rich’s blog

…was born today @ 12:09. She’s a wee one: 5 lbs, 12 oz., 19 inches long.

She’s beautiful, healthy, and seems to be cut from the same cloth as her mother.

And so we rejoice.

So, I’ve updated the collected Revelation Series to your right, there. Here’s the rub: formatting’s off. Ah well.

But I want to say this: Thus far in Revelation, my favorite teaching is the most recent–the Part II of Revelation 17 & 18. Check it out or let me know what you think. rh  (first draft of this note said 16 & 17; I meant 17 & 18.  my bad.)

If you’re interested…

A Christmas Message: 2009

Introduction:
We are on the other side of Christmas Day, now. Advent is over, and we are thrust back out into real time. I hope so much that we don’t forget that Jesus is coming.

Although we are, of course, in Christmastime. We’re in the 12 days of Christmas, the days between Christmas Day and Epiphany, a Christian holiday celebrated on January 6th. Epiphany means “appearance!” and it often marks the arrival of the Wise Men and Jesus’ appearance to the Gentiles.

So this is Christmastime! In some places in the world the church does nothing but celebrate from Christmas Day until Epiphany. We go shopping. So. Six of one…

Worry:
I have a little bit of worry that anything I say today will not be nearly have as much impact as I know it could; actually I’m sure of it. Because today we’re talking about Christmas–and Christmas is a big deal, and I worry that somehow, instead of being changed by the dense, central realities of what we’re getting so near to, we’ll just sort of chip our teeth on them.

So if that does happen, it’s me. And I would ask that all of us, somehow–in the midst of dogs and guinea pigs and pregnancy–wait. Projected there. In the midst of the stuff of life, whether it’s shopping or quiet rest, whatever it is–I hope that we might take at least a second to think about what it means to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Let’s pray together:

Prayer:
Father: We thank you for Christmas. We want you to know that we think your son is really great. And we’re glad that we’ve been invited to this party. Let it be that our lives are as impacted by Jesus’ birth and its meaning as much as they should be. Keep me from misleading us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Introduction:
We could talk about a lot of things in a Christmas message. What a hassle it is to find out from angels you’re pregnant, but you’ve never had sex. We could dig into the texts that were read to us, and talk about the ins and outs of biblical prophecy, we could compare and contrast the differing Christmas story emphases that Luke and Matthew bring out in their books about Jesus. We could talk about the meaning of Jesus’ name.

But…we’re not really going to talk about any of that stuff!

We’re going to talk about our problems. It’s church, right? Isn’t that what we do? See, we have problem. It’s a little problem. We tend to do something with Christmas which isn’t so great.

We tend to overlook it; not maybe as an event, right–I couldn’t get away with saying that. Christmas is a big event, there’s you know, trees and boxes and candy and stuff. It’s an event!

But we don’t really think for very long about its meaning; the implications of Christmas and Jesus’ birth. By and large, we’re sort of “Jesus is born! And he died for our sins.” And not only do we skip some stuff like his life, or his resurrection, but really his birth becomes something that had to happen only so that he could die for our sins.

It’s Own Implications:
But it shouldn’t be that way. The Birth of Jesus has its own implications; it’s own meaning for our lives. And that’s what I want us to think about a bit this morning: The implication of calling Jesus “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” The implications of what’s called the incarnation–a great theological word, fancy, you know: like wine in a box, or mini sausage appetizers.

We’ll talk about incarnation more in a second.

Why?
But why, right? Why Why should Jesus’ birth have any impact on our lives.

We’ve talked over and over on our Sundays about the way that those people who’ve decided to believe the things Jesus says, to follow Jesus, they need to really learn how to pattern their lives, behaviors, actions, after Jesus’ life. We’re to become like Jesus.

What’s true of Jesus should be true of his followers. Christians claim Jesus’ resurrection as their own, they expect to come back to life after dying someday.

And we claim the benefits of Jesus’ death–a restored relationship with God–even if we don’t always do the best job of taking up death itself as part of what it means to be a Christian. It’s just hard to pattern our lives after Jesus’ life–voluntary slavery, making choices that cost us greatly in every way so that others might be blessed, not retaliating with anger when we’re attacked–but that this is the life Jesus calls his followers to.

As Christians, Jesus’ life and death and resurrection become not just metaphors for how we are supposed to live, but really, paradigms, patterns, that we are supposed to follow. We’re asked to discover what it means to model Jesus in every way.

Always On My Mind:
And so this is always on my mind around Christmas: if we as Christians are supposed to live out Jesus’ life, and take up Jesus’ death, and expect Jesus resurrection all as our own, what about his birth?

Are we also supposed to embody–embody–Jesus’ birth?

I’ll pause there, because it really makes no sense, does it? I’m saying that somehow Christians are supposed to be like Jesus in every way, and experience the full spectrum of Jesus’ life–including his birth.

And my first response, after seeing a lot of birthing videos lately–is gross. And your first response might be the same, you know: Rich, that’s gross, and your weird, and I think we need a new pastor.

Of course, if you’re thinking that, it’s not a new sort of attitude. In one of the stories about Jesus, he tells a guy that the man has to be born again if he wants to follow Jesus, and the guy responds as if Jesus is loony-tunes. “You can’t be born again. A little too big for the womb.”

And Jesus keeps talking, and we see that he’s using this birth metaphor as a way to talk about the realities of what it means to begin to trust him, and begin to follow him.

Jesus himself uses a metaphor related to his own birth–one that was brought about by the Holy Spirit–and tells this guy, and those of us who listen in, that in deciding to side with him, we have to have the same sort of Holy Spirit birth thing, a sort of re-birth while we’re still living.

But what I think we do, is that we leave behind, then, Jesus’ birth and it’s implications for our lives of faith, after we’ve started following him, and never look back at Christmas to see how it should daily affect our lives.

But we don’t need to just drop this great metaphor at the door after we’ve decided to follow Jesus. Part of what it means to make our life like Jesus’ own, to become more like Jesus all the time, means that we should somehow also own Jesus’ birth, and daily be impacted by it, just as much as we are impacted daily by the way he lived, by his death, and will be impacted by his resurrection after we’ve died.

Jesus’ birth presents a sort of pattern or paradigm for Christians that we have to incorporate into our lives of faith.

This is important for everything else I say this morning. You don’t have to buy it, but do you see what I’m presenting: The idea that Jesus’ birth presents a sort of pattern or paradigm for Christians that we have to incorporate into our lives of faith.

You don’t have to buy this, but hold it in your minds for me, alright: pretend for a few minutes with me. All I’m doing right now is proposing this as an interesting idea, (which I happen to believe).

