Speaker 1: Welcome to the First Love Church podcast.
Speaker 1: This is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised common lectionary and recorded weekly in Ocala, florida.
Speaker 1: The veil is spread over all nations.
Speaker 1: He will swallow up death forever and the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
Speaker 1: It will be said on that day behold, this is our God.
Speaker 1: We have waited for him that he might save us.
Speaker 1: This is the Lord.
Speaker 1: We have waited for him.
Speaker 1: Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
Speaker 1: Isaiah 25, 7 through 10.
Speaker 1: Isaiah the prophet and the other prophets, this apocalyptic visionary, dared to imagine the unimaginable a vision of hope, of a future in which death, the great tyrant, would be replaced by resurrection, life.
Speaker 1: Like a veil that hung over humanity.
Speaker 1: Death would be removed, a day of salvation and a time of great trouble would give away to times of everlasting life where God's people would shine like stars.
Speaker 1: This audacious hope, this great hope, this great defiance is part of our ancient advent hope, our advent tradition, where we find fulfillment in Jesus, who dealt a death blow to death itself.
Speaker 1: This is our story, this is our song.
Speaker 1: It is a joyful remembrance of patient longing foretold by the prophets, enacted by Jesus, our Messiah.
Speaker 1: It is a patient hope, but it is an active hope.
Speaker 1: It is hope filled realism.
Speaker 1: It dares us to dream and live in a way that we bear witness to the kingdom's glorious inauguration and it acts as a signpost of an ultimate reconciliation.
Speaker 1: For us as believers, this time is such an important part, where we learn to wait in the dark, where we learn to have hope for things yet to come and where we stand in the tension of a God who has come, but a God who is not here yet.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe you're wondering when they're going to turn the lights on, but we decided that we're going to take this season and we're going to set in the darkness and it may be uncomfortable for somebody, but you can get a flashlight, but the truth is.
Speaker 2: And I said to Pastor Leah, I said you're standing by the light, make sure nobody thinks they're helping and turning on the light because we're doing this for dramatic effect.
Speaker 2: And he said well, I'm not in the dark, and though he's right when the light of Christ comes.
Speaker 2: But you know what?
Speaker 2: There's a he has come, but he has not yet come.
Speaker 2: And I think that for us to understand the darkness that we're in and to find him and to be found by him in it is what it means to follow after Christ.
Speaker 1: There's hope for us in this season and in these practices and during the time of Advent, the church gives us practices or tools so that we can look inward, so that we can find our way In times where we would say I cannot see God, that God is not where I can find God, that where is the hope and where is the help that I am looking for?
Speaker 1: The Advent practices help us go deeper and help us borrow God's eyes and allow God, allow God's light, who is Christ, to heal our eyes, so we can see and we can practice the presence, no matter where we are.
Speaker 1: In the text that we're gonna read in the next few minutes, you're gonna hear something that repeats itself, and it's the word near.
Speaker 1: It is the word near.
Speaker 1: It is the word near Because when we are in the dark, beloved, we feel alone.
Speaker 1: When we are in the dark, we cannot see someone next to us, and sometimes our imaginations create stories that are untrue.
Speaker 1: And so we come back to truth, we come back to love that tells us that this is where we belong.
Speaker 1: We were talking about this yesterday this idea of ultimate belonging, of utter worthiness.
Speaker 1: You are made in the image of God, you were born in divine love, and the very reason sometimes we feel lost or we feel homesick is because we were once found.
Speaker 1: We were found in love, we were found in truth, we were found in mercy, and so when we leave outside of those things, it does create a feeling or a sense of lostness.
Speaker 1: And I remind you, beloved, we have a good shepherd.
Speaker 1: We have a good shepherd who is with us, who is watching, who will find us even if we wander away.
Speaker 1: An advent for us is this practice of looking at the ancients and saying what was it like for people to wait for the first coming of God, and what will we be like?
Speaker 1: Was we wait for the second coming?
Speaker 2: That's so good.
Speaker 2: I want you to kind of think for a second and maybe open up your heart to we were talking about.
Speaker 2: If you can't imagine, we're really in trouble.
