Advent Benediction: Good News Of Great Joy To All People (based on Luke 1:46-55, Matthew 4:16)

Like Jesus' mother Mary, the angel choir, and the shepherds; may we rejoice in the fact that the gift of God's love and grace is “good news of great joy” for everyone.

Since that love and grace was freely given once and for all, may we embrace the truth that there isn't any need for us to attempt to earn it. 

May that reality and the freedom that it brings be a continual source of hope for us. May it equip us to bring love and grace to life in our parts of God's world.  

Hope and Steadfast Love: Jodi Koeman at CRC Office of Social Justice

Preparing for Christ means hoping and loving. 

We need love in order to live a life that embraces people – no matter who they are, what they look like, where they’ve come from, or how “perfect” or broken they are – and that seeks their flourishing along with all of creation and God’s creatures.

Preparing for Christ means hoping and loving. While our “souls wait for the Lord,” may we actively prepare for Christ by radically loving the world as God loves.

The full article is available here

Advent Reflection and Renewal: Waiting For Promise To Be Fulfilled

God, you sending Jesus to earth is an amazing reminder of the original goodness in which you created the universe and of how it can be lived out by humanity. For this, we give thanks.

At the same time, it can be difficult from our historical vantage point to really have a sense of how - in the centuries that passed between creation and Jesus’ birth - your good news of liberation for the poor and oppressed was only a promise. While it was a hopeful promise, it was also one which generation after generation did not see fulfilled.

So God, help us to begin to appreciate what it means to wait. We’re so used to instantly having our every wish met. Help us to seek to understand what it means for those living in the dark shadows of injustice and suffering to hope for light to come.

Help us to not take your grace for granted.

Others of us know all too well what it means to continue to wait for things to be made right. We’re familiar with the weariness of hope deferred. God, help us be on the lookout for where even glimpses of the hope of your promise of are being born within us and around us.

God, thank you for your free and life-sustaining gifts of grace, which we can all tap into, regardless of where life finds us in this season. 

Amen.

The Misguided Priorities of “Keeping Christ In Christmas” - Stephan Ingram

When Christians belligerently insist that our faith necessarily deserves priority and that our traditions are what need to be centered, we are not representing Christ; who called for humility, peacemaking. meekness, and self sacrifice.

The very fact that people feel that it is their duty to mandate Christ in Christmas represents a misunderstanding of the priorities which Christ-followers should be guided by.

Christianity, as defined by the life and teachings of Jesus, never depended or insisted on being the majority, in power or even influential.

It was a religion that lauded the weak, meek and the poor. Jesus came preaching a gospel that defaulted on the need for religion to have power and influence. He told us that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

When Peter picked up a sword and was ready to take Jerusalem, Jesus quickly told him to put it down because that is not the kind of gospel he was bringing.

When Christians try to force God on others we reincarnate some of the worst epochs of our religious history, and default on its core founding principles of love, grace and hospitality.

When Christians belligerently insist that our faith necessarily deserves priority and that our traditions are what need to be centered, we are not representing the man who called for humility, peacemaking. meekness, and self sacrifice.

The full article is available here

Advent Benediction: Jesus' Birth Heralds A New Family of Humanity (based on Isaiah 40:4-5)

As we go now, let's watch for all the places where God is making things new again. May the power of God's love recalibrate us. May it lead us to fill the dark places with light, to level the uneven paths with grace, and to join together with all of humanity as the family of peace and hope which Jesus’ birth initiated.

Advent Call To Worship: God's Light Came To Shine Into Dark Spaces (based on Luke 1:46-55, Matthew 4:16)

In Advent, we celebrate the gift of God’s light,  Jesus. 

According to Jesus’ mother Mary, it was extraordinary that this gift was made available to everyone - even those of low social status and those pushed to the margins by forces of power and greed.  The angels proclaimed the very same message to the shepherds, saying that Christ’s birth was “good news of great joy for all people.”

So like Mary, the angel chorus, and the shepherds; may we give thanks to God for the gifts of inclusive love and boundless grace which can be received by all. 

Advent Benediction: Paying The Gift Of Grace Forward Through Service (based on Romans 15:2)

May the gift of Christ coming to join our human race cause joy and gratitude to rise within us. May it lead us to follow Jesus' example of loving service in God's world.

And may the grace of God, the love of Jesus, and the peace of God's Spirit be with us this day and evermore.

Advent Call To Worship: A Message Of Hope For All (based on Luke 1:46-55)

Christ coming to earth is a message of hope for all people! All of those who aren't held in high value by the powers-that-be are now called "blessed" in God’s sight.

