OLD TESTAMENT READING Isaiah 65:18-19, 25, NIV
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.
NEW TESTAMENT READING Luke 3:15-16, CEB
15 The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ. 16 John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
SERMON Anticipate the New
Though we think of December as the end of the year, today is the first day of the Christian calendar, the first Sunday of Advent. This is a season of anticipation and preparation. Although the commercial world has been heavily Christmas focused for a month already, and radio stations have been playing Christmas music, Christmas itself isn’t here for another 23 days. In our fast paced, hurry up world, we don’t know how to wait for Christmas, but you can’t understand the impact of Christ’s arrival if you haven’t spent a long time waiting. Really, 4 weeks is nothing compared to the 400 years or more that God’s people, as we read about them in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, were quietly, stubbornly, intentionally waiting for Messiah, whom we believe came in Jesus.
A few churches ago, I wrote a skit for the youth group and children’s choir to perform for Advent. The repeated theme was “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” and it had lines in between with individual kids asking, as if a child in the back seat, “Are we there yet?” “Is it time yet?” Let’s admit that we can be like impatient children when it comes to Christmas. But as adults, we miss out on the spiritual richness of Advent if we skip over it too quickly.
This year, I invite you into a spiritual retreat with me on these four Sundays of Advent, to hit the pause button, to take time to slow down just as the snow storm may have forced you to do earlier this week, to think in ways perhaps you haven’t thought before about what God was really up to, what God is still up to, as we consider the deeper meanings of the season. My commitment to Advent 2018 is to stay a week ahead reading a devotional by Walter Brueggemann, Celebrating Abundance. The very first day, even before I finished the 2-page reading, God invited me to go find an empty notebook and start journaling. Much of what I will share with you comes from those reflections. I’ll also draw from Awaiting the Already, an Advent study we are reading in the Wednesday morning group.
This week, in preparation mode, we begin with John the Baptist. The Gospel of Mark begins, not with Jesus’ birth, but with his cousin John preaching repentance. John is the new Elijah, a seemingly crazy, certainly passionate, prophet out in the wilderness. John quotes Isaiah, as he tells his audience and us to prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. (Is. 40)
Let’s take a look at those major themes: preparation, repentance, wilderness, and the hope they point toward.
Biblically, the word prepare can mean to create something like a building or a vessel to contain something else. But prepare can also mean getting ready for a great event. As we prepare during Advent, we are asked to get ourselves ready to receive God’s love, to be the vessels through which God’s compassion and mercy will be poured. (Magrey deVega, Awaiting the Already, p. 18) We are also preparing for the arrival of Christ, not just once upon a time as a baby, but coming into our world ever again. This is the same word used when Jesus sent the disciples to prepare the Passover meal, which we remember again today as we celebrate Holy Communion. That night Jesus was preparing himself to be that vessel through which God’s love would be poured out to the world and preparing his disciples to continue the mission.
John’s primary message was “Repent!” John urgently demands change and reform. I love the way the Common English Bible translates repentance as “changed hearts and lives.” Jesus didn’t come into our world to maintain the status quo but to significantly change the way we humans think and behave regarding ourselves, our neighbor, our world, and our God. John’s urgency suggests we dare not wait until the last minute. What if we wait too long to change our ways, not just as individuals, but as a society, as humankind. Haven’t we already waited too long to change our attitudes and actions on climate change, on abuse and harassment, on human trafficking, on affordable medical care for everyone, on equal respect for all peoples? As humanity, we still need to repent, to change our ways. This is how we prepare for Christ in the wilderness of our world.
Everyone experiences wilderness in their lives. It may simply have been the snow last Sunday and trying to dig out on Monday. It may be pain or depression. It may be trying to navigate insurance policies. It may be loss through death or divorce. It may be disasters, the fires in California or the earthquake in Alaska. It may be the fear of violence or the minefield of politics. It may be a spiritual dry spell or wondering what will become of Christian faith and church.
It is in the wilderness that God wants to reshape us and our world. It is not done easily. Every biblical image I can think of to go with this theme of transformation is harsh, pressured, and painful: the potter at the wheel, a woman kneading bread, the refiner’s fire, the grapes crushed for wine, the press squeezing oil from olives, beating grain on the threshing floor. The process of transformation is hard on the one being transformed and hard work for the one transforming us, yet from our raw materials something beautiful and useful is created. God is preparing us to be vessels of God’s love and peace and hope and joy and purpose.