Speaker 2: Because if God wants you to see something different but you refuse to imagine, If you refuse to let him show you what he's doing, then you're kind of stuck.
Speaker 2: And so if you feel stuck, maybe you need to just let him show you some things differently, let him really reveal himself.
Speaker 2: He wants to.
Speaker 2: I believe God wants to do that for us.
Speaker 2: It's really strange we're in this season of Advent and then our scripture is very apocalyptic kind of a scripture, and so I was looking at that at first like well, Lord, how are you reconciling this?
Speaker 2: How is this coming together?
Speaker 2: The two at first didn't seem to fit to me.
Speaker 2: But I wonder, oftentimes when we read scriptures, we have these authors who are being downloaded words and visions from God and they're trying the best they can to come up with words to explain what they're experiencing and what they're seeing.
Speaker 2: And then we take their explanation, their words, and we go sometimes off on a tangent, and sometimes even the church will preach doctrines off these tangents.
Speaker 2: And I would just ask you this if you've ever set in the darkness, if you've ever had a dark time in your life I'm talking about going through a divorce, a death of somebody that you love dearly, a job loss, a friendship betrayal it is, for you, apocalyptic in the scope of it and how it rocks your foundation to the core, and so I think that sometimes we tend to find these scriptures unapplicable, and so I'd ask you to open up your heart, and maybe God is trying to explain something to us and help us understand something about the human experience in these words and we've taken it maybe in a misguided way tried to assume that he was saying something completely different to us.
Speaker 2: So I'd open up your heart today and listen.
Speaker 1: I like what you're inviting us to do to embrace the mystery, to allow the spirit of love to reignite us, to reimagine what the world could be with Christ everywhere, with love everywhere, with mercy that overflows over any kind of judgment.
Speaker 1: And there is a hope for us in this imagining, in our allowing Christ to change the way that we view things.
Speaker 1: And when we meet the disciples in just a moment in the text, I think it's important for us to know what was actually being experienced there, and we get this information from the text.
Speaker 1: The disciples had followed Jesus and they had come to Jerusalem and they were enamored.
Speaker 1: At the temple they were saying look how big it is, look how beautiful it is.
Speaker 1: Of course, all the nations of the world now will know that our God is the true God.
Speaker 1: Look at this temple, look how big this is.
Speaker 1: This must mean this is the way.
Speaker 1: And in response to this wonder and this awe the disciples have, look at what's happening in Jerusalem, look where God is dwelling.
Speaker 1: Jesus invites us into a really pastoral text.
Speaker 1: And this is Jesus' response to his disciples, saying this is good.
Speaker 1: Right, this big temple, this is good.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says at that time, after the anguish of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will give no light, and the stars will fall from the sky and the powers in the heaven will be shaken, and everyone will see the Son of man coming on the clouds with great power and glory, and he will send out His angels to gather His chosen ones from all over the world, from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven.
Speaker 1: Now learn a lesson from the fig tree.
Speaker 1: When its branches bud and its leaves begin to sprout, you will know that summer is near.
Speaker 1: In the same way, when you see all these things taking place, you know that His return is very near, right at the door.
Speaker 1: I tell you the truth this generation will not pass from the scene before all these things take place.
Speaker 1: Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear.
Speaker 1: Thank you, lord.
Speaker 1: However, no one knows the day or the hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son Himself.
Speaker 1: Only the Father knows.
Speaker 1: And since you don't know what time that will come, be on guard, stay alert.
Speaker 1: The coming of the Son of man can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip.
Speaker 1: When he left home, he gave each of his slaves instructions about the work they were to do, and he told the gatekeeper to watch for his return.
Speaker 1: You too must keep watch, for if you don't know when the master of the household will return in the evening, at midnight, before dawn or at daybreak don't let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning.
Speaker 1: I say to you what I say to everyone watch for him.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful text.
Speaker 1: What an apocalyptic text.
Speaker 1: There's stars falling from the sky and the moon is no longer giving us light in reflection to the sun, and Jesus is saying the way that you think that it was going to be done it's not.
Speaker 1: In fact, jesus begins to talk about the destruction of the temple.