The mercy and love of God is good news to the poor, it is liberation to all of the oppressed, and it is the extending of welcome to all of the marginalized and excluded. God’s mercy and love is poured out for all who need it in every generation.

For this incredible grace, we come now to give thanks.

Incarnation = Embodiment In The Human Condition

Advent Reflection and Renewal: Radical Hope

God,

It may seem naïve to us, in a world that is still full of grief, to talk about the joy of good news; to speak of all oppression ceasing in a world that is still full of suffering and injustice. 

But Jesus came to bring joy into our grief and light into our darkness; to bring good news to the poor, and to fill the hungry with good things.

Help us to embrace the radical hope of your kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven; of peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Amen

Advent Reflection: Who Exactly Is "God With?" - CRC Office of Social Justice

If the gospel of Emmanuel is to be good news to all things - then now is the time for that gospel to be proclaimed and lived like never before.

In Colossians, Paul writes that, in Christ, God is “pleased to reconcile to himself all things” (Col. 1:20).  All people, of course. But “all things” means a whole new ball game. The creation belongs to God, and he is reconciling all of it.

At this moment in history, this is good news like never before - and an unprecedented challenge. That’s because in less than 50 years, our earth has lost more than half of all of its mammals, fish, reptiles, and birds. They, who once flourished with their Creator’s blessing, have dwindled under the heavy hand of habitat destruction, pollution, and exploitation.

If the gospel of Emmanuel is to be good news to all things - then now is the time for that gospel to be proclaimed and lived like never before.

The full article is available here

5 Of The Most Problematic Christmas Carols - Bob Hiller

All I want for Christmas is you … to think critically about the songs you sing in church, even during Advent and Christmas.

This is the time of year where some of our weakest, most heterodox, and downright strange church songs get lots of attention. It is rather frustrating that these songs tend to be quite popular!

It's likely these songs will be sung in your church this season, despite the fact that they contain some significant flaws. Sentimentality and nostalgia are powerful emotions , but why can they be problematic in Advent?

Because a vital component of the story of Jesus' birth is that it wasn't all warm and fuzzy. It took place in the midst of real life pain, blood, poverty, imperial oppression, and discomfort. Jesus was fully human, and cloying fictional and sanitized stories can obscure or distract from this crucial understanding.

All I want for Christmas is you…to think critically about the songs you sing in church, even during Advent and Christmas.

(5) Do You Hear What I Hear? Here’s a song that is just trying too hard to be profound. Instead of propounding some penetrating spiritual insight, it merely creates a fictional game of telephone taking place on the night that Jesus was born.

(4) Away In A Manger. This song exemplifies one perpetual problem we find plaguing Christmas hymns: sentimental Gnosticism. There is something inside of us that doesn’t want to think of our Lord as being fully human. We want to clean him up. We think it impious and crass to speak of the holy infant as a baby who fills his holy diaper and keeps his parents up at night crying for milk.

(3) We Three Kings of Orient Are. Liturgically, this song doesn’t belong to Christmas either. The magi are men of Epiphany. In light of this, I am recommending that my church do an Epiphany Living Nativity. Only, in this one, instead of everyone standing around, reverently gazing at the baby Jesus doll, we’ll have six or seven overly costumed magicians chasing my two year old around our parking lot while Mary cooks dinner and Joseph has bad dreams.

(2) Little Drummer Boy. The story isn’t true, it's fiction. It also puts forth some works righteousness (do your best and then the baby Jesus will smile at you). But most crucially, it doesn't seem plausible that an exhausted, sore, and still pain-addled mother would let a drummer bang a snare drum for her newborn baby.

(1) Silent Night. The main idea of this song is not…well…true. The night when Jesus was born was not a silent or calm one, just as no human birth has ever been silent. Far from the Gnostic, sentimentalized picture of a baby with glorious beams of light shooting from his face, our Jesus was born into a loud, sinful, messy world in a loud, painful, and messy way. Mary gave birth next to a feeding trough.

Mary, The Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent - Rachel Held Evans

The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday "bigger and better." It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.

We like to paint Mary in the softer hues—her robes clean, hair combed and covered, body poised in prayerful surrender—but this young woman was a fierce one, full of strength and fury. When she accepts the dangerous charge before her, (every birth was risky in those days, this one especially so), rather than reciting a maternal blessing, Mary offers a prophecy, called the Magnificat.

With the Magnificat, Mary not only announces a birth, she announces the inauguration of a new kingdom, one that stands in stark contrast to every other kingdom—past, present, and future—that relies on violence and exploitation to achieve "greatness."