The question of course, if we at least pretend for a second to accept the idea that Jesus’ birth must be important to us personally, daily, and must impact and shape our faith, as much as his death and resurrection should daily and personally impact and shape and inform our faith–how do we apply that, right?

Check Yourself!
Well, let’s check ourselves for a second, because I haven’t really talked about Jesus’ birth at all yet, have I? If we’re going to apply anything, we should know what it is we’re trying to apply, right? Is that fair?

What are we trying to apply?

Jesus’ birth. The one named Immanuel. The incarnation of God.

Incarnation
The Incarnation is a difficult thing to talk about. Let me just be clear; it has nothing to do with delicious instant breakfast. Kidding. But it’s easier to make jokes than be serious with this thing, because it’s just such a big, weird, beautiful idea.

Incarnation as a notion means to take on flesh. Simple enough, right. It’s the idea that being, and personality, and personal agency can exist without a body–without joints and muscle and heart–and then this active conscious personality takes on skin and bones and joints and eyes–the disembodied becomes embodied, that which is without teeth and a mouth gets one and begins to breathe and sleep and dream. That’s incarnation. Becoming enfleshed.

The Incarnation
When we talk about “The Incarnation,” we are talking about God doing this. It’s a bit trickier though, because there’s really two categories as far as existence goes, right: the creator, and the created.

God and that which ain’t God, no matter how much our siblings or parents or spouses think they are God; they’re not. And when we talk about “The Incarnation,” we are talking about God, the creator, deciding to take on the life of something created–our life–to take up the experience of humanity, with all it’s troubles and terrors and highs and lows and its certain death.

And there is no simple way to explain that. But we don’t need to explain it, in order to be affected by it, to become something greater as a result of it. (Which is good, since thousands of people have tried to articulate it in way more detail than we just did).

Immanuel:
One thing is for sure though: we can’t talk about “The Incarnation,” without talking about Immanuel–that name which means “God with us.”

Immanuel was a promise made to Israel long before the first Christmas, before Jesus’ birthday. A promise that God who loved them would be with his people; really be with his people, after it seemed as though he’d been gone a long while–and he would care for them, and do right by them, and bring justice and peace and hope into the world, when it felt like those things had been gone for a long time.

But the bible reminds us that “Hope deferred–put off–makes the heart sick.” And by the time Jesus was born, this was an old promise, and Israel’s heart was sick, was tired of waiting.

I don’t know if we can relate to that.

But Israel longed for the day when God would be with them again, because it had been a while, and they had faced some horrible things as a people. And in Jesus, Immanuel and Incarnation mixed and met.

God came to be with his people in a way nobody could have really expected; he became one of Israel, a person.

We are told by the biblical writers that Jesus is Immanuel because we need to know that in this One, this Jesus, God finally made good on old promises. And healing was put in motion for those who were heartsick.

Here’s the rub:
Here’s the rub: God revealed in the incarnation, in Jesus as Immanuel, a pattern of engagement with the world. God entered into our experience of reality. The creator chose to enter into and take part of creation. All because of love for creation, love for humanity. And surprising wonderful things happened as a result of this, but the very fact that it happened is itself surprising and wonderful too: God with us and God as us–a person, alive, and breathing and here.

This–this entering into another’s experience of reality–this is what we have to apply as Christians; this is the principle of The incarnation; that it is worthwhile and good to perceive and experience reality as others perceive it. And as Christians, we believe that this is exactly what God did in The Incarnation; that God became human so that humanity might be totally and fully experienced by God, and in the end, brought back to God–known and loved and cared for.

So what?
So what, though, right? I mean. How do we apply that sort of truth. It’s nice to say, “choose to experience the reality of another person,” but that doesn’t translate well into what might happens this afternoon, does it?

I think there are sort of three things that we’ve got to think about when it comes to the whole application thing. Its sort of like juggling and walking forward at the same time, though: these aren’t steps one, two, three, you know? But three things to attend to while we make forward steps.

Notice our lives:
First of all, I think we’ve got to notice our lives. We’ve got to pay attention to ourselves: We’ve got to really start trying to pay attention to ourselves. Learn what it means to be us.

For God to become human, God had to first really be aware of what it meant to be God. The creator of everything didn’t, you know, slip and fall into humanity, into creation: God knew what it meant to be God well before humans knew what it meant to be human.

We need to be honest and aware of what it means to be ourselves and what it means to be human–admitting to ourselves and each other that life is hard and full of troubles, but sometimes so wonderful. That we can forget in 3 minutes the greatest pains of our lives, or live with them so that they cripple us.

So I think that this is an important juggling thing, ball or whatever; noticing ourselves and then beginning to attend to the things we should really deal with. “I do that!?” “I have those prejudices?!” “I smell that way!?” This takes some self-reflection and it takes some courage, but honestly, it mostly just takes some effort.

Notice our lives:
Invite Others In:

As we see who we are, how we act, we’ve got to invite others in. This is a risk. It’s not simple. There’s no path to vulnerability. But if we’ve noticed and accepted how screwed up we are, how broken we can be, how demanding and opinionated and stubborn we can be–

and at the same time how funny, and how nice and kind sometimes, how hopeful and filled with longing– (everyone I’ve ever met, has this sort of human cocktail going on, you know.)

Then we can begin to see that honestly, other people might be more like us than we want to admit. And not only that, but we can begin to try and believe a great truth, though its a rare truth:

that everyone we meet has something to offer us.

That in spite of how much alike we all are–with our questions about meaning in life, and our deep insecurities, and our great secret dreams–we are still unique, and it may very well be the person who sees life just a little differently from us that has some great bit of wisdom by which we can become more of the person God desires us to be.

So we toss this ball in the air too, and juggle it, and try in little tiny ways and then bigger and bigger ways to share who we are with others.

And then the last bit, I think, which is the real goal, the big hope. You know, juggling two balls is–well, let’s be honest. It’s just not as impressive as three.

Christmas juggling, that’s what we’re talking about.

The third thing.

Notice Our Lives:
Invite Others In:
We Enter In:

We decide to believe that others are important. That the way people experience what it means to live is worthwhile. That in some little way, we ourselves decide to enter into their world, choose to believe that others lives and their hopes and dreams are really important.

And I think it’s a miracle when we are able to do that. When we are able to look with compassion upon another, and decide that it’s worth entering into their experience of reality, insofar as we’re able, which is for us only ever imperfectly. (Remember we’re not God; we are only trying to mimic Jesus, empowered by God’s Spirit and love and mercy.)

That is the beginning of everything for the Christian; the beginning of love, the beginning of redemption, the beginning of realizing hope, the beginning of meeting needs. It was the beginning of Jesus; God with us, enfleshed.

Until we take the step to enter into another persons’ experience of reality, we really better not move forward. Sometimes this is called forming a relationship; sometimes, before the practice is ripe and mature it means simply noticing what another person is going through and dealing with.