Speaker 1: He begins to remind us that the very fact that Jesus is here with us reminds us that God is not there.
Speaker 1: God is here, and this is what Advent hopes for us.
Speaker 1: Where will you find God?
Speaker 1: Are you even looking for God?
Speaker 1: But where will you find God?
Speaker 1: Very often, we have ideas that God would be in a very holy place, that God would be where we put a big throne, or God would be in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: And God actually circumvented all of that and went to Galilee and went to a manger and came as the most vulnerable around us.
Speaker 1: So when we look for God, we have to reimagine that.
Speaker 1: We don't look to places of power, we don't look to big places, we don't look to places that maybe even other people have said yes, god is actually here.
Speaker 1: And there is a hope for us in Advent to see God in the small, to see God in the ordinary, to see God in places where people would say God cannot be there.
Speaker 1: And this is the Advent hope.
Speaker 1: What does love require from me in this moment?
Speaker 2: You know, and that's so important, that we focus on the right things, because that love and that transformation, that's what is his gift to us, and I think a lot of people waste a lot of energy studying and trying to figure out stuff that really doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Speaker 2: You know, in this scripture it talks about not knowing when he's gonna return.
Speaker 2: But yet I know several broadcasts that you could go and they're gonna show you when Jesus is returning.
Speaker 2: There's been books written since I've been a Christian 88 reasons why Jesus is returning, in 88.
Speaker 2: That book sold really good in 87, but 89, you just couldn't get rid of the book.
Speaker 2: It's a good doorstop and what happens is over and over.
Speaker 2: People ask us all the time why don't we preach more on end times?
Speaker 2: You know, why don't we talk more about that?
Speaker 2: And it makes me think that and I'm not judging you, but I just know myself when I'm that worried about when he's returning, I'm just wanting to make sure I don't get caught napping.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what he's talking about.
Speaker 2: You don't wanna be asleep, right, but I wanna nap as much as possible.
Speaker 2: So you need to tell me approximately when he's coming so I can get a little shut-eye and then set the alarm a few minutes early and get up and act like I'm working.
Speaker 2: I saw a bumper sticker like that a while back on somebody's car and said Jesus is returning, quick, act busy, look busy, and I think that we miss the whole thing if we're trying.
Speaker 2: You know for what reason do I?
Speaker 2: Why do I need to know when he's coming back?
Speaker 2: It doesn't change what I need to do right now, and that is be transformed.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: The business of transforming.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 2: That's a full-time job.
Speaker 2: Anybody who knows me said hey, come on now.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, and so that surrender to that and putting energy to those type of things, that's what's important.
Speaker 2: And yet we get so distracted by all these other things that don't really help us at all.
Speaker 1: There is a warning in here that Jesus gives his disciples, and I love the way that Mark identifies time.
Speaker 1: You don't know if the master is coming at evening, at midnight, in the next watch, when the cock crows, you'll be reminded of the story of the passion where Jesus is betrayed on all of those different things.
Speaker 1: This is the passion story that Mark is reminding us about.
Speaker 1: This is the hope of the world.
Speaker 1: This is everything that we put all our eggs in Jesus's basket as the disciples.
Speaker 1: And then he was crucified.
Speaker 1: And what a terror to the way that we had imagined things, what a death blow to the hope that we had that Rome was gonna be thrown over, that we were gonna be now the victors and Rome would be under our feet.
Speaker 1: And Jesus picks up a towel and a basin and says love is gonna be the way that.
Speaker 1: There is a different kingdom coming.
Speaker 1: There is another realm that is being inaugurated here.
Speaker 1: It is the realm of the kingdom of God, and all of us are invited to participate in that kingdom, to live in that kingdom and to bring that kingdom to earth.
Speaker 1: We say a prayer together, the Lord's prayer.
Speaker 1: It's a prayer that Jesus taught his disciples and we say it, and maybe you've said it since you were a little tiny person but your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Speaker 1: What is the will of God that would be done here on earth?
Speaker 1: We see this in the manifestation of Jesus and the way that Jesus embraced his humanity and loved the world and changed the people that he was in relationship by the love that he had for him.
