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Advent On Its Own Terms II

  • Lectio Divina
    • It's a slowing of reading texts - often repeating multiple times.
    • Often, it's a moment to engage more than just the intellect, but to engage the full body - to sense the text.
    • What are the sights, smells, tastes, sounds of a text? How are you living into it?
    • You can keep taking it further - looking for wrinkles in faces, feeling a hot sun after a long day's travel
    • It snaps us out of hearing the same text and letting them be rolls of spiritual wallpapers adorning an otherwise empty space.
  • Advent can be a lectio divina for our lives. Participation is demanded from us - stay awake!
  • The willingness to stay awake is not only about performing a task, but also the act of observation. To taste, feel, see.
  • This is especially important that, if we weren't careful, we won't see there might be a shift at play.
  • Luke gives us a who’s-who on people in the time before Jesus' ministry:
    • Emperor Tiberius - Roman billionaire, one of the greatest generals in Roman history
    • Pontius Pilate - the appointed governor of the area
    • Herod and Phillip - the rulers of the area, as vassals of Rome
    • According to Josephus (early Jewish historian), Caiaphas was appointed by Pontius Pilate after his father-in-law, Annas, was deposed.
    • They’ve made their appropriate connections, they’ve all become successful.
  • And for Luke, this is in part to provide a meticulous context for the time that we’re talking about, but I think it’s also important to notice the contrast.
    • The Word of God here doesn’t come to the people who have been the most successful here in this story.
    • It doesn’t even come to the ceremoniously appointed religious leaders.
    • It doesn’t come to the ones who have arrived, but instead the one in the wilderness.
      • John strikes me as a character in a bad bro-buddy film
      • And John is proclaiming (herald, making widely known) a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins
        • The activity was a moment for people to completely reconsider their lives: “a change of self that abandons former dispositions and results in a new self, new behavior, and regret over former behavior and dispositions”, and a “formal release from an obligation or debt"
        • Now, John says, is the time to really take a solid look at your wallpaper and bring it to the center. It's time to reshape the room.
    • The wildnerness is a place of vulnerability, of danger, of a need to have all ones sense piqued and not dulled by the droning of familiarity.
      • The wilderness is where we have to stay awake and active, observing and understanding
      • And it exactly where God's people learn to depend on God.
  • If we stay awake, and if we depend on God in the wilderness, we're going to start seeing places where valleys are being raised, and mountains lowering.
    • If we've dulled ourselves, and attempted to make ourselves invulnerable, any shifts to the topography will be made worse. It's like trying to drive with a poster on the windshield - it looks pretty and consistent, but move too much and you're going to crash.
    • Our NT passage demostrates how far folks will go to keep their stupor:
      • Paul has been proclaiming that "every need will bow and every tongue confess," and not to those put in power, but to Jesus Christ.
      • That kind of talk put Paul in prison, on the way to death.
      • But the hope he has for his beloved congregation in Philippi, which he won't see again, is that by
  • The Good News will not be heard by those desperately trying to keep their mountains high like a child maintaining a sand castle amidst a rising tide.
    • The gospel comes from the margins - from the wilderness, from vulnerability.
    • It comes from those who we'd rather not hear from, rather not invite to the center
    • And just as the sands begin to level themselves as the tide crests upon the mountain, so will the good news of justice provide abundance for those who do not have enough.
  • What is it like to lectio divina that kind of justice?
    • That the homeless are safe?
    • That the hungry are full?
    • That the poor have abundance?
    • That the those who hoard cannot keep their stores closed?
    • That those who are told they are not welcome by God are given the choice seat at the banquet?
    • What is it like to taste, smell, hear, witness justice?
    • It might feel like joy.