Summary thus far
I’m asking that we begin to notice our own lives, take stock in our perceptions and discover what it means to be us. Begin to explore the questions: Who are we? And as we do it, we invite others into our experience of reality. While we’re doing that, inviting others in, I’m asking that we might take the steps to enter into the realities of others; to come alongside them and begin to experience life as they experience it, with their hurts, and their troubles.

But how do we cash this out, right? This is big stuff. How do we take it home with us and apply this idea that we need to live out the incarnation–God’s decision to experience reality as we experience it–by choosing to experience the reality of others through coming alongside them–sort of love in action.

Immediate Application:
We can start remembering lost chances.

A few of us have had people over; some of us still do–and we’re the lucky ones, because our chances don’t have to be lost ones. But family has visited. Our kids might be back home from wherever they’ve been, our parents and siblings have been around.

We’ve entered into each other’s spaces, each others’ realities. It might be as simple as having to do “shoes off at the door,” because that’s the rule where we’ve been. We might have had to watch 5 hours of home movies that only one person likes, because that one person needs to watch those home movies. Maybe we’ve cooked ham and turkey, because these ones won’t eat turkey and those ones won’t eat ham, and what’s their problem, anyway. Don’t the realize…

sorry.

But we’ve been interacting with people, sharing space and accommodating needs, some of us still are and some us are just thankful it’s over.

But I’m not talking about tolerating each other. That’s a weak, lesser cousin of what I’m talking about. It’s about coming alongside the home movie lover and asking, “Why?” “Why is it so important?”

Learning what you can gain from him or her, and loving the fact that they love it so much–even though you will not watch them until next Christmas.

Incarnation is about learning why Ham? Why Turkey? And valuing the people who stand behind the preferences. It’s about appreciating sock feet even when you’d rather have your shoes on.

It’s about taking the extra effort to care about the concerns of the person who you can come alongside. This isn’t sentimental sort of “Oh, babies dressed like fruit are so cute!” if your aunt loves fruit-babies. It’s a “You value this, and I’m discovering how to value you, and appreciate this stuff because it’s important to you. And so it’s important to me.”

God took on human flesh out of love. And it may be easier to enter into the cares and concerns and troubles and trials of other people if we love them–actually, I’m sure it is–but sometimes its the case that we weak people discover our love for others only after we’ve come alongside them.

Carolyn is pregnant. And her experience as a pregnant woman is something that I can’t replicate, right? It’d be a horror movie, or a terrible comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I can come to her and say “Love, tell me what you are feeling, share with me how you are, your troubles and joys, and tell me what you need.” I can try to enter into her experience of pregnancy as deeply as I can, so that I can be a blessing to her and be a bumbling, messed up sort of “God with her” as much as I’m able

We are faced all the time with chances at Incarnation; let’s not lose them.

A Final Warning:
But I should say a warning: In coming alongside another, doing what we can to experience reality as they experienced it, like God did for us, it will mean in the end, that part of us is changed.

After the incarnation, after the resurrection, for the first time ever, God who is Spirit had flesh. Jesus is still alive somewhere, the Bible tells us about a lot of great things he’s doing. This whole season of the church year has been about preparing for his return. But, you know, dry skin and lost eyelashes, and gas, maybe and all the stuff of being human–the pleasures and realities of having a body–are now part of what it means to be God, too.

It was so important to know what it’s like to really live in our human neighborhood, that God decided skin & bones could be a part of God’s neighborhood forever. Whatever it’s like today when the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, and Jesus come together, Jesus is there with joints and hair.

Changed Forever:
If we take up this principle, this call, really, in our lives of faith, it’s going to mean that as we come into contact with others, and enter into their realities, some part of ourselves will be changed forever.

Because our eyes will be opened; we’ll begin to see life, the world the way others do, and we’ll gain the chance to reflect on what it means to live for Jesus, to trust in Jesus, while navigating through all these experiences all these people–family and strangers and friends whom we’ve grown to love–have.

And we know that this is worth the risk, because it was a risk God took–and we know that we can do it, because God is still with us, Immanuel is still here, whenever the church shows up. It’s a pretty cool thing.

So go home, and finally ask your dad what’s the deal with the suspenders, you know: ask your kid, why is it you have that sticker on your bumper, ask your spouse what he or she loves about that thing they are just so into: and begin to take up the experiences of those around you, work to perceive the world as they perceive it. And become changed. And become like Jesus.

Prayer:
Father. We are so thankful that you know what it means to be a person. We are surrounded by people, Lord: by others–strangers to us in so many ways. Give us the strength to enter alongside others and enter into their lives, their experiences of reality. Thank you that you did this for us.

I pray that we can know what it’s like to be the one who is a stranger to us, and that we can come to love them as you love us, and somehow point them to the peace that you’ve brought us into.

Protect us, King; love us as only someone who knows us fully can. And grant us peace. In the name of the one who is with us, always, Jesus–amen.

This story from Marketplace talks about the way we apply different behavioral norms to free things than we do with costly things.  It touches on the notion of “commons,” and seems to me to offer an interesting jumping-off point for a discussion about how God’s work through Jesus is presented.  (Or: any “social” justice issue at all.)

I think this is worth reading; I was first introduced to it through the audiobook podcast “The Classic Tales.” It’s a Public Domain work, and I know for a fact you can find it online…because I cut & pasted it from the webs…

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh-a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

An electric bell rang.

The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.

“I suppose I must see who it is”, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.

“Who is it?” she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.

But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:

“Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes-for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on “Music during the Australian Period”.”

She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.

“Be quick!” She called, her irritation returning. “Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.”

But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.

“Kuno, how slow you are.”

He smiled gravely.

“I really believe you enjoy dawdling.”

“I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.”

“What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?”

“Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want—-”

“Well?”

“I want you to come and see me.”

Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.

“But I can see you!” she exclaimed. “What more do you want?”

“I want to see you not through the Machine,” said Kuno. “I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.”

“Oh, hush!” said his mother, vaguely shocked. “You mustn”t say anything against the Machine.”

“Why not?”

“One mustn”t.”

“You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other.

“I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.”

She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit.

“The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.”

“I dislike air-ships.”

“Why?”

“I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air- ship.”

“I do not get them anywhere else.”

“What kind of ideas can the air give you?”

He paused for an instant.

So what I’d suggest is that you try on a tiny incarnation.

It is a little tiny incarnation; a little tiny taking on the experience of reality that others have, in order to relate to them, to stand next to them, and meet their needs not as an outsider, but as a conspirator. You know the meaning of conspirator, right? “One who breathes with another?”

And the church must be a place of conspirators in this. God chose to conspire with us; to breathe in life as we breathe it in. We are called to do the same, with one another, and with strangers, because humanity is so important to God that God decided to enter into it.