Speaker 1: And so Jesus is reminding us pay attention to what you look for, pay attention for what you're watching for.
Speaker 1: Be careful that you're not looking for the wrong things, because if you look for success or bigness, you'll find that, but if you look for God, if you look for love, if you look for the kingdom breaking through, you will also find that.
Speaker 1: And so this encouragement to us is to allow our eyes to be healed, to sit in the silence long enough to hear the heartbeat of God saying death will no longer have the final word.
Speaker 1: Beloved, resurrection is coming, new life is coming, love is coming, and this is the invitation of the Advent.
Speaker 2: You know, the disciples are looking at the temple and kinda, hey, you know his big church the answer.
Speaker 2: And there's a small church pastor.
Speaker 2: I love the idea that he's saying that whole thing's gonna be destroyed.
Speaker 2: I can't help it.
Speaker 2: But as a small pastor, it's like you know.
Speaker 2: See, I told you we're doing good.
Speaker 2: But you know, there is the truth that no stone was left unturned and that temple was destroyed.
Speaker 2: But we also understand that Jesus is prophesying about that, but also speaking of his own body being destroyed and then God raising that up.
Speaker 2: And so when we sit here in the darkness in Advent, I wonder if you think to yourself that my path to life has to travel through death, that really God's transforming me, that seed has to die in the ground.
Speaker 2: Christ gave up that body.
Speaker 2: That temple needs to be brought down.
Speaker 2: We build up our egos, but I'm telling you at some point that ego will need to be pulled down and brought under submission.
Speaker 2: You know, because you're living for that, you're building that up.
Speaker 2: You've created something in your mind and now you're trying to make everything work for that idea of what people think of you.
Speaker 2: And you know what.
Speaker 2: That is a painful journey.
Speaker 2: I know firsthand the painful journey that is of allowing God to pull that down.
Speaker 2: You know, allowing destruction.
Speaker 2: It is apocalyptic, it shakes the very foundation of who you are.
Speaker 2: But that's where healing comes, and unless I go through that journey, I won't have the things that he wants to give me.
Speaker 2: If I won't surrender in that place and so church, you might find yourself in darkness and feel like where have I gone wrong?
Speaker 2: Where have I turned?
Speaker 2: You know, I remember one lady came up to me after church and she said could you pray with me and then ask God to show you where I have sinned?
Speaker 2: And I said well, what?
Speaker 2: makes you think that I have that skill or that you need that.
Speaker 2: And she said well, you know, for three or four months now I've been trying to sell my house and the house hasn't sold and so obviously I'm in sin somewhere and God can't bless me.
Speaker 2: You know, and I wonder how much of the time we look at circumstance and make a huge leap in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: Heather and I had a house.
Speaker 2: After we built the house we're in now for 13 years maybe longer, I can't remember 14, 15, we had another house that we just couldn't sell.
Speaker 2: We'd rent it out to people for a while.
Speaker 2: They'd demolish it, we'd go over and fix it up and then we'd lease with an option to buy.
Speaker 2: People'd give us a down payment, live in it a while, destroy it and then give it back to us.
Speaker 2: And I mean this just kept happening and I kept thinking God, why can't we just get rid of this albatross All these years?
Speaker 2: And then, a couple of years ago, the market gets huge, the people get out of the house, they demolish it, we fix it up and the house sells for way more than it was ever worth those whole.
Speaker 2: And then I'm like, oh, check me out, I'm a good businessman, I would've sold that thing 35 times, but God has his hand on it for the right season.
Speaker 2: But for all of those years I would've told you that I was forsaken.
Speaker 2: I was struggling and I'm telling you it is a perspective, it's, and there really becomes a place where could you possibly look at every situation and trust God's big enough.
Speaker 2: God's hand is on it and I can trust where I can't see him, and that in itself is a journey through struggle.
Speaker 2: But to be able to get to the place where all things work together for good and I really don't just quote that thing, I believe it and even when things are in turmoil, I know God's working out good because he's good.
Speaker 2: And listen, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 2: I know that God prevails.
Speaker 2: God wins.
Speaker 2: Have you read the back of the book?