We prepare a way through the wilderness of our lives or our world, not passively, but actively seeking God’s presence, God’s plan, the new thing God is doing. We slow down not to watch TV or take a nap, but to intentionally listen to God’s Word and God’s inspiration and prayerfully ask what God wants us to change. Our Advent devotion earlier suggested ways we might, like John, decrease so Christ can increase. We are challenged this season to decrease fear and increase our trust in God. We are challenged to decrease a scarcity mentality and embrace God’s promise of abundance. One simple example that came to mind last week would be to decrease Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending frenzies and increase Giving Tuesday generosity instead.
To turn away from the way our world thinks and behaves is what John still challenges us to do; that is the repentance he calls for in our day and time. That is how we prepare the way for God’s glory to enter our wilderness and bring about the newness for which we hope. As I sat in my new chair, in my new home, and looked out my new window toward a new view, God was challenging me to think in new ways, to reflect on God’s message to the world today and new ways of expressing it. I pondered what newness looks like to the refugees at the Mexican border, or to David with a new job, or to a friend facing a new way of life.
Advent challenges us to focus not on a quaint story from 2000 years ago, but to look for that new thing God is doing in our world today. Christ comes to us anew each year in every season, but Advent especially reminds us of that, if we are listening on a deeper spiritual level. The poetry of Isaiah’s message, later influencing John’s ministry, speaks to the soul not only of the past, but imagines and wonders and dares to hope in the possibilities of the future. That is what Advent asks us to do.
So, let me offer you one way you might participate. As I reflected on some of the devotions for this week, I thought of the hope many of you shared that you would like to see more people in worship with us. At some point that takes actively going out and inviting people to come to church, but it also takes spiritual preparation. Here’s what came to mind. What if many of you took time over the next four weeks, to come and sit in the sanctuary in meditative imagination? What if you dared to imagine that the sanctuary is full: filled with believers, with seekers, with doubters, here for whatever reason, experiencing God’s presence, together, each in his or her own way? Sit a bit on Sunday after fellowship or when you arrive early. Come during office hours if you’re in the neighborhood or when you come to study or volunteer. Many of you church leaders have a key, so come whenever it is convenient for you, but come and pray and dare to imagine what God might want to accomplish here. Listen for how God is asking you to be part of that transformation. Dare to believe that God continues to prepare us as a vessel to Receive Christ, Reach Out and Share God’s Love.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.
NEW TESTAMENT READING Luke 3:15-16, CEB
15 The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ. 16 John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
SERMON Anticipate the New
Though we think of December as the end of the year, today is the first day of the Christian calendar, the first Sunday of Advent. This is a season of anticipation and preparation. Although the commercial world has been heavily Christmas focused for a month already, and radio stations have been playing Christmas music, Christmas itself isn’t here for another 23 days. In our fast paced, hurry up world, we don’t know how to wait for Christmas, but you can’t understand the impact of Christ’s arrival if you haven’t spent a long time waiting. Really, 4 weeks is nothing compared to the 400 years or more that God’s people, as we read about them in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, were quietly, stubbornly, intentionally waiting for Messiah, whom we believe came in Jesus.
A few churches ago, I wrote a skit for the youth group and children’s choir to perform for Advent. The repeated theme was “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” and it had lines in between with individual kids asking, as if a child in the back seat, “Are we there yet?” “Is it time yet?” Let’s admit that we can be like impatient children when it comes to Christmas. But as adults, we miss out on the spiritual richness of Advent if we skip over it too quickly.
This year, I invite you into a spiritual retreat with me on these four Sundays of Advent, to hit the pause button, to take time to slow down just as the snow storm may have forced you to do earlier this week, to think in ways perhaps you haven’t thought before about what God was really up to, what God is still up to, as we consider the deeper meanings of the season. My commitment to Advent 2018 is to stay a week ahead reading a devotional by Walter Brueggemann, Celebrating Abundance. The very first day, even before I finished the 2-page reading, God invited me to go find an empty notebook and start journaling. Much of what I will share with you comes from those reflections. I’ll also draw from Awaiting the Already, an Advent study we are reading in the Wednesday morning group.
This week, in preparation mode, we begin with John the Baptist. The Gospel of Mark begins, not with Jesus’ birth, but with his cousin John preaching repentance. John is the new Elijah, a seemingly crazy, certainly passionate, prophet out in the wilderness. John quotes Isaiah, as he tells his audience and us to prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. (Is. 40)
Let’s take a look at those major themes: preparation, repentance, wilderness, and the hope they point toward.