It seems to me that if we could step back far enough, and diagnose the largest disorder of our time & place, it would be that we are a people overexposed: We are too constantly public, and too rarely private, and our movement from solitude to community, then back to solitude has been interrupted. Our solitude is never truly private (our cell phones go off, or we’re by ourselves, but checking e-mail)–and thus our community can never truly be whole, either.

If, of course, it’s the case that being in community fully & well demands that we also are able to be alone, safely & at rest.

We are half people, unable to be all of the one thing or all of the other that we need to be, and so we can never be fully human, or never fully ourselves; we have lost the ability to know what that is.

So, maybe humanity is changing. What it means to be human is changing?  If being truly human is at all defined by being in community & being alone, in a world where “community” and “solitude” are being slowly re-defined, then to be human in a human context isn’t what it was a 100 years ago.

I could be completely out there, of course, and I’m not sure what or if it would matter anyway.  But if we are never really “by ourselves,” and never fully present to the people we are physically near, we hold less power to deeply affect the world for good–and, I think, for God. Thoughts?

Sermon Advent Four Joy:

Preface:
Today we are talking about Joy.

It’s the theme of the fourth week of Advent. And it is what it is because we are so close to celebrating Jesus’ birth, and if Joy is tied to anything it’s tied to celebration.

We’ve already talked about hope and peace and love, and I hope that we’ve been able to think more about these things, these great virtues–what we think they are, where in our lives we’ve experienced them and promoted them.

I hope that we’ve been thinking about the fact that Jesus is coming back, remembering that we live in a particular time: in-between his first advent and his second, which we look forward too. And living with hope and peace and love and Joy until he does–promoting them in this world, resting in them when we’re blessed with them–it’s maybe most of what we’re called to in this life.

Introduction:
But we’re talking about Joy today. And, as we’ve been doing, today may not revolutionize your entire outlook on the world, but I think that it will at least remind us that Joy is a gift, that it’s something we should grab tightly to whenever it blooms up around us, and that it is our destiny. I’ll share a few of my thoughts about it, and, since of course it’s our goal to become more like Jesus, whose birth we’re so close to rejoicing in, we’ll talk about his Joy, too.

But first–drum roll, please, Chad–let’s pray.

Prayer:

Jesus:

Selfless:
In some ways Joy is selfless. A person overwhelmed with joy acts like Adam & Eve before the fall, they’ve got no sense of shame or embarassment at all. They will do crazy things. Shout, yell, run awkwardly toward someone.

They’ll hug when they aren’t really “into” touching people. They’ll sing it on the mountain, you know. If you’re full of joy, for any reason, you forget yourself for a moment. The ways some of us protect ourselves–being proper and quiet and deliberate–they’re out the window. Joy is not self-conscious, it’s selfless.

Plenty & Cheap:
When we’re young Joy is plentiful; it happens a lot, I think. But like a lot of things, we don’t value it so much. We’re Israel, surrounded by Manna, and complaining. As we get older, and become far more aware of how hard life can be, how much mourning is going on in the world that we can mourn with, I think we do experience Joy first-hand far less frequently.

But we can rejoice with others far more deeply when we realize just how precious Joy is. This is why kids running all over the place is good, and healthy. When we say that kids keep us young, in some ways we’re just saying that they remind us the world is a place where Joy can happen.

Agents:
And children can remind us that we are agents of Joy sometimes. We can lead other people into experiencing Joy. When I was younger–two or three months ago–if you surprised me with candy, oh man. All the pain of the world faded to the background of that surprise. Gifts, good surprises, miracles, promises made and kept: all these things are sources of Joy for us.

And I’ve grown up a little; I’m not as quickly overjoyed, you know. But I can still be led into joy by others, and I am all the time. We can lead one another into Joy, right?

Relational:
In fact, it’s probably the case that like so many other things real Joy only happens in relationship, we are only ever really joyful because of something another person has done with our Joy as their goal. God does this all the time, acts with our Joy in mind when He acts on our behalf.

Maybe we can be contented, pleased, or happy by ourselves out in the woods looking at a mountain; but Joy seems to be something that happens especially when people gather together, even if those people are real sometimes only in our memories.

Contagious:
But even if we can experience Joy apart from other people–which I doubt, really–Joy still best happens in relationships with others, because there’s something about Joy that is contagious. If we are close to or close with anyone who is experiencing joy, it’s really hard not to catch some of it.

In fact, we usually have to work to stay dour and not smile when someone’s joyful and turned our way, and of course, Paul reminds us that we are to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Which is easier said than done, for all sorts of reasons.

Funny how it’s easy to rejoice with kids, right? I think it’s honestly because very few of us want to be kids or want what kids rejoice in and over.

Jealousy:
And this points out what seems to me to be the real problem we can have when it comes to rejoicing with someone: Jealousy. If you are rejoicing, just caught up in joy because of some great thing that’s happened to you–but I want whatever you just got, it takes training in our souls to keep us from jealousy and instead keep us in Joy.

We train for Joy. The same way we train for hope or for peace or especially for love. We train for Joy. We do things that make us more likely than unlikely to catch Joy from someone else.

Sadness:
Of course, some of us have been training for or been trained by the world to expect only sadness. We can feel like Joy and even Joy’s more common cousins–pleasure, happiness, contentment–that these things just don’t have the force that sorrow has in the world or in our lives.

And there is a bit of realism in this, right? Because the world is hard, and sadness and trouble seem to be a common denominator for us people.

But we forget or have never been taught that Joy can cut through darkness like a light. It is a power and a miracle, and the devil hates it. And if there is one thing that we Christians could do to anger evil it would be to provide more opportunities for people to experience Joy.

I mean, really, this is the driving force behind Operation Christmas-child, right? You give these kids a moment of Joy, and hope that the Lord can work through it. And we should be ashamed when we discount the power or the worth of a moment of Joy in this life.
And while there are few things more complex than sadness, and few things more straightforward than Joy, it is at least partially Joy’s simplicity that gives it the power to banish sadness for a little while in this world.

Impermanent:
So of course Joy cannot last, not here. The world is just set against it, you know. But anytime there is Joy we should rejoice with it, we should drink it in. It’s a rare thing; a miracle and a blessing.

But you know what I do, too often: I put it out. Carolyn will often get really excited about some thing, joyful about something that happens, or some news she hears, or some surprise gift that comes her way. And I’ll, selfishly, introduce a note of caution, a word of wisdom, or make an “I’m not sold on this” sort of face.

I’ll steal the miracle that Joy is in this world–for helpful, reasonable reasons, you know. I’m not trying to be a grinch: whether or not I’m trying, though, I become one.

