It's been great doing this Advent Conspiracy sermon series and Bible study with the people of Greenfield Presbyterian! It has once again grown me in my own walk and challenged me to continue to look beyond myself, and look to Jesus for what is REALLY important during this season, and always. I look forward to growing further with this awesome group of people in the new year!
Christmas blessings to all,
~Sally
Greenfield Presbyterian 12-18-11
As we come to our last Sunday in this Advent Conspiracy we look back at how we’ve been challenged to Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and now Love All.
And what does love look like? What does it really mean to Love All?
God doesn’t expect us to just know how to love. He showed us how to love when He came to live among us...
Our scripture this morning gives us a taste of what love looks like...
When God chose to live among us He didn’t come as some wealthy king or influential soldier.
He was despised and rejected by men...familiar with suffering
He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows
He was literally pierced for our transgressions...crushed for our sins...
...the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him
the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all
He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
God so loved the world that He gave His only son...
We really don’t know love like that in the world that we live in!
A love so selfless, that any power that might have been used to make His life easier was set aside,
for His entire life!!
(Not just for a little while...a few days...a year even
...but His whole life)
...So that we could be spared the eternal consequences of our sinfulness, and so we could know life here and now in a different way. In a way that isn’t dependent on the things that this world says it’s dependent on.
Because Jesus came as He did, we can discover and live in a joy so deep and so abiding, that nothing on this earth can compare or even come close to recreating it.
And that joy comes from the love of God - as much as we can comprehend that kind of love... And it comes from loving others in the same way that God has loved us.
For some reason many of us struggle with that second part. I think it’s because sometimes we struggle with the first part!
Because you see, in order to give well...we need to first be able to receive well...
Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Luke that he has been, “anointed to preach the good news to the poor.” And guess what? We’re all poor!
We need to be able to not only grasp that Jesus paid the price for our sins so that we can live eternally with God beyond this life...but that Jesus paid that price so that we can live with ourselves within this life!
Sometimes we hold on to all sorts of junk from our childhood or later...
Messages that we heard (and even continue to hear) that tell us that we aren’t worth the effort, that we aren’t good enough, that whatever we do falls short of whoever it was or is that we need to have the approval and acceptance from.
This person could be long gone...but we still live out our lives trying to please the image that they put in front of us of what we’re supposed to be...
Jesus came to live among us.
...loved, and healed, and saved...suffered and died on the cross, and rose three days later, conquering even death - so that we can know - beyond any doubt or message - that we are loved and accepted. Forever. Just as we are...right this second.
Not...”only if I do this...” or “but I have to do that first...”
Just as we are - even if we had done absolutely nothing.
It’s a life-changing, mind-blowing, direction-altering LOVE! And all we have to do is accept it. Live into what it means to be loved SO unconditionally...so totally...and then experience the joy of sharing that love with others who haven’t yet experienced it.
Jesus came into the world poor to heal and save the entire world. And we are called, not just to love those near us - in our own circles of friends and family - but to love those outside of that circle as well.
Jesus was more than just an activist when He came to live among us, and He expects us to be more than just activists as well. He expects us to be active agents of God’s love in the world...and there are many ways to love others!
We’ve talked in the the past few weeks of ways that we can love others...
We Spend Less and use the money saved to help others more vulnerable, less fortunate, who have less resources and opportunity at their disposal;
We give more relational gifts to those who we do give gifts to - gifts of time, presence, and more meaningful relationship...
Jesus came to give righteousness to those who don’t deserve it and did nothing to earn or merit it...He came to give righteousness to the poor...
So looking at all this, can Christmas change the world?
Can Jesus change the world?
If we truly believe and live into God’s offer of love and relationship, how can we not pass it along to others - and THAT will change everything!
My Missiology professor, Dr. Sunquist, was telling us just this last week in class how Christmas is such a wonderful opportunity for outreach! He was saying how there are so many people around us who are without family, friends or anyone during the holiday season and it’s a prime opportunity to reach out to them in the love of Christ.
He makes a point of reaching out to people from Asian nations who are in America for school or have just moved here recently and have no family. Sometimes he meets them through being on the seminary campus, because we also house many Asian students who attend Pitt. on our campus. Or many times he meets them at his church because they sometimes will attend churches because they are curious and/or see it as another opportunity to learn English.
