Greetings from the Pivot Podcast family! This Christmas, we rejoice in the profound significance of Jesus' birth, a beacon of hope, joy, and love for the coming year.

Today we hear from host, Dwight Zscheile along with guests, Rev. TT Daniel, Jennifer Wojciechowski, Godson Dauda, September Penn, Paul Kisingu, Akinpelu Lawal, Eun Strawser, Ramon Pastrano, and Jon Anderson.

Amid festive cheer, let's unwrap the theological depth of the Nativity—the divine message in a humble manger. May the radiance of Christ's love illuminate your path.

Stay tuned as we explore the sacred wonders of this season on the Pivot Podcast.

You're in the right place if you're a pastor, lay leader, or simply curious about how faith communities adapt in changing times. Let's embark on this journey together!

Dwight Zscheile: The incarnation is God's yes to the messiness of life. It's God's yes to the ordinary, everyday beauty and ambiguity of human experience. God joins us where we are to be with us in utter solidarity to know human life from the inside. In the incarnation, God binds God's self to us in love. The Incarnation is God's yes to human culture, to local language and customs. It's also God's no to all in human life and culture that conflicts with God's will. God's word is not an idea, a theory, a concept, but a person: Jesus, who walked where we walk and suffered where we suffer so that we might be joined with God forever.

T. T. Daniel: Well my name is Reverend T. T. Daniel, I'm from Ghana, West Africa. Now, if I concern myself with the life and ministry of Jesus, his death and his resurrection, his ascension and his promise to come the second time, then I can answer the significance of the birth of Jesus, what it means to me that it means the dawn of a new hope. It means joy to the world, and also a reassurance or a reminder of God's activities in the world, that God is still in touch with his world, and that Jesus is a great definition of God with us in the world. Thank you.

Jennifer Wojciechowski: Thank you. I'm Jennifer Wojciechowski. I teach church history here at Luther Seminary. And for me, um, the incarnation really sits at the center of my own personal theology. So Advent is an exciting time. It's a time of preparation. It's a time of new beginnings with the new liturgical year. And just preparing for the incarnation. Preparing for God who chose to be born as one of us, um, on earth is because he loved us that much. And that's such an exciting part of Advent for me.

Godson Dauda: Hi, my name is Godson Dauda. I'm from Kaduna State, Nigeria. For me, the birth of Jesus Christ means quite a lot of few things to me, but I want to mention three things that it stands out completely in the formation of my faith and where I am today. Number one is that it gives me freedom, um, from the diversity of of people. It gives me the opportunity to mingle and meet up with so many people from different cultures, tribes and nations. And it gives me that, that communal, um, fellowship with other people, too. It changes my perspective entirely about what it really means to, um, come from a family that struggles through its divorce and everything. It changes my perspective. It makes me, um, to have a different perspective about what life truly is. I grew up having a kind of mindset that is limiting what I am and what I'm supposed to become due to the divorce of my family, um, and so many other things that changes, that happens to me throughout my my entire faith journey formation. And so this for me, the birth of Jesus Christ is one of those things for me. Three is that the birth of Jesus Christ opened my mind to understanding who truly I am. I am not what other people think I am. I am what Jesus Christ says I am. And the birth of Jesus Christ really exposed me to that reality, to knowing that I am the light of the world, a city that cannot be hidden, and the salt of the world that the world needs to be able to change its perspective. I'm a catalyst of change. I am the chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar person who has been called out of darkness into God's marvelous light. I am the rise and shine, the rising light that cannot be hidden. That is who I am. That is what the birth of Jesus Christ truly, really means to me. And that is what I want you to understand about the birth of Jesus Christ. Thank you.

September Penn: I am September Penn. I serve as the pastor of Angeles Mesa Presbyterian Church. As you can see, we recently finished trimming our tree as we prepare for the season of Advent and the coming of Christ. It's the Christ child, Christmas. When I think of that, um, gift alone, the gift of Christ, the gift of Jesus coming to this world wrapped in our humanity, wrapped in flesh, um, God and all of God's sovereignty and divinity, all knowing, all powerful and putting us on. Putting on our flesh, putting on our humanity, walking among us, living among us, all to save us, to save us. That's the gift; that's the gift. It's humbling. It's. It's sacred. It's most holy. And this time of year we remember again. We remember again God and all of God's divinity, wrapping himself in our humanity for the sake of our souls.