Speaker 2: Have you read the last page?
Speaker 2: We win, and so why would we argue with that based on some temporal circumstance that you're in today and yet I'm the king of it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sitting here passing judgment against anybody, but at some point when are we gonna quit this and really trust him in this process?
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Speaker 2: And we went up to the mountains.
Speaker 2: So they got this new thing in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: It's a theme park they built on top of a mountain but you gotta take one of those ski lifts up to get to the park and they don't even have like a thing that comes over you, I mean, or buckles, they don't.
Speaker 2: And I mean I was like, oh, this is sketchy, you know, and I'm the dad, I'm with Heather, I gotta be brave, and I look over and Silas' face is buried into Heather's shoulder and it was terrifying.
Speaker 2: And I had to remind myself I'm going to a theme park, I'm going to a theme park, but my feet are dangling over a certain death.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna get to a theme park.
Speaker 2: Oh man, is anyone tracking with me?
Speaker 2: You're going to heaven, yeah, but my feet are dangling over hell.
Speaker 2: He's got you in his arms.
Speaker 2: It's safer than a ski lift, but it sure feels sketchy.
Speaker 2: That's been a preach in there, amen.
Speaker 1: They're thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: In that particular, and the theme park is the mountains, which is really an incredible thing because there's one, there's a beauty in looking at it from the bottom, but there's another whole beauty in being on the top and Looking around.
Speaker 1: And in one part of this experience they had tree bridges between, just for you know, acres and acres.
Speaker 1: You just walk between the trees on these little bridges that are strung with ropes and you're so high I mean you're high into the trees that are on the very top of the mountain, and what an incredible experience to see things that you are realizing I would never have been able to see From this height, from sure you don't mean to preach this part.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: This is a great story.
Speaker 2: You're going for a member and so we were talking about who gets to preach it, but I want you to.
Speaker 2: It's my gift to you since you got the revelation.
Speaker 2: I Guess this is awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean it is awesome.
Speaker 1: But here's what we were.
Speaker 1: So we're looking at there's nature all around us.
Speaker 1: We are in the trees, we are on the bridges, we are walking and just in awe, I mean, nature itself is testifying to us.
Speaker 1: And we were looking at other people who were looking in a particular place.
Speaker 1: And that's a good thing when somebody is witnessing something.
Speaker 1: Pay attention where somebody has found love, look there.
Speaker 1: Where someone has found beauty, look there also.
Speaker 1: So we're aware of our surroundings, we're aware of our smallness on these bridges and we look down and right there not in an enclosure, just right there in nature, living his best life is a giant bear, giant, huge.
Speaker 2: I think it was her best life because it was had a cub with.
Speaker 1: No, she didn't have to go.
Speaker 2: I thought it did.
Speaker 2: Oh, there was a different time.
Speaker 2: Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I'll just quit tell I could interrupt it.
Speaker 1: There were more than one bear on the mountain, but at this particular time I'm standing on this bridge and this bear has no cage.
Speaker 1: This bear lives on that mountain.
Speaker 1: I'm the intruder, but I am up higher and I looked at that bear and enjoyed just watching that bear be a bear like.
Speaker 1: Why did it choose that space?
Speaker 1: I think it was because the Sun was really bright in there.
Speaker 1: It was really cold and he was just in the Sun, face turned toward the Sun, but he was being a bear.
Speaker 1: And I want to tell you something I was not afraid.
Speaker 1: I had a bear.
Speaker 1: I met a bear in the wild and I was not afraid because I was higher than the bear and I hadn't climbed the tree myself, because the bear could have probably climbed that tree too.
Speaker 1: But I mean so there is this beautiful hope for us that when fear is there, when something that is this terrible or Terrifying is there, if we can have a thought that is higher, if we can go to where love takes us, we do not have to fear Because we can choose, that love has already provided a way for us to go, that there is hope, and so it began to be so incredible to think just hundreds of feet from a bear.
Speaker 1: No fear at all, no fences between us.
Speaker 1: I was just higher, and so this is what Jesus is offering us that there is an ascended way to think, that there is an ascended, a Transformational love that allows us to see things different, even to experience our own life differently.
