We transition this week from Acts to a four-week Advent worship series called Christmas Is Coming. Our worship series will be rooted in the Hebrew Bible readings from the lectionary (collection of appointed readings) for this season. We will look back to these ancient writings as we prepare for the coming of Christmas.
Christmas Is Coming Outline
November 29: Jeremiah 33.14-16 (Hope)
December 6: Malachi 3.1-4 (Love)
December 13: Zephaniah 3.14-20 (Joy)
December 20: Micah 5.1-5 (Peace)
5pm & 11pm Candlelight Christmas Eve: Luke 2
December 6: Malachi 3.1-4 (Love)
December 13: Zephaniah 3.14-20 (Joy)
December 20: Micah 5.1-5 (Peace)
5pm & 11pm Candlelight Christmas Eve: Luke 2
Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes, Advent takes on a different feel from the rest of the year: we hang lights, put up decorations, sing about peace and joy. But there always seem to be these dark intrusions into our Christmas preparations: untimely deaths, December tragedies, school shootings, protests over racial injustice, end of the year layoffs…. How unfortunate, we say, that these agonies come right at Christmas time.
But this is the true setting of Christmas. It is into this darkness that God comes to be with us, into our suffering and struggles, into our brokenness and sin, into our loneliness, into our injustice and even into our distracted shallowness and complacency. Christ chooses to be among us not in the grandeur of the temple but in the rough stable of our real lives. The words of the psalms and the prophets that lead us toward Christmas are not happy congratulations, but the lament of the poor, the longing for redemption. The cry of the oppressed, the song of the widow, the silence of the people searching for the way, this is the song of Advent. This is the world that God enters into to accompany, to bless, to heal, to change. The tragedies we lament don’t intrude on Christmas: it is Christmas that intrudes on the ways of the world.
Advent is when we lift up our heads in the hospital waiting room and the empty bed, in the tear-gassed streets and embattled towns, in the Ebola wards and refugee camps, in the dark kitchens and the breadlines— and rejoice: it is into this darkness that the Holy One comes to walk with us, into this sorrow, this difficulty, this hope. Here, now, for these people, O come, O come, Emmanuel (Unfolding Light, December 11, 2014).
How will you mark Advent in your home this season?
Will you light Advent candles or read devotionals or develop a playlist?
Read Jeremiah 33.14-16.
Kathleen O’Connor describes the situation of the people in this way: “The people… are taken captive, dragged from their land, and deprived of their Temple. They are beaten, imprisoned, and face death as a people, and, like Jeremiah, they cry out to God in anger and despair” (“Jeremiah” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, 174).
Think about, journal or share with a friend some of the people and places in world that you believe are crying out to God in anger and despair.
Samir Selmanovic writes, “I have been told that if I enjoy Muslims so much, I should enjoy a holiday in Libya, Iraq, or Syria. Here is what I have to say: Some day, some day, I will, maybe not I, but my children! We Christians killed, shall we conservatively estimate 1/4 billion people because God told us so? Atheist did their part, roughly on the same scale, because they knew there is no God? And now we live in better times, don’t we? With Martin Luther King from yesterday, Pope Francis of today, and some amazing Muslims (and Humanists!) rising for our shared tomorrow. Let’s keep on fighting armed idiots (on every side) with all we got and loving every human being.”
This feels profoundly hopeful to us.
How will your life witness to hope by expressing love for every human being in the coming week?