Discover the Liberating Christ: Shaking the Foundations of the World

Advent is our season of waiting and expectation for the coming of Jesus. We anticipate again the birth of the Christ-child at the same time as we look for his return in glory. The readings for the first Sunday of Advent, which we read last week, most explicitly call to mind Jesus coming into the world again. Reading several verses from late in the Gospel of Luke, we heard Jesus’ vision of the future, a future when the Human One would come in power and splendor.

This week, we turn primarily to the early chapters of Luke as we consider the initial coming of Jesus and all that would mean for the world. Even so, you may have noticed that Jesus doesn’t even get an explicit mention this week. As we consider the theme of peace, our focus is actually on Jesus’ cousin, John (see Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Luke 3:1-6).

What Gift Can We Bring: The Gift of Peace

This week, we continue to explore the gifts of Advent. The second week of Advent is often about Peace. In the time of Jesus, the Hebrew people were struggling under Roman rule and looking for peace in their lives. Into that world first came John the Baptist, calling the people to repentance and reminding them that God wants to forgive them.

According to the Gospel of Mark, the appearance of John is the beginning of the good news of Jesus (see Mark 1:1-8). Drawing primarily on Isaiah, Mark helps us to see John as the voice crying in the wilderness who heralds the coming of God into the world. John is in the world pointing to the one that is coming into the world. He is reminding us to listen to God's call to us, to listen to the call to forgive, to listen to the call to peace.

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As the calendar of the church year starts over, we also switch to a new primary gospel. Where our gospel readings over the last year were primarily drawn from Matthew, the next twelve months will see readings predominately from Mark. Mark is the shortest of the gospels and, most likely, the one written the earliest. Even though many of the stories found in Mark are also found in Matthew and Luke, one of the things we will begin to notice in the coming months is the way that Mark does things a bit differently.

Maybe some of you notice this difference with today’s readings. The stories surrounding the birth of Jesus that we are most familiar with come primarily from Matthew and Luke. Luke gives us the story of the angel visiting Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, the manger, and the shepherds. Matthew gives us an angel visiting Joseph, the magi, and the escape to Egypt. Even John gets some attention at Christmas by connecting Jesus to the creation story in Genesis.

But when we look to the first chapter of Mark, we step into a story already in progress. For Mark, “the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ” (Mark 1:1, CEB) is not in the story of Jesus’ birth, his genealogy, or his existence since the beginning of creation. For Mark, the good news about Jesus starts with John the Baptist. Mark is writing primarily for a faithful Jewish audience. His focus is not on miracles. His focus is instead on how Jesus is the Messiah, the one foretold in the prophets. So he begins his gospel by quoting the prophets.

What Gift Can We Bring: Peace

I was inspired this summer by a question asking how we can better connect the call to love God and others that has been central to worship here with the needs of our local community. It got me thinking about the Advent and Christmas seasons when we focus our attention on the gift of Jesus.

Inspired by the hymn, What Gift Can We Bring, and this question related to the mission of the church, I asked myself the question, how are we, as the body of Christ, still a gift to the world today? This inspired me to flip my focus in Advent this year. Rather than simply looking forward with expectation to the gift that God has given to us, I began to wonder how we as the church continue to make those gifts visible still today.

Drawing on the traditional themes of Advent (Peace, Hope, Joy, and Love) and the themes of Grace and Faith present in the season of Christmas, we will reflect this season on how we as the body of Christ continue to make these gifts known in our communities. On this first Sunday of Advent, we use the prophet Isaiah (see Isaiah 2:1-5) to help us reflect on the gift of God's peace.

Season of Creation: Storm Sunday

Today we consider the power of storms. God created this world in balance and set in motion the intricate machinery of our climate. Like the seas, we can sense the power held within a storm. It makes sense that we might equate the power and intensity of the storm with the power of God.

Looking to Psalm 29 we see how the Psalmist starts with the idea of God within the storm and then finally moves beyond that idea to the God that comforts us and strengthens us in the face of life's storms.

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I don't know about anyone else, but I love a good thunderstorm.

When I was in high school, my family had a pop-up camper trailer that sat in the yard by the house when we weren’t on a camping trip. I remember that most summers, we had a chance of storms coming through nearly everyday. Many times, the clouds would build with lots of lightning and thunder before it actually rained.

As the storms would build, I would go lay out on top of the camper and just look up at the clouds and watch the lightning jump around in the sky. Many times, it would look like fingers shooting out from one cloud to wrap around another. Or you would just see the flashes of the lightning buried deep inside the cloud, giving them an eerie glow.