Hygge, the Incarnation, and Why I Love Advent with Pastor Ryan Braley

And let's pray.

God, we give you thanks this morning for your presence here with us and for your light and love and for your hope that you offer us into the world.

God, would you bless us this morning as we gather for worship and explore these words, and, god, would you soften our hearts in all the ways that we need it and give us hope in all the ways that we need it.

We ask for your grace and mercy to abound in our lives, and would you prepare our hearts for Advent, god, this season of anticipation and longing and waiting, and would you help us to wait and to wait expectantly, and would you bless us as we gather for worship in Jesus' name.

Amen, and may you be seated.

Good morning everyone.

One quick piece of housekeeping.

I want to invite each of you to our central bowling night and that's going to be on January 11th from 6 to 8 o'clock at River City Extreme.

If you've never been there, it's a pretty awesome place.

You're all welcome to come After every Christmas.

We want to invite everyone, especially if you're new or kind of hanging around or checking out Central for the first time come and meet some people, and we figured what better way than to go bowling together Because bowling is like the great equalizer, because usually we all equally stink at bowling.

Are you with me, unless you're a professional bowler?

Any of those in the house today, okay, I didn't think so.

So we're all just below average as bowlers.

So it's kind of a fun way to come and make fun of ourselves and humiliate ourselves.

And kids are welcome too.

They don't really care, they're used to that kind of thing.

So, anyway, come that night.

You can register online and be a part of that and you can invite a friend, a neighbor, a loved one, an enemy, I don't care, invite anybody.

You can join in calendars and join us for that.

We're an Advent and we are doing a new series.

We're calling it Advent by the Books, and what we mean by that is this.

So every you know a lot of churches will kind of govern themselves around the calendar year using a church calendar.

We more or less do that.

We're not super, you know, stringent about it, but we do.

We have Advent Lent, you know, last week was Christ the King Sunday.

We have all these different holidays that we celebrate as a church.

By the way, the church New Year is today.

This is the beginning of the New Year.

So we celebrate a New Year when Advent begins, not when January 1 begins, because of the newness of life that Jesus sort of brings to the world, but also one of the things that regulates the preaching schedule is this book called the lectionary.

Have I heard of the lectionary?

Okay, a couple.

Yeah, okay, fair enough, it's just a book that they began like.

It's a book that kind of takes you through the whole scripture and every Sunday you preach on a certain text and they kind of assign you a text.

And so we thought it'd be fun for Advent anyway to preach from the lectionary.

And so both Sonia and I have picked out a couple of our favorite lectionary Advent scriptures, and mine was the one you'd heard about Romans, about a New Day dawning, and it's a famous Advent scripture.

I don't want to talk about that a little bit this morning.

And I love Advent because Advent, to me, helps me make sense of how I experience the world.

So here's what Advent is.

I kind of already briefly mentioned it, but Advent is this time before Christmas where we make room for Jesus and we sort of carve out space and time to make ourselves ready for Christmas and the gift that comes in the manger.

That happened 2,000 years ago.

So we look back in that way and remember that beautiful story in that holy night.

But we also look forward to the day when God promises to restore all things and renew all things and make all things new.

We read about in Revelation and other places.

And you and I, we live in this in-between time, which is what Advent is, because the kingdom of God has come.

Jesus said as much.

The kingdom is here, it's near, it's with me, he's brought it, but it's also not fully here.

You will hear me say this, maybe ad nauseum, but that's kind of how I think about the world.

It's in this in-between time.

That sort of has baked within it this tension and this waiting and this longing.

And Advent helps me make sense of the world in that way, because in the world I experience beauty and wonder and joy and like just lovely things.

I have wonderful days where I think like that all is right with the world.

At the same time I also have days where I'm like my gosh, another war has broken now another famine or another, you know a pocket of violence or disruption.

There's all kinds of suffering and evil still in the world today.

I mean.

Turn on the news or Twitter, you'll see it all over the place, and so I hold both of these in tension because they're both kind of true.

The world is beautiful and lovely and wonderful and mysterious, but it's also full of darkness and suffering and pain.