Speaker 1: And this is the hope that Advent gives us that what was is not all that.
Speaker 1: There is what you can see with your eyes now, what you were just telling us about just moments ago.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this.
Speaker 1: True wisdom is not judging that this is the end of the story.
Speaker 1: Have you ever read a really good book?
Speaker 1: If you stop at chapter 2 or chapter 4, that book might not have the same glory as if you go to the very end.
Speaker 1: Beloved death no longer has the final word, and Until death is no longer having the final word.
Speaker 1: It's not the end.
Speaker 1: So we hold on to this hope.
Speaker 1: We say this is the glory for us, that we would learn this way of watching and waiting, and not in a way that we are just Resigning ourselves to things as they are.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think this is the beauty of Advent that we, as the church, can look at things that are wrong or evil or hurtful.
Speaker 1: And With confidence we can say this is not the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Yes, beloved, war is not the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And with confidence we can say there will be a day, one day when Jesus is so formed in all of us, when the Incarnation happens and all of us have birthed the Christ, where we will no longer send our sons to war, we will no longer send our daughters to war.
Speaker 1: There will be a day when children no longer go to bed hungry, when the greed of man no longer Dictates that some will have and others will not.
Speaker 1: And we're not waiting for a magic Potion.
Speaker 1: We're saying what will it be like for all of us to so be transformed by love that our consciousness will allow us to invoke whatever needs to be done.
Speaker 1: So our brother is not left from the table, from our sister does not have something that she needs in order to thrive.
Speaker 1: This is the invitation of Advent that we would allow our thoughts to become like God's thoughts, like love thoughts, and find ourself going.
Speaker 1: This is not right, and not in a place to judge it and say you are wrong, but to say here is the answer.
Speaker 1: Here is the hope, here Is the goodness that you need you know what's the practicality of that?
Speaker 2: It's, you know, that we allow God to speak to us, we allow God to permeate us in a way that we practice those, those meditative thoughts and and those promises that he has for us, and we, we trust those, and that that is like being up on that bridge yeah, there's bears and stuff, but I'm up here, you know and that it begins to influence other people.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about, I was watching the kids the other day and Silas said something that was relatively benign, but one of his older brothers says well, we're not gonna talk like that because we're gonna be kind.
Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, does that sound like Heather?
Speaker 2: And what happened was the the older one was around her longer and and that that that way that we're gonna live as a family, rubbed off.
Speaker 2: And then the the older one couldn't help, but in part that to the younger one, and it begins to spread, and I want you to see that, that as God begins to give you those, those, those words of you know, security, even in a storm, that you can lay your pillow, your head on the pillow on, afraid, because we're getting to the other side, you know, and then there becomes that that trust and and and that now begins to affect the people that are in the boat with you.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 2: And so trust him for that, that we're not ever going to promise you that if you come to Christ, everything's gonna be rosy and everything's gonna be smooth.
Speaker 2: I've been a Christian long enough to know that in this world there will be tribulation, but I've also learned take courage, because he, christ, has overcome them, all of them, and so there's a place that I can Get carnally, where I'm just panicked, I'm worried, I'm focused on the negative, I'm reciting the negative, I rehearse it and then I just kind of stay in that energy and I stay in that place and basically Unlocked, I'm married to it.
Speaker 2: Or I can allow him to replace those thoughts with a new thought.
Speaker 2: And this is a process and this is the practices.
Speaker 2: This is the practice of attending a church service, of, of, of prayer, of Understanding that all the different practices, of communion itself is Is a real place where I'm exchanging what I have for what he has, and I gotta understand my thoughts.
Speaker 2: His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, amen.
Speaker 2: His ways are better than my ways, and so I make these exchanges with him in this practice, and I watch Him.
Speaker 2: Bring me to that place, bring me up higher.
Speaker 2: Can anyone testify?
Speaker 1: Oh God's good in the in this season, we pay attention to the dark that is around us and we learn to sit in it with patience.
Speaker 1: But we remember that the light is coming.
Speaker 1: The light is coming, and Sometimes the light is not coming from out there.
