Advent Week 4: LOVE (Genesis 3)

You probably know this about me, but for those that don't, Advent

is my absolute favorite time of the year and it just so happens

this is my favorite Sunday of the year.

This is the the Sunday of love as we covered, and it is a great

opportunity that Cole has given me to preach to you guys this

Sunday. So I just have a maybe one of

the most important questions to ask you.

What is love, baby? Don't hurt me?

Is it a book that's long and boring?

Is it more than a feeling? The truth is, this is one of the

most tired questions that humanity has asked and we've

asked it forever. In all genres of music,

literature, philosophy, just in community.

We all ask what is love? And we keep asking that

question. Just like I listed off a few

Boston, Hadaway, The Beatles, Bee Gees, White Snake, and the

Magnetic Fields all ask some form of this question.

And not just in the last like 50 or 60 years, but so do we, and

so is all of humanity. It isn't.

It is intrinsic in many senses to the human mind.

What is love? And equally important, am I

loved? This question is well trodden

because we all want to know. I want to know you want to know

all of us together, we we want to know this question both

independently but communally. And we all not just want to know

it, but we want to feel it. We all want to be loved

similarly, and sorry guys, we've been down this road as well.

Dante saw fit to explore the same question.

So just to set the stage because it's one of my favorite scenes

in literature ever, Dante is in heaven.

He just got done getting asked by Peter what is faith and by

James what is hope? And now he is being questioned

by John, the beloved apostle. And of course, John is going to

ask Dante of the three cardinal virtues, what is love?

And I'm just going to quote a small portion here.

I don't have it up, so just listen to me.

So this is now John speaking to Dante.

But tell me too, if you feel other chords draw you toward

him, that's God, so that you voice aloud all the teeth by

which this love grips you. And then Dante internalizes the

holy intent of Christ's eagle. I love that he calls John

Christ's eagle the apostle. John Christ's eagle was not

hidden. I indeed was made aware of what

he would most have My words declare.

This is John speaking to Dante, and Dante realizing what John

has been getting at the whole time.

It's a little hard to picture, but at this time, because of

John's radiance in reflecting God's love, Dante literally goes

blind. So he like can't see at this

point and he's freaking out and this guy is speaking to him and

he realizes it's John. And while he's blind, John

questions Dante in more verbose ways than this, but simply, what

is love, Dante? What is love?

Frontier? What is love?

And we are going to answer that question.

However, I would invite you with me to put a pause on that

narrative. The significance of Dante's

answer is earned, and Dante spends a lot of time and two

other books, The Inferno or Hell and Pugatorio or Purgatory,

getting to a place where he can comfortably answer that

question. So we as a church have to do

some legwork and earn it as well.

Because I am not Dante and we are not about 70 cantos into the

Divine Comedy already. For our text today, we're going

to be looking at a text that seemingly is not about love at

all. In fact, it feels emotive.

Lee, if you hear it when I say it, a little mismatched for this

Sunday, and that's good. That's very good.

It's a text laden with shame, with guilt and a series of

actions that affect us, us being Christians, Frontier Church, but

also us corporately in the most vast sense you can imagine, all

of humanity. We are going back to the very

infancy of humanity where it all began.

So if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

3. And please rise, whether in body

or spirit, for the reading of His word should have it up

behind me as well. And I'm sorry, we are reading

all of it. It's a long 1.

Buckle up. Hi, Florence.

Hi, honey. All right.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the

field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat

of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the

serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is

in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest

you die. But the serpent said to the

woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat

it, eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God,

knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the

tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,

and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she

took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her

husband who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they

were naked. And they sewed fig leaves

together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden

in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid

themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of

the garden. But the Lord called to the man

and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound

of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I

hid myself. He said, Who told you that you

were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of

which I commanded you not to eat?

The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me

the fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the

woman, What is this that you have done?

The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate.

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done

this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts

of the field. On your belly you shall go, and

dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and I will and

between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and your and you shall bruise his

heel. To the woman.

He said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing and

pain. You shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over

you. And to Adam, he said, Because

you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of

the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat it.

Cursed is the ground because of you in pain.

You shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you

shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you

return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are

dust, and to dust you shall return.

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother

of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam

and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of

us, and knowing good and evil now, lest he reach out his hand

and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to

work the ground from which he was taken.

He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden he placed the

cherubim and a flaming sword that turned away or turned every

way to guard the way of the tree of life.

His word is good in Holy Church. You may be seated.

I'm going to pray really quick. Heavenly Father 1st, I want to

thank you for this opportunity. And a pastor remembered a

conversation five years ago of what this Sunday means to me.