Maybe you have that same experience, and Advent, to me, does the best job of framing that.

Because Advent says, yes, that's absolutely true.

These are both true.

The kingdom of God is coming.

You'll see it pop up and spurts, and in pockets and in moments of your own life of redemption and forgiveness and freedom and liberation from things that have so easily entangled you.

And at the same time, you'll also experience pain and suffering and death and loss and grief and sin that still easily entangled you.

Are you with me?

So Advent says yes to both of these and helps us, calls us, invites us to a time of waiting and longing and aching and mixed emotions and all of those things.

So I love Advent for that reason.

It helps me make sense of the world as I see it in my own experience of life, and especially the morning of Christmas.

So that's Advent.

We look forward to it, we anticipate, we wait and we long and we hope for the kingdom to come.

Now.

I don't know if you know this or not Many of you probably do but I moved to Minnesota from Colorado.

I think it's been like 15, 16, 17 years ago now.

So I lived in Colorado my whole life.

I love Colorado.

But Minnesota is now home for me and I mean I look, I like Colorado.

I visit there about once a year and go back and see things.

I miss certain things about it.

I miss my friends and family.

I miss the mountains like real mountains, being snowboard down, the whole thing.

I miss the 300 plus days of sunlight sunshine.

But like Minnesota is home.

I love Minnesota Like the great local Minnesota hip hop duo.

Atmosphere once said Minnesota's dope, are you with me?

Yeah, any atmosphere.

Fans in the house Okay, a few, good, there was one in the last gathering.

I'm like I hope go home and listen to atmosphere, but maybe not with children present.

I don't remember the yeah, okay, no, but anyway, minnesota was great.

Dope means cool, by the way.

If you don't know what dope means, it means good, I love it.

But I noticed one major difference about Minnesota, at least one, but one glaring difference.

That was the extreme winters.

Now we have Minnesota or we have winters in Colorado as well.

We have them, but winter just hits a bit differently here in Minnesota, are you with me?

Yeah, it's a little bit different In Colorado.

It'll snow, but it'll melt within a couple of days.

If not the same day, it'll melt the same day.

In fact, in the middle of winter, snow doesn't last very long.

Out in Colorado, in fact, I've had many of Brown Christmas is growing up.

I didn't love it, but we had many Brown Christmas.

I can see the grass, the dead grass.

Here in Minnesota it's not the case.

Once it snows, it does not leave the ground until the end of winter, which is usually July 1st or 2nd around in there Every year.

I'm like, please, god, don't let the snowfall interrupt my fireworks on 4th of July Again.

Please, not again.

Also, I noticed this the sun takes the winters off here in Minnesota.

Really, I get just like I'm out of here, man.

I'm going down to Florida, I'm going down to the Dominican Republic, I'm going to hang out down there.

There's no sun for a whole couple of months.

I remember my first winter here.

No one had told me this.

The grayness sort of just permeated my body.

I'm like after the 10th day of cloud.

I was like what happened to the sun?

Where did it go?

I almost forgot what it was.

Even called the sun, right, it just disappears for a whole three or four months.

But now here's the deal.

Now, that was years ago.

I love winter, if you ever hung around me, or the Brailes in the winter, I love the winter and I fully have embraced the madness and the extremity of winter.

Are you with me?

Okay, a couple of folks are I address you?

I get it.

Let me try to convince you.

Here's what happened a couple of years ago, actually maybe seven, eight years ago.

Somebody introduced me to this ancient I think it's ancient sort of way of living, this Danish way of living, or the Scandinavian, I think it's Danish, but called Huga.

Everyone say Huga.

By the way, my sermon is titled Huga, the Incarnation, and why I Love Advent.

So there you go.

There it is right there.

Thanks, sarah.

So everyone's.

Oh, you said Huga.

Huga is this Danish word.

It might be Norwegian as well.

That sort of is this way of being in the world.

Here's a picture of it, for example.

It's like a way, it's like a posture of being in the world, and the Scandinavians, of course, they invented it because the sun also takes the winters off.