Joy does many of the things hope & peace & love do: it’s part of this group of things that can sometimes make no sense. We can experience them for no real good reason at all, they last and carry us when they shouldn’t. These are intrusions of good into a dark world, and we should protect them, and not discount the power or the worth of a moment of Joy in this life.

Reminder:
But we live this life in a world that is imperfect, broken, and breaking us down with sin and trouble. This world is not as the world was meant to be. And we are in this season of Advent–so close to Christmas, right–remembering all this stuff.

And what we need more than anything is to drink deeply from whatever moments of Joy come our way, because Joy, when it passes into some other thing, reminds us when it fades that life is not the way it should be, and that we look forward to a life where Joy is permanent, and lasting.

Joy is our destiny. Joy that is entirely relational, because God will be with us and we will be with one another without shame and embarrassment and sorrow. Our momentary experiences of Joy in this world, which fade, can become year-long advent reminders that what we see around us not all there is, and the world will also fade and be replaced with something better.

And this is all because of Jesus, right?

Jesus:
The author of Hebrews writes this long recitation of people of great faith in God and the troubles they have to endure. If we shouted out Old Testament folks that we could remember, we’d probably be shouting out names from this list the writer gives us: Abraham, Jacob, Moses. The famous ones, famous for their faith in God. Chapter 11 of the book.

It ends like this:

 “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

And the write continues on in Chapter 12:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Listen to me, to Hebrews, again:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

The pragmatists are right, you know. We live in a world where Joy is not universal, and whenever it comes to us we fail if we hide it under a basket or put it out wherever we find it. But Jesus– Jesus who is on his way, whose first arrival we celebrate joyfully because it was a surprise and is a gift better than all the candy in the world–Jesus knew sorrow and pain and terrible trouble.

He was a stranger in the world, strange because he wasn’t stained by the world’s sin and the world’s brokenness, and strange because in spite of that he experienced sorrow and terror and shame.

But Jesus knew the Joy set before him, and because of it could take up all the terrible things the cross symbolizes. Jesus knew that death would not speak a final word over him, but he would triumph over it. And his resurrection, which vindicated everything he had done, also transformed every sorrow of his life with Joy.

It’s the same Joy that we’ve been promised we’ll experience, too. And I don’t know if our resurrected bodies will be able to handle more joy than the ones we’ve got now do–I think about living joyfully all the time and it exhausts me, you know–but I do know that Joy thrives in the peace and pleasure and closeness that we’ll have when God is fully with us.

First Advent:
But we don’t need to wait until Jesus returns to experience Joy: and that is a miracle. If Joy will mark Jesus’ return, his second advent, it just as fully marked his first. If it’s true that Joy is what happens when we are surprised with a wonderful thing, then there was no greater surprise than Jesus’ arrival in the world.

And everything we know about the first Christmas is that it was one of Joy. When Mary, Jesus’ mother, goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant in her great old age with a son, John the Baptist, Elizabeth tells Mary “As soon as I heard the sound your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for Joy.” Mary sings “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” An Angel declares to shepherds “I bring good news of great joy for all the people.” And we could describe the way all those in the Christmas Story respond to Jesus with Joy.

Conclusion:
Look; the world is filled with surprises, and not all of them are wonderful. But if we rest in the presence of God we can be people who fully receive with Joy whatever good thing comes our way.

We can be people who give Joy to one another, and act as agents and ambassadors of God’s delight, doing what we can to position those around us to rejoice.

We can nurture the personal relationships that Joy thrives and blooms in, and we can gather up memories of Joy for one another, and remind each other of them so that sorrow does not win in it’s battle for our hearts.

We can reject all the urge that’s in us to kill joy when it comes up around us, and instead, allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit who is in us, and rejoice with those who rejoice.

In this world Joy is a gift, and we are Christ’s gift-givers. This in-between time in which we live? For God’s people it is one that started with Joy at Jesus’ arrival, and will end in the same if we just hold the course in our faith. So rejoice! Rejoice! The Lord is come. And if Joy comes your way, hold tight to it, drink deeply of it, it is special and you are blessed.

Advent Love:
Introduction:
Today we’re talking about love. It’s the traditional theme of the third Sunday of Advent. We are continuing to pause in our survey of Revelation, and I promise that we will come back to it with far more depth than is really comfortable.

But today we’re talking about Love. I don’t know if anything I share will be surprising to us, but I think it will be good, and an important reminder that as we live in between Jesus’ first advent and his second, if we are anything less than loving, then we are also probably less like Jesus than we should be.

Let’s pray.

Prayer:
God who is love. Be with us now; gather our hearts into your greater heart, our loving into your greater loving. And still us, for a moment, inside your persistent, forgiving, knowing love for us. Don’t let me mislead us, and be with my preparation here, and now. In Jesus’ name.

Love’s Far Horizon:
So, we are talking about love.

And in some real way, I think I am just too young to talk about it. I don’t know if I’ve lived long enough, really, to talk about love well.

Because love has a far horizon. Love has a far horizon. In some real way love is proved in the long accumulation of choices that we make, a tally that’s just honestly longer than the 29 years I’ve lived–most of which, you know, I just sort of bobbled through life like a weeble-wobble.

But the truth is that we people rarely think of what decades down the road will bring, and rarely take the opportunities life brings us to summarize our lives and consider whether they are ones set apart with love or simply are not.

Of course, Advent gives us a chance to look at our lives more closely than we might otherwise do.

An Accumulation of Choices:
But the fact that we often live in the near moments instead of thinking far ahead of ourselves points out starkly that a loving life is an accumulation of choices; that we move from choice to choice, action to reaction, and it’s all these things together that gather up over time into a heavy record, a thing with force that either witnesses to the love that filled our lives or to and have a force, a presence, that’s other loving or something less than that.

When Paul says that Love is patient, that love is kind, that love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, that it doesn’t insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but in truth, that it bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things: he’s pointing out the way these things of love, these ways of love, they happen in our moments, in our immediate right nows. The all things that love endures, and hopes through and bears through: these are things that go on in “right nows,” aren’t they?

And the reason I think that to say a person is loving, is marked by love, we must look at the total sum of their choices, the accumulation of their lives, is because we are very good at holding our breath. We are good at short sprints. Any one of us can, for a little while, act loving. We can suck it up and be patient or not boast or avoid rudeness for short stretches–during life group, or on Sunday morning, or at a funeral or a wedding or a family reunion–but to consistently pursue a life stained through with love…well, it takes more work.

It just takes more work. Because, as we know, everything in the world around us set against love. Which is why God had to figure out a way to sneak into the world around us, and break it’s rules from the inside out, and give us the power to be loving the way Paul describes love here.

Love just takes work, right? It takes work to love well.

