We continue our four-week worship series this Sunday called The Advent Way. During this series we will invite reflection on how the Advent way prepares us for the beauty and mystery of Christmas. Worship will be rooted in the book of Isaiah and Matthew’s Gospel.
Outline of The Advent Way
December 1: Walk. Isaiah 2.1-5.
December 8: Turn. Matthew 3.1-3.
December 15: Imagine. Isaiah 35.1-10.
December 22: Love. Matthew 1.18-25.
Christmas Eve: 5:00pm & 11:00pm
Warren Carter writes in Matthew and the margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading:
“By repenting, people prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. Both way and path are metaphors for God’s will and purposes (Deut 5:33; Jer 7:23; Matt 7:13-14; contrast with Roman ways and roads). God’s purposes, manifested in Jesus, will be experienced either as salvation or as condemnation depending on one’s response to John’s call to repent. To repent signifies, then, not only specific changes in structures and ways of living, but a basic receptivity to God’s purposes. [p. 94] ”
Read Matthew 3.1-3.
How might you turn toward God this week? How might God already be turning toward you?
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