In Scandinavia there's like no sun there for several winters or several months.

But Huga is this way of being, this posture of being in the world.

That sort of describes a cozy and contentedness within the winter months or within the cold.

It sort of evokes a sense of comfort and community.

And Huga, here's the.

I hear some wonderful, I love that picture man.

Look at that.

There should be a bare skin rug down the floor there too, I think, and a basset hound somewhere in the corner and a pipe, maybe I don't know.

It's great, I love that.

That's Huga.

It sort of embraces winter and finds the beauty and the mystery in the deep, dark, cold winter months.

Now I know what you're thinking.

You're like Ryan.

There's no beauty to be found in the deep, dark, cold winter months.

But if you look for it you just might be able to find it.

Here's how I began in my own life to huga it up.

So huga is not a thing you can't go buy huga from like hallmark or something like that.

It's cooler than hallmark.

Let me just tell you that, just kidding, if you're a hallmark fan but but you can't go buy it, it's like a sort of thing that you own.

Really it's a way of being.

It's a way of opening your eyes and being awake During the cold winter months.

So here's what I did.

I'm not that what happens.

My somebody bought me a book on huga and I read it like this is this, is it?

This is what I want to try and do.

So I began to go outside more often in the winter months.

So I bought some of these bad boys, some snow shoes.

Bob Rupert and I go.

We go snow shoeing every winter at least we have twice I think we've gone but we go every winter and we go outside.

I love to.

I love the snow shoe up by my house of my Lafayette woods.

I go walking around in there in the mornings or at night or whenever I can't.

I don't go that often, but I go as much as I can and get outside, just enjoy the snow, because the snow is actually quite beautiful, especially in the woods.

I also got this bad boys, a Burton snowboard, but it's actually it was the original snowboard, but they made into a sled.

I got one of these and took my kids sledding a whole bunch that winter.

We went something in our backyard, went to Banana Hill and just slutted like crazy We'd come home We'd have hot cocoa.

This is a mug that my wife got me.

It's a caribou mug.

It's got it's.

You know it's a little worse for the wear, but it's got a bear on it.

Has a hat, says ufda, yeah, that's him Up north.

The call up north is calling you some hot cocoa.

We begin to hang lights inside the house really candles.

I got some candles here.

I'm gonna light them.

Now, like I said, hugo is not something you buy at Hallmark, so I had to.

I had to do manly Hugo.

So I got some leather scented candles.

And also I got some coffee and whiskey scented candles.

Let's go, I'll let a candle but a better smell like whiskey and coffee and sweat and testosterone, whatever that smells like.

Things just got gross.

All of a sudden my wife was like don't say that, ryan, and I'm gonna dress properly for the winter.

Did you know that the Scandinavians often say there's no such thing as bad weather and just bad clothing for the wet, for the winter?

So I bought some wool socks.

I wear wool socks all the time here.

I bought some of these bad boys too.

Now, before I show them to you.

Just so you know these are Nike combat undergarment, cold weather gear, pants, combat.

Okay, these are not like my daughter says.

They're not tights, it says combat right on the waistband.

Yeah, right there, combat, pro combat.

They're used for when I go into combat till Starbucks and caribou and those kind of.

They keep you warm, know you are under your jeans with your wool socks and you're like ready for anything.

We also like.

We also like start doing more things outside.

It's like last year we went with the Carothers, went family went to the light show in Cambridge.

Or you've been to the light show in Cambridge and they say, like lights, you walk around and it's like freezing cold, but they had many donuts and cocktails and a giant hill that kids just running down and not even slenders running down this hill.

That's fun for kids.

We're gonna do all these things and let our fireplace in the house and begin to enjoy and embrace winter.

Also, one of the deal when I would shovel in the morning because you got a shovel so I'd go out there and I'd shovel, I would take my air pods out.

I go really early in the morning with the darkness, when it's quiet and cold, because, like the coldness is like just clean and pure, and it's Bitter, doesn't doesn't lie to you, like the Sun does some sometimes.

So I'd go out there in the in the like the twilight of the morning and I would shovel, I'd pull my air pods out and I'll just listen to the morning as I shovel and it's actually quite fast I.

