I am excited to announce that our Advent Devotional and Advent Preacher’s Guide—A Stirring in the Darkness: The Expectation, Longing, and Hope of Advent—are now available!
Order Now via Venmo and items will be delivered via email.
Advent Devotional: Suggested Minimum, $20 (If you provide for a large crowd, we ask that you consider doing more). This beautiful e-book includes daily readings and reflections and is designed with everyone in mind. You can share with your congregation!
Preacher’s Guide: $99. This guide includes 55 pages of notes covering every week of Advent + Christmas Eve/Christmas Day in a nicely laid out e-book.
Both documents can be easily engaged together or separately. This means that you (preacher) can benefit from the notes AND the same themes are weaved through the devotional for your congregation to engage daily.
*If you are a paid subscriber or you pre-ordered one of the Advent resources, you should have received them to your email. If you have not yet received them, please first check your spam folder, and then contact us.
I will continue to post very short summaries of the texts here each week of the season.
This Sunday’s texts can be found here.
Our three passages on the first Sunday of the liturgical year point us to what are often called “The Three Advents" 1) Christ has come to us in the incarnation; 2) Christ is always coming to us in word and sacrament; and 3) Christ will come again in glory to be our judge on the last day.
Our Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 33:14-16) is the announcement that better days are ahead for Israel. This passage is part of what is called “The Book of Consolation” (Chapters 30-33) in Jeremiah, speaking of the future consolation of Israel. Right in the middle of incredible darkness and chaos, Israel receives words of hope. In darkness, Jeremiah echoes the cry of Israel, and ultimately the human cry for justice and righteousness.
Our passage is a splash of water to the face of a sleeping people. “A time is coming…”This prophecy harkens back to the time of David, when things were at their best for Israel. There is good news, a better day, when God will restore them and they will be together again as God’s people.
In this passage, we catch a glimpse of the nature and character of God. God is aware of the distress of his people, and aware of their temptations. God speaks into the murkiness, into the darkness. He has not forgotten them. Likewise, we can trust that, no matter what we face, God has not forgotten his Church today.
In our epistle reading (1 Thessalonians 3:9-13), Paul says that he is praying to see the congregation at Thessalonica, in person. He loves them so much that he just wants to see them face-to-face and to restore whatever is lacking in their faith.
Paul tells the church that Timothy returned to him to tell him that they are doing well, that they are living in faith and love even in Paul’s absence (vs. 6). That has brought Paul incredible joy.
From this passage, we get this sense that blamelessness and holiness are communal, not just individual (vs. 13). The Church is an organism. My faith and your faith are connected.
Throughout history, the churches that have understood this best are suffering churches. The communal nature of our story is a difficult concept for those of us who live with more affluence to understand. This is why it is important for us to stand in solidarity with those who are persecuted, marginalized and oppressed. We are in the struggle together. If one of us struggles, we all struggle. We stand shoulder to shoulder with those who suffer. Christ is the one who stands in solidarity with us, who suffers with and for us, and we bear witness to Him.
Our gospel reading speaks of judgement (Luke 21:25-36). Many scholars believe that this is a passage about coming destruction and judgement of the temple in Jerusalem (which would happen in 70AD). The judgement of the temple stands, in microcosm, as a judgement of the world. It was a sign of the world’s systems and structures coming under judgement, being shown as incomplete.
We too have systems and structures that we cling to; some of them are good; some of them are not so good. And all of them will be shown for what they are in light of Jesus. Advent is painful because it involves judgement. It is the picture of a world whose systems, whose answers to the world’s problems are limited at best, and deeply harmful at worst.
But God’s judgement is revealing and healing. If we are sick, a doctor has to judge what is in our body, in order to prepare for our healing. We can trust God’s judgement, because our God is the one who loves us and who desires to heal us and the whole world.