him.” He begins by critiquing the sanitized, peaceful images of Christmas that dominate cards, music, and popular culture, arguing that they obscure the harsh reality of the world into which Jesus was born. Drawing on Jeremiah 10’s mockery of idols that must be carried and Matthew 2’s account of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, James contrasts lifeless, human‑made idols with a vulnerable, incarnate God who willingly places himself in human hands. He emphasizes that God’s entry into a world of fear, violence, and refugee suffering—highlighted by Herod’s massacre of the Bethlehem children—demonstrates divine humility, courage, and a defiant hope that does not deny suffering but enters it. Throughout, he weaves cultural references (e.g., Tolkien’s Sauron) to illustrate the powerlessness of idols versus the strength of a self‑giving God. Chaplain Doug adds contemporary relevance, linking the biblical refugee narrative to modern displaced families and urging listeners to see beyond Christmas cards toward real‑world compassion. The episode closes with James’s original song “Christmas Cards,” which lyrically reinforces the sermon’s theme of a God who is both small enough to be carried and great enough to save the world, followed by a benediction.
Chapters
So for those of you listening, welcome back to Voices in My Head. I am Rick Lee James and I am chaplain at Springfield Regional Medical Center, and I'm so grateful for all of you who are here today. I'm going to be presenting a message today that's called The God Who Lets Us Carry Him. So before we open the scriptures today, I want to name something that often gets lost in the way that we celebrate Christmas. Many of the images that we use in this time of year on our decorations, in the music that we sing and play, even on the Christmas cards that we send, they tend to paint this soft, peaceful picture. And, and beauty is good, we need beauty, but the world Jesus was actually born into, I believe, was very different according to what scripture tells us. Than that soft, peaceful, serene setting. Bethlehem was a small, ordinary village. The Holy Family lived under Roman occupation. And by Holy Family, I mean Mary and Joseph and Jesus. And in Matthew's Gospel, the joy of Jesus' birth is immediately overshadowed by something disturbing. Herod gives an order to kill the young children of Bethlehem under 2 years old. Herod is a ruler that is so paranoid, so fearful, that he saw even toddlers as a threat to his power. Historians tell us this matches everything we know about Herod's character. He was violent, he was unstable, he was willing to take innocent lives to protect his throne. And it's into that world that Jesus comes. It's a world of fear. It's a world of grief and injustice. It's a world where families are forced to run for safety in the night. And it's a world that looks far more like real life than the pictures we sometimes put on our mantle. And that is the point that Matthew's Gospel wants us to understand. God does not wait for a perfect world to show up. God enters the world as it really is. Vulnerable, dependent, carryable in our arms as a baby. A God who trusts himself to human arms and who chooses to walk with us at our speed. Well, in the middle of danger and in the middle of heartache and hope, that's a different kind of God than we thought we would encounter. So today, as I briefly explore, explore some scriptures together, I want us to hear the Christmas story maybe in the way that families in Bethlehem lived it. Not as a sentimental escape, but as good news for a world that is suffering real fear, where hope has to be stronger than that fear. So let's pray as we begin today with our message. Lord, I pray that you would use whatever words I bring I trust, Lord, that your Holy Spirit will speak and that it will not be my words, but what is heard today will be words to our hearts from you. For we believe that you are always speaking. We believe that you are always loving, always reaching out, always revealing yourself, and you are always inviting us into something. And Lord, with all of our hearts, as well as we can today, we say we accept that invitation. Into whatever journey you would like to take us on. And in Jesus' name I pray, amen. So I want to look quickly at Jeremiah chapter 10, verse 5, and it says this: Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field. They cannot speak. They have to be carried because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good. Jeremiah is talking about idols. He's mocking them because idols have to be carried. If you have to lift your god and carry your god, that god doesn't seem to be doing much for you, according to Jeremiah the prophet. But then comes this Christmas story. And suddenly we see that Jesus, God in flesh, needs to be carried. The very thing that Jeremiah talks about as being something that points to an idol, and yet here we meet it in Jesus. Well, Jeremiah is preaching during the rise of Babylon. Every surrounding nation has its god. There are just many gods in that day that are worshiped and talked about, and these gods are made of wood and stone and metal, and these statues had to be carved out by human hands. They had to to be decorated, nailed down, and carried. Well, Jeremiah describes them as scarecrows in a cucumber field, which is kind of a funny image when you think about it. I don't know that I've ever seen a cucumber field before. But a scarecrow, if you think about it, it only works if you think it's alive. Birds are only scared, crows are only scared if they think that's a real human being. If you don't believe it's real, then it's powerless for you. In J.R.R. Tolkien's third part of The Lord of the Rings, one of my favorite series of books, in The Return of the King, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, the hobbits, all return home to the Shire. And instead of the peaceful land that they knew, they find it twisted and oppressed. It's industrialized under Sauron the wizard's influence. Sauron, who was once the most powerful wizard, is now reduced in his power. He's broken, he's stripped of his rank, he's wandering with his aide Wormtongue, and he is weakened. But he still uses his voice to manipulate, to intimidate, and to control the hobbits in the Shire. Well, when Frodo and the other hobbits journeying with him confront Sauron. The Shire-folk gather around. Sauron sees the hostility in their faces, and he tries to frighten them. He dares them to do something to him, or to try to kill him. He invokes curses upon them. He threatens that his death would poison their land, and claims he still holds dangerous power against them. And the hobbits in the Shire temporarily recoil. They believe him. But Frodo says, "Do not believe him. He has lost all power save his voice that can still daunt you and deceive you if you let it." But Frodo says, "Don't listen to him. He has no power." I point that out because just like the scarecrow in Jeremiah, idols only gain power when we give them the use of our imagination. I think this is Jeremiah's point. The only life an idol has is the life its followers give to it. Idols need their followers to sustain them. They can't walk, they can't protect, they can't speak. They're lifeless, they're false. They have to be carried. Well, the Gospel of Matthew shows us a different kind of picture though. Than these idols that Jeremiah described. Listen to this story from Matthew chapter 2, starting with verse 13. It says, now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, and he said, rise, take the child, or carry the child, and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to kill him. And he rose and he took the child and his mother by night, and he departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son." Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in that region, those who were 2 years old and under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more. According to Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived AD 37 to 100, Herod's brutality in this passage is not exaggerated. Herod killed 3 of his own sons, his favorite wife, Mariamne, and numerous people of wealth and influence in his society. Now Bethlehem was likely a small village in the time of Jesus, consisting of anywhere from 300 to 1,000 people. So the number of boys killed, it may have only been 10 to 30 children, but when it comes to people, when it comes to children, 10 to 30, well, even if it was one, it's a tragedy. This number was small enough for Rome to ignore, but was large enough to rip the heart out of the people in Bethlehem. This is the world of the first Christmas. It's a world, as I said before, of fear and violence and political terror and of refugee families fleeing for their lives. It's a world of grieving mothers who have lost babies. It's this world where Jesus is born into. It's this world where Jesus is carried in. And Mary carries him through the night and Joseph carries him into Egypt and human arms are protecting the God of the universe. So hold these two texts together. Jeremiah says a god who must be carried is no god at all. But Matthew shows us that the true God chooses to be carried in human arms.