It's fantastic and lovely and cold, but I loved it.

This is Huga, it's amazing and it changed the whole way I see winter.

In fact, I feel sorry for folks now who live in only warm weather climates.

They're missing all this beautiful and wonderful mystery of the winter season.

Now I know you're asking how in the world, ryan, can you find beauty and wonder and mystery in the winter?

Well, if you look for it closely enough, I think you'll find it.

That's how I think it is.

I mean, if you see winter as a never-ending drudgery and you loathe every snowfall and you complain about the cold day in and day out and you never go outside, then that's the winter, your own habit, and it'll last forever in your mind.

But if you find a way to engage with the winter, go outside even for just a moment and Breathe in that brisk, cold air that keeps you honest and you enjoy things like hot cocoa and you go run around in the snow with your kids or your dog, you just might find magic.

And, by the way, this is not just positive thinking.

It's not like denial.

You know like sometimes teenagers engage in this denial.

In winter, they go out with their shorts and there's a t-shirt to school.

What are you doing?

I'm not cold.

And their fingers are blue or falling off.

Their lips are dark blue.

You need a hat on, dude, let's go.

You got to get some clothes on.

It's not denial.

It's actually embracing the winter for what it actually really is.

It's dark and it's cold, but it's refusing to become cynical or jaded or hardened or resentful towards the winter.

It's opening ourselves up to the beauty in the world that's already there in the midst of the cold and then the darkness, because, like anything in life, whatever you look for, you will find it.

Think of a slide, for that I might have already missed it.

Oh, go back for me one, sarah.

Yeah, I was very proud of the slide, so we got to.

Whatever you look for, you'll find it.

Okay, now I'm ready, sarah.

So if you look at the world and you see the world only as a cold and dark place, regardless of the month or the season, and you say, hey, the world's only material and just the physical world.

There's nothing beyond the imminent frame, there's no divine sort of presence, there's no life after death.

This is all there is and the lights go off.

We all go home and we're done.

That's it.

There's nothing mystical or magical about it.

Then that's the world that you'll inhabit.

But if you see the world differently, as a place of wonder and mystery and things that are unknown and surprises, and perhaps, just perhaps, that longing in your soul that longs for begs, for there to be a God or something after we die, if there is something about that in our longing for mystery and beauty, if you begin to exploit it, you just might find a different kind of world, one filled with mystery and magic and openness.

See, this is the beauty and the theology, I would say, of the incarnation the incarnation when Jesus, or when God becomes a human.

In Jesus, the fancy word is incarnation.

God becomes incarnate, he becomes a human being, which many of us are like.

Oh yeah, no big deal.

This is anathema in every other religion in the world.

No other religion talks about a God becoming a human.

It's scandalous.

Gods don't do that.

They're above that, they're sort of too proper.

It's condescending to kind of become a human.

They don't do that.

The Jewish God, the Hebrew God, the God of the Christian Bible, this God becomes a human in Jesus.

It's incarnate, he's incarnated.

And God not only becomes Jesus, but he takes on flesh, he takes on humanity, he becomes just like one of us, and in doing so he sends an emphatic yes to humanity, to flesh and bone and physicality.

God affirms the material world and he calls it good.

By becoming one of us, he endorses, if you will, what it means to be a human.

Now there's this ancient I'm not ancient, but there's this old philosophy known as Gnosticism.

You ever heard of Gnosticism?

So it's deemed heretical, but it still sort of has its place.

It sort of seeped into Christianity a lot of places and pockets.

Gnostics believe that the material world was bad.

It was sort of not good, sort of innately evil almost, and so their job was to escape it and go somewhere else, sort of infuse some platonic dualism.

But Jesus, for God, becoming a human in Jesus, like no, no, this world is good.

Like the material world is good, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's good to be a human.

I was at the mall last night, not because I like malls, but because my wife likes to go shopping at malls.

I'll go with you and my girls too.

I'm gonna go do my own thing.

Just holler at me when you're done.