Sorry: An Interlude
And I’m going to just skip the part of this sermon where we talk about how “love” is more than an emotion, and discuss what it means to “be in love,” because I’m basically sure we’ve heard that spiel before. Being “in love,” is a fine thing, a good thing, a miraculous thing: but it’s focus is narrow, it’s emphasis is usually self-centered, and the emotional high that comes with it is simply unsustainable over 80 or 90 years. There’s nothing like a crush to make us high, but coming down’s terrible.

Practice:
But Love takes effort, accumulating a lifetime of loving choices takes work. And it’s built on a conscious decision to turn away from impatience, from boasting, from jealousy, rudeness, and arrogance. It requires a conscious decision to reject impatience and choose patience, to keep a thick skin, and stay centered in the Lord so that we’re not irritable, irritated, or resentful. Love takes work.

What it takes, really, is practice.

When we talk of patient people, we’re talking about people who have practiced patience so much that patience has entered into them and sets them apart. We mean the same thing when we talk about humble people, or kind people, or hopeful people. These are people who have, for some reason or another, practiced hope and kindness and humility for such a long time that they really have become hope or kindness or humility embodied, right?

Do you know people like this? They are heros, aren’t they? But life isn’t like the movies; we don’t become heroes by being in the right place at the right time; we become heroes by doing the right thing the same way we have done the right thing for days and months and years. It just so happens that the spotlight shines us in the moment when we’re just being ourselves–kind, patient, humble, or hopeful.

Love Becomes Natural:
This intentional practice of the virtues that are part of love does a sort of thing to us. It turns, slowly, into habit, into gut-response. And habit solidifies, over time, into nature, into who we really are: loving, or something else.

Like a bodyguard trained to automatically dive into a bullet, we find that, over time, we become trained to automatically love: to automatically give the benefit of the doubt, to automatically turn toward forgiveness instead of bitterness, to automatically deny ourselves the pleasure of criticism, and grudge-holding, and distrust, and instead, automatically act with grace toward another, automatically endure whatever thing comes our way, hope through whatever loss faces us, bear through whatever problem we’re presented with.

Because this is just who we are, you know? While we were busy living our lives, making a hundred choices a day, our nature firmed up like concrete. We became people others would say are loving without even noticing it.

Mechanics:
Do you see the mechanics I’m talking about here? If we practice love long enough, it becomes a habit and enters into us, defining us. We become loving people.

Over time, love can become natural to us if we use the supernatural resources God gives us to choose love in the middle of the opportunities life gives us to choose something less than love.

And it seems to me that the older we get as people, the less we’re able to act loving when we really have not been making loving a habit of ours. Our nature starts showing, you know: we aren’t able to sprint through a whole life group or Sunday morning or a funeral and keep acting out of love, because it’s not what’s firmed up in our souls. We’ve been practicing other things: resentment, irritability, thoughtless & impatient speech.

I guess I mention this as a warning, and I might be wrong, but it seems like daily we are making choices that over time will determine if we’re seen by others as loving, or cantankerous. One of God’s miracles for us, of course, is that he can soften the cement of our nature and change us more into people like Jesus at any point in our lives, if we try to make habits

Jesus:
And Paul’s list of what love is: it’s Jesus, right? Patience, kindness, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, not irritable or resentful, bearing & hoping & enduring all things: this is Jesus. Jesus is the embodiment of love.

And as I’ve thought of it this week–and I have thought a lot about it, because for some reason this little message on love has been a difficult one to prepare. Because I just haven’t lived long enough, right?–but as I’ve thought of it this week, a passage that we don’t often turn to when we talk about love, and about Jesus as a model of God’s love, perfect love, has come to my mind again and again.

It’s from Philippians:
Paul is writing to the house church in the city of Phillipi, and quotes a well-known hymn:

1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

And we’ll pull this passage out when we want to talk about humility; which is fitting, because it’s talking about humility, Jesus’ humility, which we’re supposed to emulate.

But basic to this passage is the way Jesus ultimately is turned not toward himself, but toward us, toward “the other.” And the way we’re supposed to mimic him, model our behavior after his.

And it really seems to me that in the final analysis “love” is being turned toward others instead of turned toward ourselves. All those things Paul talks about–patience and kindness and all the rest–they’re things that happen when we no longer allow our needs to become the biggest, most important things in the room. We no longer dismiss the stuff of the people around us, but instead, value that stuff, their stuff, as much as–or more than, sometimes–our own. Love is being as concerned for whoever is in front of us, alive in their mess, as we are concerned for ourselves.

It’s the habit of every great saint, and it’s the life of Jesus: to consider the needs of those in front of us, and to seek to meet them as best as we can.

Work, Still:
And of course, of course, this takes work, right? Because everything about the world, and our lives, teaches us to think about ourselves, our needs, our wants, and not those of the people around us, especially people who aren’t actively trying to meet our needs.

But every forward movement we make in becoming like Jesus as people, and as a church, depends on us reorienting ourselves to others. Think of any of our core values: Intentional Christian Hospitality–a mouthful that just means that we intentionally act toward others as Jesus acted and acts toward us–with patience, enduring all things, oriented toward truth. What is that but acting with love?

Prophectic multiculturalism? That we will be a place known for the weird bone we won’t stop gnawing, the weird commitment we have toward caring for people who are not like us, and receiving their care when, in fact, we need it. What is that but love, and receiving love?

If we held as a church only one goal. If we got rid of every core value we’re holding onto, and asked of everything we do, instead, “Is it loving?” because our only goal is to be more loving, what would be different about us? About our speech, our actions, our anything?

All you need?
And if we say that “love is all you need,” I think in some ways it’s right on. As long as we remember that love is not just feeling good, it’s working good out the same way God who is love worked out good for us, and love is living God’s life, Jesus’ life, as best as we’re able to live it. It’s being concerned for the other person in front of us as much as we’re concerned about ourselves, if not more. And beyond this, it’s working toward what’s best for them–which may not always be what’s best for us, or what’s best from our perspective. And it takes work to figure out the difference between “what’s best,” and “what I think is best.” But even if “love is all you need,”–love that’s defined by Christ–it sounds idealistic, right? A little cheesy. But I love cheese. And if Christian’s are called to anything, it’s to living out ideals in a world that needs to see them lived out as much as possible.

“This is a test…”:
And most of us don’t need reminded that we could be more loving; except that we really do, because it’s the reminders, over and over, that get us moving, you know?

So we should want to look at ourselves, in this advent season. We should see if we’re bothered when someone interrupts us. See how angry we get if someone doesn’t do what we think they should do. See how frustrated we are when people don’t pick up after themselves, or say things that we find embarrassing, or they smell bad, or they act funny or they are just plain wrong. And we’ll be able to measure just how loving we are.

What we do:
See, we people are in some real ways, what we do.