This is the stunning claim of the incarnation: God has made a home among the very people the world casts aside. And in her defiant prayer, Mary— an unwed, un-believed teenage girl in an occupied land—names this reality.

The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday "bigger and better." It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.

The full article is available here

Advent: Labor Pains In The Birth Of A New World - Shane Claiborne

Was There Really "No Room in the Inn"? - Mario Seiglie

A more authentic cultural understanding enhances the meaning of the story, rather than diminishing it.

We’ve grown up hearing the account that the “inn” in Bethlehem was full, with no “room” available, so Joseph and Mary ended up in a stable, with Jesus Christ born and laid in a manger there.

This image has been used to promote the typical Christmas nativity scene for generations. Yet a careful analysis of the biblical text reveals quite a different story!

This is important, because a more authentic cultural understanding enhances the meaning of the story, rather than diminishing it.

A typical translation of Luke 2:7 says about Mary giving birth to Jesus, “And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” 

The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word translated “inn” here is kataluma. It means a place of rest, usually a guest room. In fact, the same writer Luke uses this very word later where it clearly refers to a guest room and not an inn.

Furthermore, Luke elsewhere in his Gospel uses a different Greek word when he writes about an actual inn. 

While Jesus was conceived of God the Father through the Holy Spirit, his was nonetheless a typical birth for the common man of his day. Though God, he truly came as one of us.

Jesus was rejected at his birth by Herod, but the Bethlehem shepherds welcomed him with great joy, as did the common people in later years. The city of David was true to its own, and the village community provided for him. He was born among them, in the natural setting of the birth of any village boy, surrounded by helping hands and encouraging women's voices.

For centuries Palestinian peasants have been born on the raised terraces of the one-room family homes. The birth of Jesus was no different. His incarnation was authentic. His birth most likely took place in the natural place for a peasant to be born; in a peasant home.

The full article is available here

Chanukah & Christmas As We Approach Trump Presidency - Rabbi Michael Lerner

Reflection and Renewal: Not Pursuing or Believing In Peace (based on Isaiah 9:6)

God,

The birth of Jesus is an amazing reminder of how much you celebrate and value the world which you created. Thank you for your endless and all-encompassing love.

The angels who announced Jesus' birth sang of that love, which they proclaimed as a message of "peace on earth and goodwill to all."

But if we're honest, we need to confess that sometimes we don't think much beyond our own narrow interests. We all too easily fall into the trap of looking out for #1 and thinking that your world is one where we need to compete with our neighbor to get ahead.

Instead of taking the posture of sacrificial love - which brings about the kind of peace the angels sang about and Jesus taught - we try to achieve peace for ourselves through strength, power, and status.

Other times, we give up hope that peace and goodwill are even possible.  When we see the need and brokeness around us, we can become despairing and cynical.  We must confess that we often lack faith in your promises and your design for abundant life.

We need your help. Keep us open.  Keep us hoping.  Teach us to rest in you.

Amen.

The Work of Christmas - Howard Thurman

A Prayer For Justice Seekers at Advent - Do Justice!

Why We Need A Little Advent - Ben Irwin

Advent calls us to look upon the distress of our world and insists that we see the world as it is - that we see its brokenness and our part in it. Jesus' birth challenged (and continues to challenge) the legitimacy of an empire built upon slavery and coercion. 

We're not very good at waiting for Christmas - or lingering over it when it finally comes.

This may be because we're hoping for some kind of respite from the world, but somehow the payoff of Christmas feels hollow when we finally get there.

I believe the answer lies, in part, in allowing ourselves to fully experience Advent first.

Advent forces us to linger in the dark—even as we wait, sometimes impatiently, for our redemption. It’s only by lingering here that we can see the light of Christmas properly.

To experience the respite Christmas offers, we first have to understand: respite from what and for whom?

Advent calls us to look upon the distress of our world and insists that we see the world as it is - that we see its brokenness and our part in it. This can be challenging for those of us who’ve known nothing but privilege and power and comfort our whole lives.

Confronting the brokenness in our world means confronting the brokenness in our own hearts. It means confronting our complicity in systems that oppress, discriminate, or take away life.

Mary anticipated that her son would bring down rulers, lift up the humble, feed the hungry—and send the rich packing. His birth challenged (and continues to challenge) the legitimacy of an empire built upon slavery and coercion.

The angelic proclamation of “peace on earth” is not something we were supposed to just sit around and wait for. (No peace this year. Oh well… maybe next Christmas.) The Christmas proclamation is a vision we are called to embody.

The full article is available here