So Dr. Sunquist and his wife open their home on Christmas Day and have a family or few individuals from China or Malaysia or Korea or Vietnam in their home, and they tell them about Jesus and why they celebrate Christmas the way they do.
I have to tell you that my husband is another one who, every once in awhile, will get a nudging from the Holy Spirit to act when maybe during other times he normally wouldn’t.
Kim told me of an opportunity he had just the other day at work at the Apple Store. He was working with a family who had just arrived from Turkey.
They didn’t know anyone and had absolutely no connections. As he got to talking with them he found out that they were Christians and weren’t doing anything for Christmas, and so with the nudging of the Holy Spirit, he invited them to our home for Christmas.
They didn’t accept, but more to the point...the invitation was made. Kim shared the love of Christ simply by inviting them to be a part of our day, by showing hospitality.
I’m always so amazed when he does stuff like that - and I’m always so certain of the work of the Holy Spirit in it, because my husband is not usually the one in our household who is the big social, invite people over to the house kind-of-guy!
Christmas is our opportunity to love as we have been loved. Our opportunity to love and care for the poor - whether they look similar to us - or whether they look very different from us.
We can love others individually or we can love others as a church! We can gather with other organizations or other churches and join God in what He is already doing in the world.
Jesus tells us that whatever we do for one of the least of these children of mine, you do for me.
So the Advent Conspiracy isn’t just about individuals or single churches sharing with others about who Jesus is, it’s about the entire body of Christ at work in the world.
It’s hard for us to imagine, with our little jar of donations, how we will make an impact for clean drinking water...
But when we partner with other people and churches, the impact can be significant - and our contribution, even though it might not be as large as others, still plays a part in making a very real difference in the lives of people who don’t have clean water to drink!
Think of what can be done if we open our eyes further to the needs of this community and the world around us...and what can be done if we intentionally partner with other churches and organizations in the community and world.
The poor, the vulnerable and the outcast will be seen and heard and touched and fed - not out of guilt...but as an act of worship!
The Good News is for all people. (pause)
We’re all poor, blind, imprisoned...but we’ve been given a gift, and called to enter a broken world and love differently.
Advent has become bigger...and the story is still being written.
When we learn and start loving others unexpectedly, it causes them to reexamine everything in their lives.
Loving people as God loves us catches people by surprise! They don’t expect, in this broken and many time depressing world, to be loved by others - especially others who don’t even know them!
Two examples. Any of you who went caroling last Sunday...remember some of the reactions we received from people? They thought we were looking for donations, and when we told them that we didn’t want their money, that we were just caroling to bless them...they didn’t know what to do with that! They were shocked.
The other was just yesterday. A few of us from the seminary went caroling at a small care center that’s across the street from the seminary. We sang some carols in a couple of the dining areas, and then we went around to some individual rooms where the people don’t leave their rooms much.
One woman, Mary, was so happy that we had come to sing for her. Then she shared with us that this was just what she needed because she had just received bad news that her friend, who has cancer, had just found out that her daughter also had cancer and didn’t have long at all to live... What do we do with that?!
Well, we sang a couple more songs, and then I asked if we could pray for her. I prayed for her breaking heart and those of her friend and her friend’s daughter, for God’s love and presence and peace and hope to surround them all...and as we left she was so thankful that we had come.
For each of us that were there, we felt like we were moved to carol at that care center, that day, just to sing for Mary. If nothing else, we knew that we were a blessing to her yesterday, and in turn her smile, and tears, and appreciation blessed us as well.
That is loving others. Connecting with people in ways that say, “I don’t know you, but you too are a child of God, and I want to share the kind of love with you that He has shared with me...and it’s amazing...you’re gonna love it...and I can’t wait for you to experience it with me!”
God initiates. The Incarnation is God becoming flesh and blood in Jesus Christ - so He could live with us, so He could experience all that we experience, so He could show us a better way, and so He could pay our debt and free us from all guilt and shame to live freely in His love....not just in life eternally, but in this life - here and now.
May this Advent season, this Advent Conspiracy be a catalyst that helps each of us to live a little differently...not just during Advent, but from here on out!
May it help us to Worship more Fully, Spend Less on things that don’t really matter, Give More with things that DO really matter, and Love All in the same way as the One who loves each one of us unconditionally.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit we pray that this may be so....Amen.
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