But I went to this chocolate shop because I do love me some dark chocolate and there's one I don't know, it's called Lollipops or whatever it's, at Ridgedale Mall and I walk in there and, I kid you not, these two little kids are running around and everything there.

The one cool part about the mall is it all kind of smells like Christmas and there's music and the whole thing's like all like Christmas.

So this chocolate shop at Christmas time there's two little kids running around and, I kid you not, I walk in there and I hear this one little boy.

He yells out if this is a dream, I don't wanna wake up.

Yes, I say, look at me, young man, this is not a dream.

This is great, this is Christmas and chocolate.

And the guy.

I was laughing.

I got so funny and the guy next to me saw me laughing.

He's like I go.

Did you hear that?

He goes.

Yeah, that was great, because this world is good.

And God has infused himself in Jesus into our world.

He's become one of us.

He's taken on flesh and bones and blood.

And Christmas is the great celebratory feast because God has said it's good to be a human.

Flesh and bone, emotions, sexuality, these are all things that are good part of being a human.

They don't have to be ashamed of.

And God has entered into our world.

He's as CS Lewis says, he's written himself into the story.

Now, a couple of years ago there was a cosmonaut, so back in the space race went into outer space, a Russian cosmonaut who didn't believe in God, and he goes out of space and he comes back in your reports.

Hey, I've been to outer space and I looked all around and I didn't see God.

I couldn't find him out there.

So there's no God.

I looked and he's not out there.

And CS Lewis says well, because they're contemporaries, like well, that's sort of a silly way to put that.

That's like saying, or like suggesting that Hamlet, who was a character in a play by Shakespeare, you might have heard of Hamlet, that Hamlet went up to his attic in his castle and looked all around for Shakespeare, the author of the play, and he couldn't find him.

Therefore there's no such thing as Shakespeare Like.

That's silly.

It's not how it works.

God is not a molecule or an object to be found in the universe at all like a pencil or a ruler.

He's not a thing you can find in outer space, as though that's where he lived, and bring him back and empirically sort of examine him under a microscope in a lab.

It's not how this whole thing works.

We can know God, but only to the degree that God allows himself to be known.

So if Hamlet were to ever know Shakespeare, shakespeare would have to write himself into the play alongside Hamlet.

How would Hamlet ever know Shakespeare otherwise?

And Hamlet not finding Shakespeare in his attic in his castle by no means disproves anything, any more than going up to space and not finding a molecule like an island or a basketball.

That is God, any more than not finding that disproves the existence of God.

It's not how it works.

We can know God, but only to the degree that God has sort of written himself into our story.

Cs Lewis says this.

He's like look, I would rather say it this way I don't believe in the sun only because I can see the sun, although there's that, but also good luck staring at the sun for too long and it'll burn your retinas out.

You know this maybe.

So it goes.

I believe in the sun because, rather because because by it I can see everything.

I'll say it again he said I don't believe in the sun because I can see it, but because by the sun I can see everything.

So I would examine the existence of the sun.

The best way is like look around the world.

You can see the vitality that the sun brings, the warmth I feel in my skin, the way it makes plants grow and wakes me up in the morning.

I can see the effects of the sun and I can see the whole world because of the sun.

So I know the sun exists and so maybe in the same way we can know that God exists because of the effects of God in the world.

In fact, I would say this way I believe in God because God and the story of God in the Bible, the story of creation, rebellion, redemption and restoration that story makes the most sense of the world that I inhabit.

That I see Because in this advent time, but also in general, I have this sense that the world's not as it should be, like it should be better, but it's not as it should be.

And I also have this sense that human beings are flawed.

We're kind of broken, but also we're kind of great.

We can compose symphonies and make plays that will make you cry, and babies are awesome and there's guacamole at Chipotle.

It's a wonderful place.

Somebody made that.

I also have a sense that I have this longing for love and for beauty.

Where does that come from?

This longing I have?

And nothing in the world that I've tried can fulfill that like I want it to.

So I'm always kind of left a little bit empty and I long to be filled.

I have this sense that my life is supposed to have meaning or purpose.