Why?
Idols must be carried because they have no other choice, but Jesus is carried out of love. Idols have to be carried because they are lifeless. But Jesus becomes carryable because he is self-giving. Idols require your effort to keep them upright. Jesus makes himself vulnerable not because he lacks power, but because he is strong enough to be humble. God shows his power through humility. The extraordinary thing about the Christmas story is that God trusts human beings to carry him. God places God's self in human arms. The Catholic Church refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as Theotokos, which means God-bearer, one who carries God. God depends on a carpenter and a teenage mother. God entrusts himself to a refugee family on the run. This is not weakness, this is courage. This is defiant hope. Hope. This is the vulnerability of love on full display. Jesus is the God who slows down to move at human speed. The God who walks 3 miles an hour like humans do. The God who slows down to touch the sick, to bless children, to eat with sinners, to look people in the eye, to rest, to weep, to embrace. He is the God who stops completely for us. He is the God who says, "I will not outrun you. I will not overwhelm you. I will walk at your pace. I will even be carried by you." If God comes to us at our speed, it means hope is not found in escaping the world. Hope is found by God entering into the world and loving it enough to slow down as he allows himself to be carried. In Jesus, God enters a world where babies die. And God refuses to let that kind of suffering be the end of the story. This is the part of the story that the Christmas cards and the Hallmark movies miss. Christmas cards and Hallmark movies, they skip the fear, they skip the violence, they skip the sorrow, they skip the real world that Jesus entered into. They skip the vulnerable God who arrives in danger, not safety. Christmas cards show halos of angels. The gospel shows Herod in his cowardice and narcissism. Christmas cards show soft lighting. The gospel shows Rachel weeping. Christmas cards show a perfect world, but the gospel shows a world that needs saving. And in that world, hope is not a denial of how things are. Hope embraces it, but hope is defiant. Hope says the world is dangerous, but God came here anyway. Hope says this is a violent world, but God stepped into it as a child. Hope says this world is filled with tears, but God trusted himself to the very people who struggle to trust anything at all. And the gospel holds together both sides of Christmas: the world's pain and God's presence in that pain. The gospel shows us that the God we carry in Jesus is the God who carries us. So the message of Christmas is this: idols must be carried because they are false and dead, but Jesus is carried because he is love and he is alive. The idols of this world demands strength from us, but Jesus is the strength that carries us. The idols of this world cannot walk, but Jesus walks at 3 miles an hour so we can keep up. The idols of this world cannot enter into our grief, but Jesus enters it fully as a baby in danger who suffers as a savior. And this is our hope: a God small enough to be carried is a God big enough to save the world. We're gonna close today with a song that I recently wrote called Christmas Cards, where I talk about this story. I wanted to write something that was about what happened when Jesus was born, but maybe something that the Christmas cards and the Hallmark movies miss. This is called Christmas Cards, and it'll be our closing reflection today. You don't see Joseph packing up before the sun can rise. Mary holding Jesus close, saying, "Baby, please don't cry." 'Cause Herod sent his soldiers out to kill the newborn boys.
For the weeping moms in Ramah, there would be no Christmas joy. Jesus was a refugee, his family on the run. To run. A king without a country in a land that's not his own. The God who made the universe running for his life. It's not the kind of story that the Christmas cards describe. It was not a Hallmark movie, sweet as those might be. They were sneaking into Egypt, dodging soldiers —in the street when you're running from a tyrant who is trying to take your life. It's a different kind of story than the Christmas cards describe. Jesus was a refugee before he walked on the waves. He knew the life of exile long before he beat the grave. So maybe love looks different than the script. Stories that we like. There's a bigger meaning than the Christmas cards describe. And Jesus comes to us today, faces we don't know, families crossing borders with nowhere else to go. So if we make some room for them, we just might be surprised by the stories deeper than Christmas cards describe. So don't throw away your Christmas cheer. There's good news for the poor. Every unjust mountain leveled, every valley be restored. And don't believe the myth that there is no hope in this life. 'Cause God is so much greater than Christmas cards describe.
Well, thank you for being here with us for this chapel service today and for this podcast today. I'm grateful that you're here. Thank you again, Chaplain Doug, for playing along with me today. And we close with a word of blessing Today, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you and give you his peace. May the Lord bless you as you go today.