But it's a challenging it's a challenging Sunday.

It's a challenging season for many of us, not just this year.

Advent in general. So God work in US stubborn

gladness, joy, peace and love in lives, worlds and experiences

that seem tumultuous and many reasons to not be joyous, to not

be glad in this season create in US such a a a frustratingly

stubborn persistence to sing your praise.

Lord, I pray for everyone here in the many known and unknown

problems that despite our sentiments and the truth of

those difficulties, that we would joyously sing your name

this week, that we would be stubborn because of your Spirit

to worship You when we don't feel like it.

That's your son's name. I pray.

Amen. This Advent season, the theme we

have been working on, and I just said is stubborn gladness and

how Advent answers the pangs, pains and worries of mental

health or mental frustrations. And for our final Sunday before

Christmas, I want to show you Frontier Church, how Advent

combats shame. If you are a note taker, let me

reopen this. Sorry guys.

If you are a note taker, you can make note that there are two

types of shame that humanity experiences, and they're both

present here. The first one is ontological

shame, and that's a really big theological or philosophical

term, so please everyone say it with me.

Ontological one more time, ontological, one more time,

ontological. That is a big philosophical term

that just means being the inner self, the most philosophical

core of yourself. That is ontological shame or

shame of being that is linked to the shame of humanity, and we

all experience it equally. Regardless of creed, regardless

of how awesome you are at being a parent or a kid or being

single, you can't escape this shame.

And it's present here in Genesis.

It's present from the immediacy and it is generated when we see

Adam and Eve defied God from the instruction he gave them not to

eat this fruit in the prior chapter in Genesis 2 because of

this. This is the shame of sin and it

all started here in this text in them defying God.

When Adam and Eve defied God and consume the fruit, humanity,

that's all of us were marred by the that choice.

And we have all been marked by this one action.

And it is a mark that altered our being ontologically.

We can't escape it. So we think it is a shame of

Adam defying God and it is our shame too.

And the cost of this shame, the choice that was made here

initially in Genesis, is eternal, the first sin against

God. It is an eternal shame from

which we seemingly cannot escape, and because of this we

see the other two type or the other type of shame and its

consequences present. We see the initial ontological

shame, the first turning from God that affects all of us, and

then we see the consequential or active shames, the shame of the

choice and making choices in shame, realizing they are naked,

clothing themselves a response to a perceived wrong or concern.

And that is the second type of shame.

It's shame of sinful action and consequence.

Firstly, as a consequence of that first sin, all of these,

these shames of action come from that first shame and that we as

a species know this as sin and unfortunately we function in it.

Our daily actions mimic the first action of defiance against

God. We lash out, we disobey, we

curse, we kill, we harm, and we are aware, like they were of

those actions. Just like Adam and Eve who sin

and become aware of their state, so much so that they try to

cover it up and hide it from God.

We too experience the daily consequences of our flight from

God, both in being, but then in the choices that we make.

That first and secondary sense of shame.

Look at the text God, as God is dictating these punishments of

Adam and Eve and of the serpent for turning against them, for

turning against the good to Eve. There's pain in childbirth and a

desire for the husband. I don't want to spend too much

time on this, but the the, the Hebrew word is teshuka.

It's actually a really complicated word.

It would be nice to flatten it and just say look at Genesis 3

and Genesis 4 with Cain. This word is used.

This desire is negatively implicated.

Can't really do that. It's not that simple.

But to say in Song of Solomon where it is used positively, the

Hebrew word seems to be dictated by context.

And here one of the consequences of Eve, because it's in negative

connotation, is that this desire is is more than like a a a

normal or a non sinful desire. It isn't good.

And the context dictates that not just the word like we do

here. Sometimes it's a preferred

imbalance or denial of unity. And to the man, this consequence

of this shame, this action, this ontological state, this change.

Now he must labor in the very earth fights against him,

thistles and thorns. He will fight to survive, and

the very things that nourish him will strike against him until he

returns to the ground that's fighting him.

So you know, dust to dust you will return from whence you

came, but the whole time you must wrestle with it to live.

And then he has to be taken by the thing that he had to wrestle

with. It's a losing battle, that shame

and consequence of that sin that we all equally experience.

So to put this chapter and I, you know, it's really difficult

because it is such a well well known and enriched chapter.

But just to put it in scope here with the shame of this, what we

see, beloved, is a waterfall, a cascade of first cause and

effect for man, the the shame of original sin that Mars us all,

Adam and Eve eating of the fruit, changing the autological

being of man to that of sinful, A sinful state.