Biblically, the word prepare can mean to create something like a building or a vessel to contain something else. But prepare can also mean getting ready for a great event. As we prepare during Advent, we are asked to get ourselves ready to receive God’s love, to be the vessels through which God’s compassion and mercy will be poured. (Magrey deVega, Awaiting the Already, p. 18) We are also preparing for the arrival of Christ, not just once upon a time as a baby, but coming into our world ever again. This is the same word used when Jesus sent the disciples to prepare the Passover meal, which we remember again today as we celebrate Holy Communion. That night Jesus was preparing himself to be that vessel through which God’s love would be poured out to the world and preparing his disciples to continue the mission.
John’s primary message was “Repent!” John urgently demands change and reform. I love the way the Common English Bible translates repentance as “changed hearts and lives.” Jesus didn’t come into our world to maintain the status quo but to significantly change the way we humans think and behave regarding ourselves, our neighbor, our world, and our God. John’s urgency suggests we dare not wait until the last minute. What if we wait too long to change our ways, not just as individuals, but as a society, as humankind. Haven’t we already waited too long to change our attitudes and actions on climate change, on abuse and harassment, on human trafficking, on affordable medical care for everyone, on equal respect for all peoples? As humanity, we still need to repent, to change our ways. This is how we prepare for Christ in the wilderness of our world.
Everyone experiences wilderness in their lives. It may simply have been the snow last Sunday and trying to dig out on Monday. It may be pain or depression. It may be trying to navigate insurance policies. It may be loss through death or divorce. It may be disasters, the fires in California or the earthquake in Alaska. It may be the fear of violence or the minefield of politics. It may be a spiritual dry spell or wondering what will become of Christian faith and church.
It is in the wilderness that God wants to reshape us and our world. It is not done easily. Every biblical image I can think of to go with this theme of transformation is harsh, pressured, and painful: the potter at the wheel, a woman kneading bread, the refiner’s fire, the grapes crushed for wine, the press squeezing oil from olives, beating grain on the threshing floor. The process of transformation is hard on the one being transformed and hard work for the one transforming us, yet from our raw materials something beautiful and useful is created. God is preparing us to be vessels of God’s love and peace and hope and joy and purpose.
We prepare a way through the wilderness of our lives or our world, not passively, but actively seeking God’s presence, God’s plan, the new thing God is doing. We slow down not to watch TV or take a nap, but to intentionally listen to God’s Word and God’s inspiration and prayerfully ask what God wants us to change. Our Advent devotion earlier suggested ways we might, like John, decrease so Christ can increase. We are challenged this season to decrease fear and increase our trust in God. We are challenged to decrease a scarcity mentality and embrace God’s promise of abundance. One simple example that came to mind last week would be to decrease Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending frenzies and increase Giving Tuesday generosity instead.
To turn away from the way our world thinks and behaves is what John still challenges us to do; that is the repentance he calls for in our day and time. That is how we prepare the way for God’s glory to enter our wilderness and bring about the newness for which we hope. As I sat in my new chair, in my new home, and looked out my new window toward a new view, God was challenging me to think in new ways, to reflect on God’s message to the world today and new ways of expressing it. I pondered what newness looks like to the refugees at the Mexican border, or to David with a new job, or to a friend facing a new way of life.
Advent challenges us to focus not on a quaint story from 2000 years ago, but to look for that new thing God is doing in our world today. Christ comes to us anew each year in every season, but Advent especially reminds us of that, if we are listening on a deeper spiritual level. The poetry of Isaiah’s message, later influencing John’s ministry, speaks to the soul not only of the past, but imagines and wonders and dares to hope in the possibilities of the future. That is what Advent asks us to do.
So, let me offer you one way you might participate. As I reflected on some of the devotions for this week, I thought of the hope many of you shared that you would like to see more people in worship with us. At some point that takes actively going out and inviting people to come to church, but it also takes spiritual preparation. Here’s what came to mind. What if many of you took time over the next four weeks, to come and sit in the sanctuary in meditative imagination? What if you dared to imagine that the sanctuary is full: filled with believers, with seekers, with doubters, here for whatever reason, experiencing God’s presence, together, each in his or her own way? Sit a bit on Sunday after fellowship or when you arrive early. Come during office hours if you’re in the neighborhood or when you come to study or volunteer. Many of you church leaders have a key, so come whenever it is convenient for you, but come and pray and dare to imagine what God might want to accomplish here. Listen for how God is asking you to be part of that transformation. Dare to believe that God continues to prepare us as a vessel to Receive Christ, Reach Out and Share God’s Love.
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