Paul Kisingu: My name is Paul Kisingu from Kenya. And what Christmas means to me is that Christmas means Emmanuel. Emmanuel to me is God with us, uh, in a way that I'm not really able to understand. But God came down and he became a human being. And God becoming a human being for me is he is with me. He is with me all the time. Good times and bad times. Uh, on top of the hill and in the middle of the valley. So. That's why Christmas is very important to me. It doesn't matter what I go through. It doesn't matter what life brings. Christmas to me means God is with me in everything. And I thank God for Christmas. Thank you very much.

Akinpelu Lawal: The birth of Jesus. Of course, to me he's a revolutionary, basically. And when I say revolutionary, it's in two forms. Um, one disruptive and secondly, informative. Disruptive for whoever does not believe in the promises of God. But for me, I believe in the promises of God. So it's quite some informative for me because it's, um, re-enact the hope I have about the promises of God. One for the fact that it's been fulfilled by God, coming down to us in human form to reassure us of a better place. So the birth of Jesus to me basically, um, helps me to navigate my way through challenges in life. Uh, basically, anytime I fall into distress, um, challenges that are beyond me. I definitely remember that, um, God participates even in my sufferings. And then, um, this world, this whole earth, no matter the challenges, is not our abode, is not our final destination. It's actually somewhere else, uh, which he has gone to prepare for me. So if he could come to participate in my suffering, definitely, I know I would see him one other time. Um, when the full eschaton must have come. So. Definitely. Um. I believe that the birth of Jesus is the most significant in human history. I mean, when talk about the significance of this, um, of the whole thing that Jesus has come to do, uh, to us in human form and of course, the divinity also.

Eun Strawser: Hello. Hi, everyone. My name is Eun Strasser. I'm the lead pastor of Ma Ke Ala O here in beautiful and a little bit rainy, uh, Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm also the author of Centering Discipleship: A Pathway to Multiply Spectators into Mature Disciples. And I was invited to say a little bit about what, uh, this Christmas season and Advent means to me. And I think that it's a powerful, part about who God is, uh, to to make the first action of the incarnation be, uh, about a little baby, coming to planet Earth, uh, to be the answer for all the brokenness in the whole wide world. And it speaks into what our first action as followers of Jesus ought to be, that it means to be incarnational, in need, and not coming with all of the answers. But, a powerful gospel. A full gospel for the hope of the world. Merry Christmas everyone.

Ramon Pastrano: The birth and incarnation of Jesus Christ are significant passages in my life. It was about 30 years ago, while reading the Gospel of John for the first time, reading the Bible for the first time that I came across that passage, John 1:14, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And that was the day that I actually became a disciple of Jesus Christ. The birth and incarnation of Christ also meant that I needed to understand Jesus' identity and develop myself a Christ centered identity by really following and learning and internalizing his character and allowing that identity to shape me into the person that I am today, every dimension of my life. So the birth and the incarnation of Christ are one to me. And there those are the day. That was the day that I actually was born into a disciple of Christ.

Jon Anderson: Were you born in a barn? People will say that, you know. And, uh, if they say it with the right tone of voice and body language, it really makes you feel shamed. The interesting thing is that Jesus was born in a barn. And as an old farm kid, that meant a lot to me. It meant a lot to me that Jesus was born in a place that I knew. Because as a farm kid, you often felt like somehow you were less than, that you weren't as good as everyone else. And yet, here's God's child being born in a stable, a barn. Certainly it was nothing fancy. And when I would go out to work in the barns on Christmas Eve, I'd often think about this and just ponder it that Jesus was born in a barn. And I, uh, when I was studying to prepare to preach one Christmas, I was looking at the word manger for some reason, and I saw it translated as feed box. And it was like I just heard I heard the story in a new way, because the word manger somehow made it all seem more orderly and and okay. But the word feed box, well, I know what feed boxes look like, covered with drool and messy and whatever the cows don't eat. And that was Jesus first bed. So if Jesus can be born in a stable and laid in a feed box, then Jesus will go wherever it takes in order to reach out, to connect with us, to teach us, to heal us, to save us. And the feed box is really just the beginning of how far God will go to connect with us through Jesus. So Emmanuel, God is with us. God is with everyone. God is at work everywhere.

Faith+Lead: The Pivot podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith +Lead. Faith +Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at Faith Lead dot org.