Grief and Joy — Joy of Advent

  • December 12, 2022
  • /
  • Erin Newton

Scripture Focus: Ezra 3:11b-13
11b And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12 But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. 13 No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

Matthew 2:16-18
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

From John: Advent has parallels in many parts of scripture. We look forward this week to Erin’s reflections comparing the return of the exiles in Ezra to the truths of Christ’s coming at Christmas and to his second Advent which we also look forward to at this time of year.

Reflection: Grief and Joy — Joy of Advent
By Erin Newton

What if Christmas is not the greatest time of the year? What if there is nothing merry?

The holidays are marked by stress, depression, and anxiety. For Christians, it is a perplexing mix: joy for Jesus’ birth and the painful reality that December 25 does not end all sorrow.

As we read through Ezra, the Israelites return to the Promised Land. Exile was over. The temple, however, was in ruins. God’s dwelling place was a pile of rubbish.

The people set out to rebuild the temple, albeit in a more humble and meager size. When the foundations were laid, the response was mixed. The younger crowds rejoiced with praise and jubilation. The older crowds wept with grief.

For these older travelers, the journey has been traumatic and painful. In decades gone by, they had filled their hearts with dreams of a happy future. Solomon’s Temple, the first temple now in ruins, was majestic and praiseworthy. But all those dreams were cut down. Their lives had become beacons of pain and loss.

Yes, this new temple was worth celebrating but even this happy moment was a reminder of their grief.

Advent, too, holds both pain and joy.  Like those who would come to a pile of rubbish to worship God, the Magi visited the incarnate deity in a humble home. It was a time of celebrating and worshiping the newborn king.

Words of praise and joy were likely heard that night when the Magi came to visit. This new foundation had been laid. Not just a place to meet with God. But now it would be God with us!

Mary would cherish the honor and privilege of raising Jesus and caring for his mortal body. But other mothers would weep. Although Jesus had come, the world was still pierced with darkness. Herod’s pride would cause the death of innocent children and the grief of their parents.

We know that the season of Advent is a time to rejoice. We try to be happy. Holidays sometimes include a newly empty seat at the table. Sometimes the phone is silent because of severed relationships. Sometimes the financial burden of the holidays makes for a meager and sparse Christmas.

Advent is not the time to put away your grief. The joy of Advent has space for pain and sorrow. May we let the sound of joy and grief collide into one voice to our God.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it. — Psalm 118.24

Today’s Readings
Ezra 4 (Listen 4:27) 
Revelation 3 (Listen 3:53)

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Truth and Love — Love of Advent

  • December 9, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 3 John 5-8
5 Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers to you. 6 They have told the church about your love. Please send them on their way in a manner that honors God. 7 It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. 8 We ought therefore to show hospitality to such people so that we may work together for the truth.

Reflection: Truth and Love — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

The love we receive and the truth we believe, are to be passed on.

John’s third epistle is to a leader and friend, named Gaius. Gaius is faithful to the truth and faithful in showing love. John testifies that joy comes from the people of God walking in love and truth in this way. Truth and love go together. We cannot let go of love to hold up truth or let the truth be hidden as we lift up love. Both are needed and they are not in conflict.

This weekend, as we move into the 3rd week of Advent, let us pray that, like Gaius, we would pass on the love we receive. It is from this passing of love, this sharing of love, this walking in love that joy comes.

Prayer for Truth and Love
Let us pass on what you have given to us.

Jesus, you came so we could become like you. 
You took our sins, so we could take your righteousness.
You entered our darkness so we could enter your light.
You became poor so we could become rich.

You came, in love, to show us the truth.
You testified, in truth, that God is love.
You gave us a simple command: follow me.

Let us follow you in sowing with tears so that we may join you in reaping with joy.
Let what you have given us be planted in us and take root.
May the stalk emerge and the fruit ripen.
May the seeds of hope, love, joy, and peace be spread with abandon to all around us.
May we share in the nourishment of your bread and water of life.

Make us instruments of your peace.
Make us prophets of your hope.
Make us singers of your love.
Make us founts of your joy.

In each season of the year, let us share in hospitality, the bounty you give us.
Let truth and love be served in equal portions and in plentiful amounts.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Know this: the Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. — Psalm 100.2

Today’s Readings
Ezra 1 (Listen 2:03)
3 John (Listen 1:51)

This Weekend’s Readings
Ezra 2 (Listen 5:25) Revelation 1 (Listen 3:43)
Ezra 3 (Listen 3:01) Revelation 2 (Listen 3:43)

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Beyond Pen and Ink — Love of Advent

  • December 8, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 2 John 12
12 I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

Reflection: Beyond Pen and Ink — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

John, the beloved disciple, is the most artistic and visionary writer of the New Testament. Unlike Luke’s chronological, journalistic approach, John chooses and arranges the signs Jesus performs like a playwright arranging the scenes of a play. Events are presented in the order of John’s artistic argument. When the curtain comes down, John’s artistic statement is complete. (John 20.30-31; 21.24-25)

For such a skilled and expressive writer, in his epistles, John lays more emphasis on seeing people in person. The technology of his age is dismissed in both this letter and the next. (2 John 12; 3 John 13) “Paper and ink” or “pen and ink” get dropped in preference to spending time face to face.

It’s popular to diss technological means of connection. Zoom, Facebook, and other social media are constantly targeted with critique. Much of it is deserved. Pretty much everyone, even the technology companies themselves, agree that we use screens and tech more than we should. Many also blame the degradation of our debates online on the dehumanization of interacting via text on a screen.