A famous person, caught philandering, said recently that he hadn’t been true to his values. But values aren’t “held,” like stocks or bonds we can cash in when the going gets tough. If values are not lived, they’re nothing but advertising copy, a coat of cheap paint on some rusty thing that is still going to crumble.

We are what we do. If you want to know a person’s values, watch them. But we forget sometimes to watch ourselves, and we can say to ourselves, “I’m a loving person,” I just happen to be impatient all the time, or “I’m a loving person,” I just happen to give up on people as lost causes really quickly.

But a patient person, we know what they value, right? patience. A kind person values kindness; and kindness has entered into them. And a loving person, values love, values other people, values hoping all things, enduring all things, bearing all things so that the people around them can experience love. They have become love, because they have opened their hearts to love, and practiced its habits, until their nature has changed.

And we Christians are without excuse when it comes to being loving, because we know that Love has made it’s home among us, and in us through the Spirit. We know that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And we have drawn close to Jesus, the source of love, the one who turns to us and makes us children of God through his attention, and gives us the power to love as he loves, so that through habit and practice, we become love, loving people like he is loving.

Or, at least, ideally we know this. Ideally we do this. This is just an ideal, right? We shouldn’t really expect to become loving people, because the world’s broken, you know. When Jesus says “love one another as I have loved you,” he’s just trying to motivate us, cause he knows we’ll not even get close. He’s just a motivational speaker, really. Don’t worry about it.

That’s defeatist, right? Geeze. But we live that way, or at least: sometimes our lives seem to say that what we value is not loving, but is whatever is best for us. We trade patience for irritability, kindness for vindictiveness, humility for boasting, and contentedness for longing, we rejoice in deception because its so easy and effective, and give up in all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons–sometimes, sometimes.

Another Legacy:
But Smoky Row, we don’t have to have a legacy like this. We have the power of God among us, and in each of us, and where two or three of us meet to catch up, the presence of the Loving God is right there. Every one of us and everyone one of the neighbors and strangers we meet is a chance for us to choose loving actions, to choose things that are for their good, even if it works against our good and our comfort, and in doing this, we know that we are firming up our character, we are proving our nature, and if we just stay the course, mimicking the Lord, we can stand on life’s far horizon, and look backwards at the accumulation of my choices, and hear the Lord say that you were loving, you were loving, and in that way at least you were faithful. And again, of course, we serve a God who is loving enough to allow us to choose love no matter where we are in life, how young or old we happen to be.

We wait for the renewal of all things, for Jesus’ return. But in our waiting, we must live like him, mimicking him and doing what we know he would do. And what he did was live for us, so that we might have the power of God to live like him, and love like him, because it’s through these things that we prepare ourselves and the world for his return. We are witnesses to a loving God.

Conclusion:
But our daily choices shape us, they change us, and in some ways maybe we are becoming either more loving or less loving every day. I hope that we can be people who spend time on our knees–in prayer for others, ourselves, in cleaning out someone else’s dirty manger, because that’s what they need, and it’s the best thing for them.

If we’re not a church, or people, who are known as loving, then something isn’t right with us, and we need to toss away whatever file drawers of wrongs we hold, we need to shed our thin skin, and trade our strong sensibility of what’s right and wrong for the stronger flexibility that comes from knowing God loves everyone, and the very least we can do is choose to show it, no matter what it costs us.

Prayer:
Smoky Row, through God’s strength and grace, you are the protectors of and witnesses to the world, and your power is love, choosing it, and embodying it, becoming love in and through all things.

Let’s hold the course until Christ returns, and we can rest from the hard work of standing against the flood of self-interest, and indifference that’s coursing through the world.

Prayer:
Lord: Thank You.

Richard

Introduction:
So, this week, and for the rest of our Sundays up until Christmas, we’ll be celebrating the really ancient Christian season of Advent.

Advent means “arriving,” or “coming” in Latin, and it’s an old season that the church has used to help people to spiritually sort of prepare for Christmas and what the holiday means for us, and to also prepare for Jesus’ return, which God has promised us.

So its a season of preparation, really. And each week in Advent we’ll look at another topic: Hope today, soon Peace, Love, Joy.

Today:
This morning we’ll remember some of the promises that God’s people were looking forward to, and the ways they were asked to prepare themselves for the day God would make good on those promises.

And we’ll also remember the hopes we have as Christians, the promises we still long for, and one particular way we can prepare for the coming of the Lord.

Promises:
But God did make so many promises to his people, Israel; there were so many things that God told them to expect. Some we heard this morning, but there so many others.

Promises about the ways God would restore their fortunes, about the ways God would save them from their terrors, about the ways God would validate them for worshiping Him, in the face of all the people around them who worship all sorts of gods apart from the true God. Promises were made about the way God would bring peace for them, provide for them–food, shelter, safety–and would even bring non-Israelites into his people, into the people of God.

Amazing promises, God set amazing hopes for his people. And so many of these promises can be summed up in the hope that God would be with his people, with them as he’d been at the start of creation, closer than when the Temple was down the street, closer than when a Spirit-filled prophet speaks to them.

Immanuel:
And it was an expectation that came true, right? In Jesus?

Joseph, Mary’s husband-to-be, finds out that Mary, Jesus’ mother is pregnant–and not by him; so he decides to divorce her, quietly, saving her honor. But the angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, and says:

“Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.” (Matt 1:20-23, NIV)

Mary realizes that in her son the promises of history are about to come true. She sings a song of praise, of remembrance:

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their
inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.”
(luke 1:46b-55)

Matthew, Mary, & so many others saw in the birth of Jesus the realization of the hopes of Israel, saw God coming through, “even as he said he would,” showing up and being with and for them.

And Jesus showed up, and lived, and died, and rose back to life, and changed the course of history for everyone, for all creation. We talk about this stuff all the time; but we can’t forget that Immanuel, God with us; Jesus–he came after generations and generations of waiting, and praying, and hoping…and preparing.

Called to Prepare:
God’s people were always being called to prepare themselves for the day when he would come through. Every passage in the Old Testament that talks about the day when we God would come through for His people is preceded by so many calls for repentance, for preparation and a return to the Lord.

And the arrival of Jesus, his entrance into ministry; it was prepared for, too.

Remember?

It is written in Isaiah the prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’ ”
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
(Mark 1:2-11 niv)

Now, John was a crotchety fella; he’s a fire & brimstone sort of guy. But he had an important role to play in the fulfillment of God’s promises; he was a preparer of people.

Jesus speaks incredibly highly of him, calling him the greatest of all the people born before his arrival, because of the way he prepared people for Jesus, calling them to make a way for him.

In Between:
And we need to to make way for the Lord in our lives, among us, don’t we, because in many ways we’re in the same place as God’s people were in right before Jesus showed up.