Speaker 1: The light is coming from in here.
Speaker 1: Beloved, the light is coming.
Speaker 2: That's good I.
Speaker 1: I enjoy the darkness.
Speaker 1: I like to look at stars.
Speaker 1: I I like and have no problem sleeping.
Speaker 1: I like the darkness, but I like the darkness from a place of privilege.
Speaker 1: I like the darkness because when I go to bed at night, it's in a bed in a home.
Speaker 1: I'm not sleeping outside with wild animals.
Speaker 1: I am not worried that the people from the next town will come and steal my children.
Speaker 1: I am not worried that what I have will be taken from me in the night.
Speaker 1: And so when I say I like the darkness or I have found that there is peace there, I recognize that I also have privilege.
Speaker 1: There are people who are terrified of the dark because the most horrible and obscene things happen to them in the dark and there is no judgment and there is no diminishment on those who hate the dark.
Speaker 1: But beloved, there is dark and there is light, and there is a way to find comfort in the dark.
Speaker 1: There is a way to find peace in the dark.
Speaker 1: There is a way to hear the dark and hear the breath of loving God, who is breathing nearness to you, and this is the hope of Advent that we would allow ourselves to be healed, whether you are embracing the dark or whether it terrifies you.
Speaker 1: Everywhere we go, god is near, love is near, light is near because we have that divine spark.
Speaker 1: Every single human bears the divine spark of God and there is light coming into the darkness.
Speaker 1: There is light coming and light is bringing life.
Speaker 2: You know, when you were talking about that, defining that comfort in the dark, I was thinking about how, you know, when we were riding up that ski lift, how Silas was bearing his face in your shoulder, and then I scooted into him and we, just, we were all squeezing and cuddling, you know, and I think about that because why, as parents, would we push him away when he wanted comfort?
Speaker 2: It was a wonderful time actually.
Speaker 2: You know, it was one of my favorite times of the whole vacation that we were all just cuddling on that ski lift, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I remind you the offer and the willingness that God would allow you to bury your face, as it were, in his shoulder, and that to find comfort for him in the darkness.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's been times where I have been so overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: You know, one time I was at this, this guy asked me if I would put screen on his porch, and so I woefully underbid the job, and so it was just about enough to get the supplies to do the whole job, and there were big screens, and so I cut them all out and laid them on the ground and I started putting them up, and if you ever use one of them rollers.
Speaker 2: They will challenge your salvation because you'll get three sides of that little rope in and when you're rolling the third one in and it'll roll off of there and push through the screen and rip your screen and you will want to sing praises to the Lord.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 2: So I had ripped one, moved over, ripped one and ripped one, and I realized now that I underbid this job.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to cost me plus all day to do it and I'm going to lose all this money.
Speaker 2: And so I sit on a bucket and I just wanted to cry A grown man, but I'm sitting there going.
Speaker 2: You know, I just wish I had, you know, somebody I could turn to, some, you know, like my dad would just come over and fix this, you know.
Speaker 2: And then I felt God say well, why don't you ask me?
Speaker 2: And I just had a moment where I just buried my face in his shoulder.
Speaker 2: You know, I said I'm just so frustrated right now I just I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: I know you're going to make it all right, but this is just overwhelming right now.
Speaker 2: And I sat there for a minute, had my little pity party, but I just felt a comfort and I felt no judgment for my sorrow and whatnot, but just love.
Speaker 2: And I felt a tangible hug in it and it invigorated me to the point that I stood up and I said, well, I'm going to try this again.
Speaker 2: And so, for whatever reason, I just felt the prompting to reverse all the screens.
Speaker 2: So I moved them all and then I held them up and every one of them fit on the because they're all different sizes, but when I moved one, they all fit, even the Torah ones, with enough room to put them all up again.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, well, I'll try this again.
Speaker 2: And I got to the fourth side and I said, well, I can't do this alone.
Speaker 2: So I just started slowly moving that and asking God to help me and just had this moment where I was connecting with him and I slowed down and I said how are you going to direct my hand?
Speaker 2: And do you know that?
Speaker 2: Every one of those screens got up and I finished that job and I took the paycheck that actually just paid for the material.
