WEBVTT 00:00:04.770 --> 00:00:05.171 What is up? 00:00:05.171 --> 00:00:05.511 Everybody? 00:00:05.511 --> 00:00:06.174 My name is Ryan. 00:00:06.174 --> 00:00:08.337 I'm in studio here with Mike Lauer. 00:00:08.337 --> 00:00:08.980 What's up, mike? 00:00:08.980 --> 00:00:11.807 The Vikings lost. 00:00:11.807 --> 00:00:16.922 If you were there on Sunday, of course this will be broadcast a couple of weeks after. 00:00:16.922 --> 00:00:18.788 But my Denver Broncos beat the Vikings. 00:00:18.788 --> 00:00:30.106 Sorry, pal, but good news is I won four free burritos in a couple of wages One with Mike, one with my father-in-law John owes me a burrito and my uncle, kurt, owes me one. 00:00:30.106 --> 00:00:34.463 Anyway, hey, we're not here to talk about the Broncos, we're here to talk about week. 00:00:34.463 --> 00:00:44.695 We are in the third week of Advent and we are on the love week, and just a moment ago Mike broke out in a rendition of the B-52's Love Shack. 00:00:44.695 --> 00:00:46.762 But we're not here for that either. 00:00:46.762 --> 00:00:47.545 So we're gonna keep moving. 00:00:47.564 --> 00:00:55.979 But anyway, you know, when people talk about why God made the world, a lot of people sort of offer up these conjectures about why did God create the world? 00:00:55.979 --> 00:00:57.023 Why do you exist? 00:00:57.023 --> 00:01:01.014 And some people will say, well, you were made to worship God. 00:01:01.014 --> 00:01:13.560 And fine, I get the understanding behind that, but really, if God made creatures to worship Him, it feels a little bit self-serving, you know, as though God needed to create a bunch of beings to just worship Him. 00:01:13.560 --> 00:01:15.123 So I don't think that's the answer. 00:01:15.123 --> 00:01:18.861 Others will say well, god was lonely, like I don't know if God was lonely. 00:01:18.861 --> 00:01:33.025 If you ascribe to a Trinitarian theology, that God is Trinity Triune, that there's Father, son, holy Spirit, then God wasn't lonely because God in and of God's self is a community, sort of a Triune being, which is quite lovely. 00:01:33.025 --> 00:01:44.608 But well, the answer I would suggest we're running out of time here is that God is love the Bible says that and love, if you think about love, love always creates. 00:01:44.647 --> 00:01:50.466 I mean, if you think about the act of sex, for example, sex is this incredible, ideally, this loving act. 00:01:50.466 --> 00:02:00.212 It's probably the most physically intimate you can be with a person, and many times the act of sex creates a new life, and so love always creates. 00:02:00.212 --> 00:02:09.025 So I think that God in and of God's self, the Triune being, was overwhelmingly a being of love, and so love just always creates. 00:02:09.025 --> 00:02:14.682 So the world was created, you were created, I was created, chipotle burritos were created out of love. 00:02:14.682 --> 00:02:18.091 I know it sounds cliche, but I think it's really absolutely true. 00:02:18.671 --> 00:02:24.480 And for the earliest Christians the story of salvation was an entirely, was entirely one of rescue all the way through. 00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:24.981 This is great. 00:02:24.981 --> 00:02:43.525 Theologian who says it this way, says that the epic of God descending into the depths of human estrangement to release his creature from bondage to death, penetrating even into the heart of Hades to set the captives free and to recall his prodigal children and restore a broken creation. 00:02:43.525 --> 00:02:45.329 This is the whole point of creation. 00:02:45.329 --> 00:02:49.823 And then, of course, here in Advent, we celebrate the coming of the Christ child. 00:02:49.823 --> 00:02:51.264 Why does God come to earth? 00:02:52.126 --> 00:03:01.652 Well, love, it's a story of rescue through and through, and three of my favorite stories in the Gospel of Luke, I think, depict this wonderfully. 00:03:01.652 --> 00:03:12.133 It's three stories that are told one after the other by Jesus, and when you read them you really should read them all and interpret each of them with the other two. 00:03:12.133 --> 00:03:17.052 So it's the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son found in Luke, chapter 15. 00:03:17.052 --> 00:03:18.256 And I love it. 00:03:18.256 --> 00:03:22.471 These are stories about God coming to rescue us, which is what the Advent story is. 00:03:22.471 --> 00:03:27.909 God coming to earth in Jesus is a great rescue mission motivated by love. 00:03:28.625 --> 00:03:31.247 And so in the sheep story, the sheep gets lost. 00:03:31.247 --> 00:03:32.873 It wanders off is what sheep do. 00:03:32.873 --> 00:03:36.754 If you know sheep, they're kind of dumb, they don't always know better. 00:03:36.754 --> 00:03:40.954 They wander off to get lost, to get stuck in the brambles and they need help. 00:03:40.954 --> 00:03:49.151 And so in the story it's a really short one Jesus says the shepherd leaves everything and goes to find it and he carries it back joyfully. 00:03:49.151 --> 00:03:56.188 The text tells us on his shoulders, and I always imagine cause sheep are just, they don't know better, they're kind of stubborn, they're obstinate, they're kind of dumb. 00:03:56.188 --> 00:04:09.235 So I imagine that sheep, by kicking the whole way back, like in the shepherds, exerting all this energy, like God, you sheep, come on, I'm trying to help you out here, and the sheep's just being a knucklehead and the shepherd drags the sheep back out of love. 00:04:09.235 --> 00:04:11.832 The shepherd doesn't want to lose that one lost sheep. 