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Years ago, on the third Sunday of Advent when we lit the joy candle, I had a terrible experience leading worship. I was newly ordained and it was one of the first times I served communion. When I went to break the loaf of bread, I discovered one of the elders had unintentionally bought a thickly buttered loaf of garlic bread.

Instantly, this sacred moment that I had anticipated for years turned into an embarrassing disaster. The people in the congregation understood, some even found it humorous. But, for me, it was anything but joyful.

All these years later, though, it’s become a defining moment of my ministry, and an experience that I treasure. That loaf of garlic bread helped me to learn that what we do on Sunday mornings isn’t a performance. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be real. Our unavoidable human failures can never empty God’s sacred gifts of their power. All these years later, this story does bring me joy.

Friends, the truth is that no matter how many years pass, much of the very real suffering and loss of this pandemic will never bring us joy. And, there is no real comparison to my story of garlic bread and what we are all enduring now. But, still I wonder—will some of the things that most challenge and disturb us now come to be memories we’ll someday treasure? Will some of the pain we feel now birth a wisdom and maturity that we might come to rejoice over in time?

Maybe this is the year we receive sacred joy—a defiant joy that springs up, even as we grieve and are afraid. Maybe this is the year we find the joy that Mary found when she discovered the astonishing truth that God was with her and that no word of God would ever fail.

I hope, especially if you are overwhelmed and angry and mourning and scared, that you’ll listen in to this message about joy. Even on your own you can light a candle for joy—together, we’ll discover that what God is doing is greater and stronger than anything that threatens us in these hard days.

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This Sunday we light the candle of peace and rejoice that our savior is the Prince of Peace. But like everything else about Jesus, this peace doesn’t look the way we expect it to look. Jesus’ approach to peace is gloriously different than our own.

When we start thinking about peace, it doesn’t take long before we are cursing our enemies. After all, our peacelessness is their fault. If only the world were full of people like us, we would already have peace. We wouldn’t even need a savior.

The world, of course, is filled with people exactly like us, and so we desperately need a savior. 

And the glory of God comes down to show us a new way to peace, one that doesn’t require the participation or destruction of our enemies. It’s the path that John the baptist blazed through the wild spaces, far from the temple in Jerusalem—the word that drew all those seeking for more out into the desert. That word, that path, is repentance.

We hope you’ll listen in as we discover how the prophet’s call to our ancestors is for us as well. The way to peace still begins with repentance. This is the road that leads to new life in Christ.

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For us, it’s not beginning to look a lot like Christmas. For us, it is the holy season of Advent—and it has never been more important, more healing, to understand the difference.

Of course, we are tired and scared and overwhelmed, which makes it seem like exactly the time to string lights, drink hot chocolate, watch predictable Christmas movies, and buy things for those we love. And there is nothing evil or wrong about any of these things—but they won’t bring us the healing, hope, and peace that our souls are starved for.

We need Advent—these weeks of looking at the world as it is, all creation groaning as if in labor. We need these weeks to name and grieve what is broken. A season, not for shutting out the world and making wishes but, for the Spirit to call us to open our eyes and look soberly at reality—a reality that can’t be fixed with candy canes or even Congress itself.

We hope you’ll join us by listening in to this Advent series. But don’t come expecting choirs of angels singing—come expecting apocalypse. Because, before we can rejoice in what is coming, we first have to see what is. Only then— when we wake up and see how devastatingly complete the Fall is—can we find real hope. The kind of defiant hope that watches and waits for our Savior who has overcome the world and is making all things—ALL THINGS—new.

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Have you ever noticed that life’s not fair?

Of course you have, we all do. Usually, we notice it when we come out on the short end of the stick. God’s not fair, either. Because God is compassionate and generous, we get not what we deserve, but what we need.

Yes, life isn’t fair. But, the good news is that, with God, we get more than we deserve. And yet, the good news doesn’t end there. The wild and amazing part about all of this is that as we journey with Jesus, we, too, become more compassionate and generous.

We hope that you’ll listen in as Rev. Dr. Stuart Dugan invites us to ponder the mystery of this good news, and what it means for our collective journey with Jesus.

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This week we Journey with Jesus on his forty-day fast in the wilderness where he faced temptation to reject his own humanity and the limitations that came with it. In some ways it’s an odd story.

• Why would Jesus pursue solitude in the wilderness, rather than pursuing acclaim following his baptismal coming-out party?
• What is the significance of Jesus rejecting the shortcuts to food, security, and power that the devil offered?
• How can this story help us answer the question of how we are called to embrace our own humanity?

