preaching: Advent I: Hope

Sermon text: Isaiah 2:1-5

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

Download a Reading Plan and Devotional here: http://www.allgather.org/advent/.

Check out the upcoming 'Christmas Nights' record here: http://www.allgather.bandcamp.com/.

Christmas Eve Service

If you're around Durham/Chapel Hill on Christmas Eve,

come join the Gathering Church at 6pm

for a special candlelight service.

allgather.org

Advent Week 4: You Have Stirred My Soul

Brett sang this one by Robbie Seay Band following our incredible children's recital and sermon. It really captures the soul-stirring we've read about in Mary's experience, Elizabeth's pregnancy, and Zechariah's prophesy. Perhaps my favorite is the last line, "To you this love be given back." As we ponder the attitude, emotion and posture of our love in response to the soul-stirring, in-breaking love of God, may this be our prayer...

You Have Stirred My Soul

You have stirred my soul I am overwhelmed

At how this came to be That I would know such love

You have stirred my soul

Not by my own deed

But your sacrifice It has made me whole

And love more beautiful today

With offerings of grace

You're calling me away

And love more beautiful today

I am not the same

You're calling me away

To you

To you our voices rise

To you our spirits rise

To you this love be given back

Screening: Sad Santa

Advent season, at it's best, forces us to make room for the manger-born Messiah (the God-man) whose birth was foretold by an angel to a virgin in a backwoods Middle-Eastern town. Bearing the ridiculousness of each part of that last sentence in mind, we might do well during this time to look upon casual things which we normally would take for granted through a bit more of a critical (but ultimately sensitive) lens. When we do this, the lustre often fades, the appeal is fleeting, and the foolish things shame the wise (1 Cor 1:27).

I present to you, not a smeared portrayal of Santa, making obvious what you are supposed to feel; but rather a realistic and infinitely more unsettling imaging of a symbol of something much larger. Could we use this technique more? Instead of tactlessly calling idols out, might we powerfully but subtly reveal these untruths for the disappointing counterfeits they are; trusting the Spirit and letting people figure it out for themselves?

www.theworkofthepeople.com/

Advent Week 3: Here Comes the Sun Again

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter

Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

and I say it's alright

We managed our second George Harrison song for worship at church within the last month this past Sunday. It was fun singing "Here Comes the Sun" (and no we didn't opt to change the U to an O, to make it more holy), and the mood correlated well to both the atmosphere of Joy as we lit the pink Candle on the Advent wreath and the joy emanating from the children and families as we had our first Child Dedication.

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

and I say it's alright

While I'm not involved in any way with producing the music, which is great and done brilliantly by Jeff and his merry men (& occasionally women), I am involved with worship planning. Thus, I must apologize. Not for the song, I stand behind the song for this week and this season. I apologize instead for my failure to communicate how this song accurately depicts what is happening during Advent. It was not merely picked to satiate some sort of Abbey Road void or be that kitsch-factor for an upstart church without a lot of rules (though it probably accomplished both). So I apologized if it appeared novel for the sake of novelty or cool for the sake of coolness.

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it's alright

It's alright

It's rare that we can sing a worship song using "little darling" with a straight face, but I think we can her. Far from being a merely sentimental bit of (as my high school history teacher used to put it) froth, this delicate affection comes to us from God in a time of cold, darkness, sadness, and despair. God, the 'Lifter-of-heads', then comes and whispers affectionately to us in our hoping and waiting, "Little darling...here comes the Sun...it's alright." This isn't something only the Beatles knew, but is actually the modus operandi of God throughout the history of his relationship to his people. Our job in during Advent (which can be woodenly translated: 'the arrival of a notable person, thing or event') is to not lose hope, and above all, to remember the cold, dark winter before Christ came initially as the Light of world & in preparation and expectation for His second coming in Glory.