Speaker 2: But I had the most wonderful lesson in that willingness I felt from God just to comfort me in that we're not judged, and why do we hold ourselves to that?
Speaker 2: And that there's an offer.
Speaker 2: And so if you hear, if you hear nothing else from us here, hear him, hear us saying that God offers that to you to comfort and encourage.
Speaker 2: He's not mad at you.
Speaker 2: That's a bad doctrine that you picked up somewhere.
Speaker 2: He's not mad at you.
Speaker 2: Hear, the apple of his eye loves you.
Speaker 2: Isn't that good news today?
Speaker 1: God's gospel reminds us that whatever separates us from God, either the heavens or the holy of holies, has been torn asunder and will no longer go back.
Speaker 1: This incredible conviction that there is no keeping God at bay, there is nothing you can do to keep God from you, that love will come and God is not and will not be where we expect him.
Speaker 1: There's a realness to this particular gospel text that talks about the Advent season and it cuts through sentimentality and the romance of Christmas coming and it reminds us about incarnation being really risky business when it talks about the darkening of the sun and the dimming of stars and the moonslight and the end of the world as we know it.
Speaker 1: For many of us.
Speaker 1: We have faced many ends of the world many times where it feels like everything is over and this is the hope that we have that death will be no more, because God is coming and God will die for us.
Speaker 1: It is speaking the truth to ourself about our unreal expectations about how life should have been, how we should have been.
Speaker 1: More it should have been easier.
Speaker 1: God is talking about God's own self and saying whatever your expectations are, I'm going to exceed them into the flowers of the field that perish and the grass that withers away, the passing of kings and of nations.
Speaker 1: Here is God, this incredible event for which we all wait, God who has chosen to enter everything that decays, everything that dies, and enter it with us.
Speaker 1: That means we find God in everything that it means to be human, even death.
Speaker 1: But no longer will God remain in the heavens or behind the walls or a curtain on a hill.
Speaker 1: God comes to us to bring life life to us who would surely die, and bring the new heaven and the new earth into our suffering, into our earthly life.
Speaker 1: Advent gives us a time and a space to believe and to live out the reality that there is more, that there is life even after death, that there is a new realm and allows us to return to the good and come back in this practice of thinking another way, of seeing, another way of listening to the breathing in the dark and believing it's your beloved, Not a scary monster.
Speaker 1: There is for us a hope in this ragged breathing, in this God who came to dwell with us, who comes to dwell with us.
Speaker 1: Advent bids us hope, even in the dark.
Speaker 2: You know, jonah's rescue comes in the belly of a great fish, in complete darkness.
Speaker 2: You know, christ brings salvation through resurrection, but it comes through the grave, you know.
Speaker 2: And so why are we turning off your lights in Christmas season?
Speaker 2: What's wrong with us?
Speaker 2: You're supposed to light up the whole front yard, right?
Speaker 2: Or maybe we're being reminded that Christ has come, but yet we're anticipating that he will come again and through darkness will come a great light, you know, and so we're anticipating the celebrating of Christmas, but we're reminded that we don't always live on the mountaintop and that I'm so grateful for this one truth that he's not just found there on the mountaintop, that God is found in the dark and he finds you in the dark.
Speaker 2: Isn't that great news?
Speaker 1: Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a theologian of German descent and there's many who believe the same kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They don't believe that there are just two events that Christ came in Bethlehem and that Christ will come again.
Speaker 1: He said there's actually three events.
Speaker 1: And the second one is Christ is born in you, not just a salvation, but when you allow the light to blaze in you, when you allow the Christ to live in you, when you allow yourself to be surrendered to love, and then everything you do comes from this source of love, that there is a hope for the third advent then, that Christ will be born in everyone, that Christ will be born in this whole world.
Speaker 1: And this is such a glorious hope for us that what we can do, surrendering ourselves to light and to love, that there is a hope for us.
Speaker 1: Many of the practices that come to us practice at the communion table, but there are many practices that ground us in an advent tradition.
Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this week's sermon.
Speaker 1: If you would like more information about us, visit us online at firstlovechurchorg.