We live in an age when many of our relationships are mediated through a screen.  We email family members in the next room, and often know more about the lives of Facebook friends than we do about the people who live next door or who sit next to us at church.

This is not an attack on technology, but a reminder of how radically counter-cultural Sunday morning worship is.  Here we spend an hour and a half – sometimes a bit more! – with actual people, listening to people talk and read out loud, sharing the presence of God and of each other.

Every week we take a few hours to greet and hug and kiss each other, and listen and eat together, without the veil of communications technology.

The deep root of this is the incarnation of the Son that we celebrate in Advent, beginning next week.  God didn’t keep His distance, or flip a switch, or beam light from heaven, or communicate with us indirectly.

In the incarnation, God stepped out from behind the veils, and embraced us in the flesh.  In the incarnation, God met us face-to-face, and now He calls us to go and do likewise.