We hope that you’ll listen in as we welcome our friend Rev. Cedric Lundy to the pulpit and lean into the life and journey of Jesus, in all his humanity.

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This Sunday, we begin a new series to explore our Journey With Jesus. And, this week, we’re talking about one thing we all face on the journey of faith…

FEAR.

Throughout the Bible, God says do not be afraid. It’s one of the most frequent commands in the Bible. And, though we’ve heard this word—time and time again—day in and day, we still find ourselves entangled in fear.

The problem with fear is that what we fear, we follow. And what we fear, we obey. 

So, how do we live as truly free people? How do we live unafraid in the midst of raging storms? How do we journey with Jesus, hearing and following and trusting the voice of our good shepherd and true savior? 

Listen in and hear this good word from our dear friend, Pastor Eulando Henton. 

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What does the Lord require of us? In a never-ending season of uncertainty, this has never and will never change: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. Together, these three are the beautiful way of life the grace of Jesus Christ equips us to walk.

Kindness and justice are accessible words;they are part of our everyday lexicon. Even if we don’t properly understand them, they are words we use. Words we affirm. Everyone claims to be on the side of justice. Everyone claims to be kind.  

But humility? Miss us with that one.

Humility is an antiquated word. Maybe our ancestors sought to be humble, but we are the Hamilton era. We’re not gonna miss our shot—we’re determined to make our mark. We might not know exactly what humility means, but we’re still pretty sure we’re not interested in having it.

And we’re wrong. Really wrong. Dead wrong.

I hope you’ll join us virtually and listen in to find out why this humility (that we don’t want) is exactly what we need.

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God requires something of us. Three somethings, actually, according to the prophet Micah; to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. That is the beautiful way that the gospel of John is talking about when it declares that Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life.” The good news is that, whatever God requires us to do, God gives us the grace to accomplish. So what is this beautiful way that God is inviting and empowering us to walk into?  

This week, we talk about kindness. Kindness is having a marketing moment right now—t-shirts, mugs, Instagram filters. But there’s a backlash as well. Does loving kindness mean we have to focus on making everyone around us happy all the time? Does loving kindness mean we have to throw our healthy boundaries out the window? Many times, people experience talk of injustice as divisive and hostile, so is there even a way to do justice and love kindness at the same time?

The key to answering these questions comes in exploring the uncomfortable kindness practiced by Ruth and recognizing that our understanding and God’s understanding of kindness is not the same. 

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Jesus calls us to new life. When we are filled with his Spirit, we become totally new creations. And it is grace that gives us the power to live the way the Lord calls us to—the beautiful way. We become new, but the beautiful way is not new. It’s the same way God was teaching Adam and Eve when he walked with them in the cool of the evenings. It’s the same way of living laid out in the covenant God gave Moses on Mount Sinai. It’s the same way the judges and prophets continually called the people to return to. The beautiful way of living is to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God. It’s the old way that, by the power of the Spirit, makes us new. But what does it mean to do justice? No one consciously chooses injustice over justice. We all find a way to justify ourselves—to define justice in a way that proves our actions are just. But how do we know that what seems like justice in our eyes is, in fact, justice in God’s eyes? We turn to scripture. The Bible reveals to us clearly what justice looks like in a fallen and broken world (hint: it usually looks like good news for the powerless, not the powerful). I hope you will listen in as we explore the story of Naboth’s vineyard and discover how God intervenes through a prophet to demand justice of a King.

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This Sunday, we begin a new worship series called “The Beautiful Way,” a four-part exploration of the way Jesus calls us to live. And the whole month is going to center on just ONE verse from the book of the prophet Micah:

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.

I remember singing these words in one of the first songs I learned in church choir. I bet you’ve learned a version of it yourself, have worn it on a t-shirt, or have hung it on a wall somewhere. In the coming weeks, we’ll break down what it means to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. But in our haste to get to the beautiful words, let’s not skip past the really surprising part.

Does God require something of us?

Doesn’t Jesus’ death and resurrection mean that we have an amazing grace that frees us of obligations? Isn’t God in the business of loving us no matter what? If we are saved by grace, how can we be required to do anything?

This is another one of those scary news/good news situations. The scary news is that we are God’s people and, as such, God requires things of us. But the good news of the gospel is that whatever God requires of us, God’s grace will empower us to accomplish.

Listen in to hear more about how beautiful it is to live this way.

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