The next cascade, the deluge, continues, Adam and Eve's shame

in awareness for their wrongdoing, the shame of

actions, and then finally, because of the shame of

wrongdoing and our new state, their new state, there are

consequences, individual consequences for those first two

shames, and we also experience consequence for that shame and

those shames. We experience them to this day

on top of our own consequences. In that secondary category, when

you sin, there are consequences to your shame that are in real

life. If you, you know, yell at your

spouse, there are consequences to wrongly handling how you

communicate with the person you love.

If you steal, there are supposed sometimes they are not, but

there are consequences for theft.

There are consequences for everything that we do against

God that is wrong. And we all carry these shames

and these consequences in response to what happened here

in Genesis in the garden, that same cascade.

We experience it in real time, even though it is across time

from us. I'm sorry, that's really dense

for for Advent. So I promise, and I ask you guys

to hold on because if you are wondering like I was Casey,

what's love got to do with it? Another song quote.

Hold on because I think when we enter Advent church, a lot of

us, and that's myself, bring shame.

Hi Julian into the celebration, see you buddy.

It is important that we reconcile the garden because for

many of us today, see you buddy. Today our voices are soft, my

voice was soft, our thoughts church are clouded and our self

loathing is at an all time high this season.

Why, you may think to yourself, I don't deserve to celebrate.

I was a monster. I berated my spouse or maybe

even struck them. I was a glutton or I acted in

lust and cheated. I acted in hate.

I struck my brother or sister. I hate myself.

My life does not warrant the warmth and volume of the Advent

season. God, I can't feel the warmth.

You may be thinking, Casey, you don't have to talk about the

gardener shame. I know the shame.

Well, I'm in the shame. I barely want to be here.

I don't think I deserve it this season.

I wish it were quiet and I wasn't expected to sing.

And beloved, my response to you is that I think and have thought

those same words this morning all week.

All season and it is my favorite season and I I wrestle with that

year after year. I wrestle with the irony of this

being my favorite season. I love Advent more than any

other time and sometimes I don't think I should celebrate.

I am ashamed. I am naked and realizing it like

Adam and Eve did in the garden. I have sinned against God.

What do we do? Frontier Church.

I don't want to sing. I'm embarrassed for all the

wrong that I do. So what do we do?

Well, tis the season. And I would contend that that is

precisely the point of Advent. Advent is God's final and

perfect contention against our myriad shames, both ontological

and active shames. Advent is God's final and

perfect contention against everything that went wrong in

the garden that affects us all today, and it answers not only

the problem of the garden, but the continued problems that we

experience. It combats those sentiments that

would prevent us from worshipping today.

To change pace a little bit, you'll remember in the opening I

talked about John the Apostle asking Dante what is love baby,

don't hurt me. We are going to let Dante answer

that question because I believe it is very important for

reconciling our shame. So to go back, Don or John asked

Dante who's blind by the brilliance of of John's

faithfulness in heaven, what is love?

And there's a little preamble response, but I want to read a

few lines of John's response here because I think I think it

is really beautiful and I think it is where our hearts posture

should be an advent. Because John, remember he had

gone through hell, he had seen people working through

purgatory. And I'm not saying his scope of

what those look like is real, but the sentiment of knowing

hell exists, of working and failing.

He's seen all of that. He's seen the effect and

experiences and acted in the effects of the garden like we

have. And when John asked him what is

love, Dante finally responds. My love results from all those

things whose bite can bring the heart to turn to God, the

world's existence and mine, the death that he sustained, that I

might live, and that which is the hope of all believers, as it

is my hope together. Sorry, that's one of my favorite

things ever written in any language.

Do you see that church? Do you see Dante's definition of

love is generated and based on Jesus Christ?

It's based the whole conception of what love is to Dante is

based on the life of Jesus Christ.

I know he says the death, but we include the incarnation.

It's assumed in the text God made flesh for us to save us.

The answer to what is love church is what Russell said.

God is love and he came to save us.

That is the genesis of love. If the genesis of our shame is

found in Genesis 3, the genesis of love and ultimate conqueror

of that shame would be the birth of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.

It would be the word of God become flesh to save us.

To Athanasius, a church father who was kicked out of the church

a few times, his nickname is Contra Mundum.

In Latin that means against the world.

Because when the church was straying away from the truth, he

kept fighting for the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Famously his book on the Incarnation.

In the beginning, he says that the incarnation is the central

and most pivotal act of love in time.

In all of time, the incarnation is the most pivotal and singular

act of love by which all other love is defined.