00:04:11.832 --> 00:04:17.211 And then it says he gathers his friends and his neighbors to celebrate cause the sheep is brought back home. 00:04:18.125 --> 00:04:23.973 Then, right away after, there's a sort of the lost coin and there's this woman, by the way, who represents the God character in the story. 00:04:23.973 --> 00:04:29.593 It's awesome that God, sort of in this story, is coming in the story anyway in the form of a woman. 00:04:29.593 --> 00:04:41.228 And so there's this woman who's looking her whole house over for this coin that she lost and she turns everything upside down and it says, until she finds the coin she won't stop looking. 00:04:41.228 --> 00:04:48.812 Until she finds the coin, cause sometimes coins get lost, they get dropped and they fall and the crevices are down the drain or whatever. 00:04:48.812 --> 00:04:53.293 And she will stop at nothing until she finds the coin. 00:04:53.293 --> 00:04:57.394 And this is what God does he stops at nothing until he finds the lost one. 00:04:57.394 --> 00:05:02.892 So then the woman she gathers her friends and neighbors and they celebrate that she found this lost coin. 00:05:03.524 --> 00:05:10.769 And then, of course, the three headed story ends with the lost son and the son goes to his father, says can I have my inheritance? 00:05:10.769 --> 00:05:11.009 Now? 00:05:11.009 --> 00:05:13.069 I want it Basically, culturally. 00:05:13.069 --> 00:05:18.630 He's saying I wish you were dead, cause you know, young kids wouldn't get their inheritance until the parents died. 00:05:18.630 --> 00:05:23.713 And then also that money that he's asking for actually belongs to the entire community. 00:05:23.713 --> 00:05:25.733 So he's saying hey, dad, I wish you were dead. 00:05:25.733 --> 00:05:29.391 Also, I don't really care about the whole community or their embeddermint, I want what's mine. 00:05:29.391 --> 00:05:33.834 And it's really the slap in the face of the father and the whole village. 00:05:33.834 --> 00:05:38.685 Really it's a severe offense and in every way the father probably would have disowned the son. 00:05:38.685 --> 00:05:43.654 The whole village, the whole tribe would disown this young man and bid him farewell. 00:05:43.654 --> 00:05:48.572 Sometimes they'd even have like a fake funeral for the son, but that would be the end of the relationship. 00:05:48.572 --> 00:05:49.528 It'd be broken, be done. 00:05:50.084 --> 00:05:50.988 The son takes the money. 00:05:50.988 --> 00:05:51.552 He doesn't care. 00:05:51.552 --> 00:05:56.793 He kind of middle fingers the whole world when he leaves and takes the money, goes to foreign places. 00:05:56.793 --> 00:06:06.036 He's looking for something, apparently, and he squanders all the money, all of it, and he ends up in the worst possible situation for a young Jewish kid. 00:06:06.036 --> 00:06:11.247 He's in this pig pen with unclean pigs that are actually. 00:06:11.247 --> 00:06:12.913 They're faring better than he is. 00:06:12.913 --> 00:06:15.672 They've got more to eat, they're better off than this son is. 00:06:15.672 --> 00:06:19.891 And he comes to his senses. 00:06:19.932 --> 00:06:30.595 The text tells us and he thinks he gets an idea I'm gonna go back home and maybe I can beg my own father to let me be a servant In the household which a few days ago I was a son. 00:06:30.595 --> 00:06:33.033 Now I'm gonna go back and beg to be a servant. 00:06:33.033 --> 00:06:38.168 So the son goes home covered in pig slop and mess, just broken. 00:06:38.168 --> 00:06:41.528 He's probably ashamed, guilt ridden, just disgusting. 00:06:41.528 --> 00:06:44.713 And the father sees him from a long ways off. 00:06:44.713 --> 00:07:00.863 The text tells us and I'd imagine that you would make that kid sweat it out a little bit, make him think about what he did wrong, demand an apology, or 50 from him to you and all the whole village, but the father, who apparently loves his son, doesn't do any of this. 00:07:00.863 --> 00:07:07.548 The father sees him, he runs to him, he kisses him and he gathers friends and neighbors to celebrate. 00:07:07.548 --> 00:07:12.009 And, oddly enough, in the ancient world, grown men of stature and of wealth don't run. 00:07:12.009 --> 00:07:13.225 It's a shameful act. 00:07:13.225 --> 00:07:16.228 But the father runs and he shames himself. 00:07:16.228 --> 00:07:32.889 Also, kissing your son or like showing any kind of public affection is a shameful act, but the father doesn't care because he loves his son and he kisses him I imagine all of his face shames himself to bring the boy home and he gathers friends and neighbors to celebrate. 00:07:33.079 --> 00:07:35.367 This is the story of Christmas and of Advent. 00:07:35.367 --> 00:07:44.507 If nothing else, the father, who loves us, has dove-in, dove-dived head first into humanity to rescue us, to bring us home. 00:07:44.507 --> 00:07:58.826 He will stop at nothing until he finds us, because you and I, like sheep, we wander off, like coins, we fall down into the wrong crevices and holes and like sons, sometimes we just wander off, we squander things, looking for something else, not realizing that we had it all along. 00:07:58.826 --> 00:08:06.367 And so this Advent, let you know the love of God, the love of the father, who will chase you down to find you and drag you back home because he loves you. 00:08:06.367 --> 00:08:12.208 So anyway, happy Sunday of Advent or third week of Advent, and may you know the love of the father today. 00:08:12.208 --> 00:08:12.721 Peace. 00:08:12.721 --> 00:08:16.064 Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. 00:08:16.064 --> 00:08:28.951 And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8.30, which is our liturgical gathering, or 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clclclkriverorg. 00:08:28.951 --> 00:08:29.321 Peace.