It's supposed to go somewhere and I'm supposed to do something, even though I don't always know what it is.

And Christianity, the Bible's story, says yeah, yeah, that's where we are, that's exactly.

Yes, there's a longing for things to be better than they are, but also, like that, there's some beauty here.

There's a tension, a longing and ache.

There's a purpose and meaning to your life, jesus tells me, and you.

So Humans are flawed.

Of course we are.

We're born into this world that's sort of cancerized by sin, but also we're still kind of beautiful and wonderful and mysterious and amazing, and I long for that to be more.

And, like Saint Augustine once said, that human beings will never find their rest until they rest in God.

I think he's right, because I've looked all over and nothing can fulfill me the way I want it to, other than Jesus.

You see, heuga doesn't deny the darkness, it just refuses to succumb to the darkness and it looks for hope and light in the darkness and it provides a way for us to move forward in the darkness.

This is what Advent does.

Heaven does the same thing.

It doesn't deny suffering or pain or grief or sorrow or loss.

It says, hey, things aren't as they should be and some days you might feel lost that's part of the tension but it refuses to succumb to the darkness, the cold.

It finds light in the darkness.

John says that the light has come into the darkness.

This light is the life of all human beings.

But the darkness couldn't understand it.

How could it?

It's darkness, but darkness can't overcome light.

That's not how it works.

Light always, always overcomes darkness.

That's how light works.

Just does so.

Advent says, hey, I refuse to become cynical and jaded and lost and hopeless.

I cling to hope.

Here's what Tim Keller says.

Here's how he writes it.

He says that the message of Advent is that things really are this bad.

They really are.

The world is not good.

We all kind of sense it.

Maybe we're afraid to name the elephant.

Let's just name the elephant, the room.

They really are this bad and we cannot heal ourselves.

I cannot save myself, and that's a bummer that I want to, and I've tried, but I can't.

Things really are this dark.

Thank you for coming to my sermon.

For sure I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but nevertheless there's hope.

There's hope.

There's light, even just one.

And I wrote down some thoughts.

I want to read them to you.

This is why I love Advent, because hopelessness and disillusionment and disenchantment seem to be the new religion of our world.

The world says there's nothing really beyond the imminent frame, nothing beyond the material world, that tomorrow won't be better than today.

There's nothing out there.

There's no God who will help you or who loves you or cares about you at all.

That the world is just nuts and bolts, utterly explainable.

There's no magic when the lights go out, that's it.

And that way of seeing the world does not do my heart any good.

It doesn't that way of seeing the world does my heart bad.

See, advent confronts the hardening of my own heart and invites me into the wonder of the world all around me With the insistence, the rebellion if you will, that God has not abandoned the world, that hope is real and something is coming, as one pastor says it, that not yet will be worth it.

The not yet will be worth it.

Advent seems to whisper into the dark and the cold, and so each year we enter into a season of waiting and expecting and longing.

Spirit meets us in the ache and we ask God to enter into the deepest places of our own cynicism and resentfulness and bitterness and jaded areas of our lives and our hardness, where we've stopped believing that tomorrow can be better than today and where we've stopped believing that someone out there loves us.

So we open up, we soften up, we turn our hearts in the direction of that day, that day when the baby cries his first cry, jesus, and we, surrounded by shepherds and angels and everybody in between, we celebrate that sound of that crying baby in time that brings our spirits.

What we seem to be longing for Advent is an invitation, this morning and in the weeks to come, to see things in a new way, to see them by the light of the sun, maybe the S-O-N, and to make sense of the world by the light of the sun, a world of wonder and magic and mystery.

Psalm 24 says this way that the whole world is full of God.

The earth is the Lord's and all that's in it and those who live in it.

It's inhabited by the Lord.

It's inhabited by Jesus, jesus who came to find us in our lostness, like a sheep or a coin, or a son who's wandered away, and to find us and bring us home.

And this Advent, may you see that, may you wake up to the new day that's dawning, like Romans said, or like Paul writes in Ephesians and Jesus wake up.

Wake up, oh sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.

So this Advent, may you have hope, amen.