As much as I have devoted my life to writing, I have to acknowledge that reading words or writing words sometimes isn’t enough. Perhaps the ideas are too complex and the time (or word count) too short. Sometimes it is because I make mistakes. Sometimes it is because I am misunderstood. But often, it is just what John says; some things are better, face to face. 

This is one of the reasons for the incarnation. The Bible, even just the Torah without the New Testament, is a beautiful testimony of God’s love. But Jesus’s birth takes that testimony beyond pen and ink.

God could have continued to write to us, through prophets and priests, and scribes. But what he wanted to say couldn’t be said with pen and ink. He needed to touch lepers and write words in the dirt that spared an adulteress. He needed to walk through Samaria. He needed to mourn death. He needed to wash dirty feet. He needed to bleed.

What God has to say to you, through Advent, through the church, and through the scriptures, goes beyond pen and ink. In a miraculous way, when gathered face to face with believers, Jesus is there among us. Give that face-to-face love to one another this season and throughout the year.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Show us the light of your countenance, O God, and come to us. — Psalm 67.1

Today’s Readings
Esther 9-10 (Listen 6:25)
2 John (Listen 1:50)

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By Water and Blood — Love of Advent

  • December 7, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 5.6
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ.

John 3.5-6
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

Reflection: By Water and Blood — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

The coming of Jesus was long awaited. Afterward, it was long debated. Conflicts arose about the nature of Christ’s coming, especially among those who had prior beliefs about the world that they were unwilling to give up.

Gnostics believed flesh and matter were evil and only spirit was pure. God, a spirit, becoming flesh was unfathomable. They tried to find ways to explain the coming of Jesus without letting go of their preconceived beliefs. Perhaps Jesus was just an illusion? Perhaps a spirit that only appeared to have a body?

John pokes holes in these arguments just like Thomas poked his fingers into the holes in Jesus’ side and hands. Jesus came by water, a symbol for spirit, and by blood, a symbol of life and of death.

If Jesus only “appeared” on Earth, instead of living here, then Advent’s love is an illusion and a half-truth. But John assures us that this is not true. The Incarnation, John testifies, was not a Zoom call, or a holodeck adventure, or an experience in augmented reality. John touched, saw, heard, and believed in Jesus. The Jesus John loved (John 13.23), was not some phantasm. He was a physical, sweaty, sometimes napping, mud-making, foot-washing, blood-sweating Jesus. (Mark 4.38; John 9.11; 13.12; Luke 22.44) 

When placed in the hay as a baby, his tender skin itched. When he got a splinter in his father’s carpentry shop, his small fingers bled. When angry enough to swing a whip in the Temple, blood rushed to his face. When he stood at a friend’s grave, his guts roiled with emotion and tears rolled down his cheeks. When he knelt in the garden, his mind clouded with stress, anxiety, and fear as blood burst from his capillaries through his skin. When the soldiers punched him, their knuckles raised fleshy bruises. When they pulled out his beard, the blood and hair stuck to their hands and clothes.

Jesus was real. This means his love is real too. The love Jesus has for us is not some long-distance affection. He came close. His love for us is visceral and he lived that love out with passion in our physical world. He will come close to us if we draw close to him. You probably aren’t a Gnostic (although Gnostic-ish concepts are popular in our culture). However, you might have to let go of some cultural beliefs as you draw closer to Jesus.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Matthew 5.6

Today’s Readings
Esther 8 (Listen 3:41)
1 John 5 (Listen 3:00)

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Another Love Chapter — Love of Advent

  • December 6, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 4.7-16
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 

1 Corinthians 13.13
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Reflection: Another Love Chapter — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

If asked about the Bible’s “Love Chapter”, most probably think of 1 Corinthians 13. Paul’s poem on love is well known for its beauty even outside of Christianity. I read it in literature classes. But there is another love chapter. 1 John 4 is the Apostle John’s.

What these chapters have in common is not sentimentality. They explore the serious implications of sound theology. Paul praises love as greater than any miraculous gift of the Spirit. John identifies love as the surest marker of one who belongs to God and knows God.

This entire chapter of John is about testing. After challenging his readers to “test the Spirits” by whether they testify to Christ’s full, bodily incarnation, John gives us a test for ourselves and for others: Are we loving? If we are not, John says, we do “not know God.”

Why is love the key John uses to open a door to God’s nature? Why does John choose love as the litmus test of identity for the people of God? Shouldn’t God’s nature be about power, glory, and honor? Shouldn’t Christian identity center on purity, holiness, or doctrinal alignment? 

It’s not that John is unconcerned about God’s glory or about doctrine. John’s gospel goes to greater lengths than others to emphasize the glorious divinity of Christ. John is also the loudest voice against gnosticim in scripture, defending the full and complete humanity of Jesus.

John’s concern is that our doctrines lead to actions that either testify to God’s glory or not. Right belief is best tested by right actions. Orthodoxy must lead to orthopraxy. If we don’t live in love, we don’t live in God. If we won’t love those we can see, our claim to love God whom we have not seen is in doubt.

John, who saw and touched Jesus (1 John 1.1), the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1.15), tells us that “in this world we are like Jesus.” One purpose of Christ’s advent was to show what God is like. The Holy Spirit’s advent in our hearts shares that purpose. If we don’t love, we are quenching the Spirit, misrepresenting God, and distorting his image.

Let us not just anticipate Jesus’ love for us this Advent, but proclaim it to others. Let Advent be an evangelistic imperative to invite others to see and experience the love of God.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
Keep me, Lord, as the apple of your eye and carry me under the shadow of your wings.

Today’s Readings
Esther 7 (Listen 2:08)
1 John 4 (Listen 2:58)

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