Of course, there are some pretty big differences between us & them: we’re God’s People not because we were born into some particular ethnicity, but because we’ve been reborn into one particular Spirit, into one particular life, the life of Jesus, right?

But there are hopes that God’s People had before Jesus first showed up that we still have, we’re still looking forward to swords and spears being turned into the honest tools of work, we’re still looking forward to a time when “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

And in this way, advent, this season we’re in, both remembers what’s happened–Jesus’ first coming, the first arrival of God. And Jesus’ next coming; the second advent of God, when God’s promises will fully and utterly come true.

As we move forward in Advent we’ll look especially at the hope of the last chapters of Revelation, hopes for the world the way we know deep within in us it is supposed to be. Hopes that echo all the Old Testament promises of God, but go beyond them in even better ways.

And Jesus didn’t leave us alone in this middle time; we’ve got the Holy Spirit, a promise God made to his people long before Jesus arrived, the Holy Spirit who can help us in a thousand ways to prepare for his return. God gave us the Spirit for us to live in between the time he left and the time he would come again.

The Spirit who brings in our lives, as we rest in him, virtues like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

A Habit?
And while having a season once a year, and a communion or two to remind us to prepare ourselves for the return of Jesus may help us, may be really important, we could take the opportunity advent provides us to think more deeply about one particular way we talk about hope.

Because we have created for ourselves an unhelpful habit. The habit of “putting our hope” in things, in people, in events.

As Christians, our ultimate hope is that God will come through, right? That Jesus will return and bring with him–whatever the mechanics of it are–a renewed world, where life is as it should be. Our hope is directed toward this goal: that Christ will return and bring the restoration of all things with him. That’s the thing we’re watching for.

But we get distracted, and our watch gets a little haphazard, and our far horizon gets a little boring, so we start looking at nearer ones, things closer by, and over time, the hope that God has been holding, the hope that we have placed in God’s hands to come through and to make things right:

We take it back, and we start placing it other places, we put it other places. And of course, we cheapen hope in the process.

We “put our hope” in lesser places. That desire that we all have for everything to be wonderful the way we know everything is supposed to be: we take a watered down version–the simple feeling that things are going to be fine, just fine, or good or wonderful–we attach it to things, to people. We associate the promise of a good future with some thing or some person.

We do this with people all the time: How many people do we know who think that if they just get a girlfriend or a boyfriend, if they just have a child, if they just had one more friend, or if that one relationship would just improve, then life would be okay, then they could look forward to the future with optimism. We do this with careers, we do this with talents, we do this with achievements, and with stuff.

When we’re talking about “putting our hope in things,” “when” is the key word we need to pay attention to. If we’re using the word “when,” and some mention of our happiness in the same sentence, we should take some time to examine our hearts.

Tired of Looking:
But sometimes, we get so tired of looking far out toward the future, to the far horizon, patiently waiting and preparing for Jesus’ return come high water or what feels like hell, we just give up. We stop looking out and ahead all together, and we begin to look at what we’ve got in our hands right now. We don’t even talk about “when,” we talk about what we’ve got.

The real hope of all things being made new transforms into the weak pleasure of the moment, and whatever thing we are touching, or tasting, or talking to. We trade away “good enough,” for “the very best,” forgetting that the very best is something greater than we could imagine or ask for, and the stuff of life we do have isn’t for us alone. We trade preparing ourselves for the return of the Lord for preparing ourselves to have a good evening. Instead of gathering up good deeds, we gather up pleasure.

We give a little ground, and a little more ground, and a little more ground, and the things we need to keep us going until the day of the Lord arrives–food and drink and friends–they get left behind with the Hope of Jesus’ soon arrival. And instead we pant after stuff of the world. We forget that “finer things” are not permanent, and when Jesus returns, they’ll be lost.

We trade the heavenly bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem of Revelation, where there will be enough–enough food, enough medicine, enough light, more good, full friendship of God and one another than we can imagine–and turn instead to the stuff of Rome’s merchants.

The Merchants:
Remember the passage we read today? The merchants realize, too late, that all their fine luxurious goods, all the stuff that we turn to when we stop hoping for Jesus’ return–it’s done, and empty.

11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.

14 “They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’ 15 The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn 16 and cry out:
” ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city,
dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet,
and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls!

17 In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!’

In Preparation, Hope:
Listen.

I may be far too dramatic here. We may be all sorts of gourmet, love all sorts of finer things–we may be piling up stuff just so we can climb on the piles and look out with a better view for Jesus’ return. I may be over-rhetorical, and not one of us has shifted our view from the coming of the Lord to the stuff going into our houses and our stomachs.

But if we find we are putting our hope in the things of this world only, or even too much, we must change our ways. If the hope for some new shiny Christmas present has replaced the hope of the return of Christmas’ star, then we are in dangerous ground that could give out beneath us at any moment.

The season of Advent is our opportunity to right now reject the impermanent things of this world and prepare ourselves for the good enough of the world to come. And the good enough of that world is far better than whatever name brand luxury we have or whatever delicious treat we could consume.

It’s shopping season, you know? It’s buying season, and feasting season. But John saw all Rome’s wealth laid waste; all the preoccupation of purchasing and hoarding amounted to nothing in this vision of John’s.

As we go about our nearly-Christmas business, live in this time in between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, we can’t forget that we are living in a time between Jesus’ first arrival and his second. And we have to ask ourselves: Where is my hope?

We have to seriously, frankly, assess ourselves: What do you put your hope in?

And has the hope of a restored, reconciled, resurrected world been traded away, one thoughtless purchase or unhealthy pleasure at a time, for the measly high that comes from some thing of this life?

Remembering that Jesus is coming prioritizes things for us. If it doesn’t, we have not taken seriously the promises wrapped up in Jesus’ return. Meanwhile, the world is today training us to live for an everpresent now, live always for the pleasure of this moment, and to suck and consume as much pleasure out of this moment as we can.

But this moment will give way, permanently, to a world where our greatest needs will be met more completely than every child together could daydream up.

Let the Hope of Advent re-prioritize your life, and let’s take seriously the opportunity to ask ourselves if we even look forward to Jesus’ return anymore, or if we’ve given in to the constant attention-cry of this moment and the destined-to-decay stuff in it.

Prayer:
Lord, help us to say, with the psalm-writer, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

We know that you are coming, and you bring with you a new morning, a dawn in a world that will be good as you are good, without qualification, without hurt, without sorrow or fear.

But we live in this world, and it is sneaky, and it distracts us from you and asks for all our commitments. Return our eyes to your advent, and in this Advent season, help us to live in the light of Jesus’ return, and not in the artificial shininess that the toys, and achievements, and food, and other things of this world give off.