And God did that for us. He said it was God's focal point

of perfect love that conquered death and corruption.

It conquered our shame, both shames, that being shame,

ontological shame, and the day-to-day shame.

To continue in the same thought, Carl Bart famously described the

incarnation in the beginning of his commentary on Romans, which

is a mammoth but very worth your time, he said.

Liz, hang on, you'll like this one because it's math related.

He said. In geometrical terms, imagine

all of creation as a fixed and perfect circle.

So there is a start and an end. As much as we can infinitely

imagine through all of time creation, it is fixed in time.

That is a circle. And God being an infinite line

of perfection, truly in the sense of a line, goes on in both

directions forever. That is Infinity beyond your

imagination, and the incarnation is where on like one pixel the

Infinity of perfection and goodness intersects time, and in

that one drop corrects and perfects the entire circle, Carl

Bart said. That is the incarnation of

Christ in time. It is the thing that makes the

circle of time good and loved. God saw the shame and

consequences of the garden and said I will save you.

Why I am ashamed, I feel horrible.

God, don't you, don't you understand?

You can't save me. I have sinned.

I am naked in the garden. Cast me out and God said, I know

and I will love you, Church. Think of John 316 For God so

loved the world that he sent His one and only begotten Son to

save him. That is the love of the

incarnation. It has conquered the shame of

the garden and all of your shames, That initial ontological

shame that changed all of humanity, the trajectory from

that one point. All of us changed through all of

time, and then all of the myriad of shames of daily sinning

against God. The incarnation obliterated

that. God's faithfulness and love

obliterated that. Of course, church, the angels

would sing in Luke 2. Of course they would sing.

God looked at a world full of shame and said, I will love you

more than the shame that damns you.

That is why we sing so loud at Advent.

That's why when you are feeling like you don't want to sing at

Advent, I don't want to sing. I don't have the voice, the

capacity. I'm tired.

Lord, I'm upset with myself. It doesn't mean we ignore that.

That doesn't go away. Advent is not about ignoring

things. Advent is about a course,

perfect course correction and the opportunity to Despite that

experience, sing anyway by the grace of God to say that we are

complex creatures in that despite I am still struggling,

God, you have enabled me through your incarnation to sing in

spite of that complexity, that struggle.

That is why we sing so loud, because God came knowing the

shame and the sin of humanity. And he said I love you to all of

humanity. He said I love you to every

church. He said I love you to us

frontier. He said I love you to me Casey.

He said I love you despite your shame.

So Church, do not let shame rule you in this season.

It's not easy. You're going to struggle.

But the incarnation, his coming empowers you.

There is hope, there is joy and there is peace ultimately

because of his love in the incarnation at Advent.

So Church claw fight tooth and nail dragging across concrete to

worship with your full and present heart this week.

Not saying it's going to be easy, I'm saying He is worthy

and He empowers you to do this. Despite the myriad shames that

we experience because of Advent. The very shame that you

experienced that marred your very soul has been conquered.

It was course corrected and God becoming flesh.

Jesus Christ has come and loved you so perfectly in his life and

death that you can be free of those shames.

That doesn't mean that we are free of repentance,

reconciliation, that we don't make mistakes.

Of course, when you mess up, confess, ask for forgiveness,

but it means that we are no longer drags in that sin.

It no longer owns and conquers us because of the incarnation in

this season. And really, to be honest, every

other season of life, my charge to you, Frontier Church, is to

live a life that is abstract of the permeating, festering shame

of sinful existence. Repent, forgive humbly when

somebody sins against you and is in shame, and also forgive

joyfully. Love well even to death as

Christ did, Dante says at the end of this answer.

A little while later when reflecting on Jesus, Dante's

response is really practical. He says I love according to the

good he gave to them. Dante and reflecting on Jesus

life and death says that his response as a believer is to

love like Jesus did in the incarnation, living and dying

according to how Jesus did to love others.

And I think about that in Advent as we love and die and fight not

only to worship but to serve others despite our attire.

Dante is ultimately saying church I will love according to

the work God laid out to love them.

And remember in Genesis 3, if it all cascaded to a mess that

seemed improbable, unfixable, goodness sake, life altering in

the most literal sense to where we were all dead before sin, God

laid out a plan in the incarnation that we celebrate an

advent to fix that shame. So Dante's response and our

response should be, I will love because God loves and has loved

me. That is the love that conquered

shame church. That's why this is my favorite

Sunday of the whole year, the incarnation God coming down and

saying, I will love you so perfectly that I will conquer

your shame. I will save you from that first

sin that we all experience, and I will empower you and save you

from the multitude of pains that you have committed against me.