To this expectation I share Matt Ward's brilliant addendum:

Kingdoms and queens they all bow down to you,

Branches and ranch hands are bowin' too

And I've taken off my straw hat for you, singing

Here comes the sun again

The leaves on the trees they all call out your name,

Chrome on the freight line shines the same

And the stars in their cars roll their tops down for you singing,

Here comes the sun again

Oh but if you're gonna stay show some mercy today

Blow a little breeze on my face

Snow banks drift down the hillside for you,

Slides inside sandy river before the day is through,

And before evenin' falls I may find myself there too, singing

Here comes the sun again

Isaiah 60:1-5, 19-21 (emphasis mine)

1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult, because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.

Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Make us an expectant people, hopeful and comforted by you. Light us, warm us, grow us with your presence. Amen.

Here Comes The Sun - Nina Simo...

Here Comes the Sun Again - M. ...

Advent Week 2: "The Irreverent Doctrine of the Incarnation"

In the preface of the Phillips Bible paraphrase (kind of a precursor to the Message), CS Lewis offers a word relating the bible text to the incarnation. He likens the particularity and style of the Greek text as betraying its writers of not being necessarily in full command of the language of our sacred Text. Here is an unique and interesting thought and meditation for our Advent preparation and bible-reading.

"Does this shock us? It ought not to, except as the Incarnation itself ought to shock us. The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby in a peasant-woman's breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorized Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as an earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ's life) are of a different sort: miles deeper and further in."

O God,

you wonderfully created

and yet more wonderfully restored

the dignity of human nature;

grant that we may share the divine life

of your Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God now and for ever.

Amen.

Advent Week 1: Hope

“Learning how to wait as a people of nonviolence in a world of war, you’ll know what Advent is. Advent is patience. It’s how God has made us a people of promise in a world of impatience, and Christ has made that possible — for us to live patiently in a world of impatience.”

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a wonder at the wisdom and power of Your Father and ours. Receive my prayer as part of my service of the Lord who enlists me in God's own work for justice.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a hunger for peace: peace in the world, peace in my home, peace in myself.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me a joy responsive to the Father's joy. I seek His will so I can serve with gladness, singing and love.

Come, long-expected Jesus. Excite in me the joy and love and peace it is right to bring to the manger of my Lord. Raise in me, too, sober reverence for the God who acted there, hearty gratitude for the life begun there, and spirited resolution to serve the Father and Son.

I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, whose advent I hail. Amen.

Christmas Day Ruminations...

This video is particularly poignant for today as we celebrate the King of Kings and Lord of Lords taking on flesh and poverty. The beauty of this is in its simplicity and humility.

May your Christmas day be thought-provoked, joyous, relational, hopeful, self-less, and a startling paradigmatic shift for the new year of greatest as least and least as greatest.

Thomas Merton may have coined or at least popularized the phrase the 'no man is an island', but indeed our Savior 'peninsulizes' us to our brother and most importantly to God.

Praise the Word Made Flesh.

jamming: Sufjan Stevens- Songs for Christmas

Hark!
I've been playing this box set (or at least an assembled iTunes subset playlist of this box set) all advent long. It has, since last Christmas, become my favorite compilation of Christmas tunes, both serious and reverent and fresh and wacky. Sufjan's ability to merge plaintive banjos with exuberent trumpets and xylophones to represent the entire spectrum of this season is notable. I've enjoyed this especially during lent because of his renditions of some classic hymnody that really counters the shopping mall norm of snowmen and chestnuts with anticipation, hope, & peace. Don't get me wrong these discs are not void of santas and sleighbells, but the proportion of attention and attentiveness to advent and the coming incarnation of God is beautiful and welcomed.

Here are a few of the tracks that have found extended play in my house, car, and head:
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
We Three Kings
Angels We Have Heard On High
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!
Holy, Holy, Holy
O Holy Night
Star Of Wonder
Joy To The World
Lo! How A Rose E'er Blooming
Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing
The First Noel
Once In Royal David's City
The Incarnation
I Saw Three Ships
Amazing Grace
Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming

decking the halls...

no time to write anything, therefore i'll resort to audio-visual.