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Two decades ago, I was asked to write to write a difficult sermon. A family in our congregation had just lost their baby to stillbirth, and the funeral was scheduled for the week before Christmas. The juxtaposition of a season of life and joy with the grief of an empty cradle was difficult to think through theologically. I remember sitting at my desk with a Bible, commentaries, and a lexicon of New Testament Greek. The internet, still coming into its own, offered little assistance; a few blogs surfaced theological musings on Christmas, but none spoke to the unique pain of this moment. I turned to the Gospel of Luke, pondering the manger that cradled the Christ child and imagining it empty. Luke 2:12 offered both comfort and a haunting image: “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
The manger, usually a symbol of humility and divine presence, became for me a symbol of absence and longing. My sermon reflected on how God entered human vulnerability — meeting us in the desolate spaces of our lives, not to erase grief, but to transform it.
Looking back, I wonder how the process of crafting that sermon would have changed had AI been available. Could an algorithm have helped me find insights I missed or metaphors I struggled to create? These questions, which may have seemed…