Still, church, encourage each other.

Seek out somebody struggling. Say, I know the pain doesn't go

away, but I'm going to sing next to you.

It's still messy because of those secondary shames.

Even if you know we're saved from that ontological shame that

was experienced in the garden as believers because of Jesus

Christ, it doesn't mean all the problems just immediately go

away. We still sin.

Do not let your brother or sister hide in shame.

Encourage them to repent and invite them to be joyous this

season. For God loves us.

He loves you and it's called them out of shame.

He's called us all out of death and sin through his birth, this

Advent season that we celebrate, and his death and his perfect

life. So this week, Church, as we

March towards Christmas, do not hide in the dark for fear of the

wickedness or shame of yourself that we all inherited because of

the story of Genesis 3. God has come for you and He's

called you out of the shadows into the warmth of his love and

light. Sing loud despite yourself.

Like I said, we are complex creatures.

I know well how feelings can manipulate how you act.

Church act in spite of negative feelings because of God's love

in the incarnation. When your soul is weary and

burdened with shame, call out to God with a loud voice in joy and

He will answer. God's love has defeated the

shame of the Garden Church, and it has saved you.

That is this Sunday when we celebrate the love of Advent.

It is God's perfected love in the Incarnation at the very end

of the Divine Comedy. Forgive me, I've already spoiled

some of it. I'm going to actually spoil the

end of it. Many of you won't be able to see

this, but I actually have a phone case.

That's Gustav Dorres, the Empyrion Dante looking at a

cloud of angels and circling the Trinity as he's about to look at

it's very famous wood etch, burned wood etch painting by the

French artist Gustav Dore for the Divine Comedy a few 100

years ago. But Dante is permitted after

some more testing to look at the Trinity and it's at the very end

of the Divine Comedy and it's, I love this section so much and

Will is here and he's heard me talk about it.

So I'm sorry, Will. I think it is one of the best

expressions of pushing language to it's very mechanical limit

and creative limit to, and this is an imperfection.

But for a human to try and describe the experience in human

form, what it's like to look at God in perfection, not the human

perfection, but God in perfection and human trying to

imagine it. And he does this through what

are called descending elevated similes.

That's a poetical term that is for Dante, where every time he's

going to try to describe God, he's going to use a simile to

liken himself to smaller and smaller things.

So every time he looks at God, God gets bigger and bigger.

The picture gets more perfect, but he can't understand it

because he's human. So it's like God is so big, but

I am like an infant, an infant suckling at night.

Like he just keeps lowering himself every time he talks

about God. I am an Ant who cannot fathom.

And it's really beautiful mechanically because it

describes the awesomeness of God's perfection and love.

And he gets to glimpse it. And at the very end, I always

think about this in Advent, the famous line, the last thing

Dante records before he's like, my mind is unraveling.

I can't handle this. I'm not going to remember it

all, but it's so beautiful and I feel God's love.

His last reflection is that in seeing the Trinity loving and

loving him and everything, he feels his will aligning to God's

and the love that comes from God all the way through time.

And reflecting on God's love, he says the same love that moves

the sun and the other stars. And I think about that, that God

in his power and in his might, looked at us shameful, sinning

creatures and became like us, humbled himself, incarnated into

the form of a baby, the very Maker and mover of the cosmos of

things much greater in scope than us, became the form of a

child, absconded that power because he loves you.

Church. That is the Advent season.

Go in peace this season, worshiping loudly, dealing with

complex emotions, and choosing to the best of your ability to

love, to be loved, and to receive the warmth of the Advent

season. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I petition you today because it is difficult to

celebrate this season. I can think of many, many

reasons, Namely, one of our our congregants who's in Iowa City

just texted a couple of friends with appendicitis this morning.

He's now in the hospital. So we pray for Josh Benton as he

had to go into the hospital this morning.

They're already dealing with so much.

God preserve him. I pray for Lauren, for strength,

for Lauren to worship and to experience love this season.

They are fighting for joy Church.

May we fight well alongside them.

I pray for all the unknown pains and pangs this season, all the

shames that would prevent us from loving and worshipping you.

There's so many I can think of, so many personal excuses why I

shouldn't sing one. God crush that in me.

Make me and a light of your love, make me stubborn with

gladness that is not conquered by all the pains that would pull

me away from you, the evil choices that I have made.

You are worthy of worship. God, thank you for the

opportunity to worship and to love you and for sending your

Son to save us. It's your son's name, I pray.

Amen.