Advent - Love

I've been doing this for a minute. I was thinking the other day I'm gonna be 47 in

January. I'm coming up on 25 years of being a pastor in one way or another.

Getting old. Y'all remember when you thought 40s was old? Yeah. And now I'm

like, no, I think like, no, that's not old. It's not even close to being old. It's

funny. I mean my knees feel a different way, but that's fine. Yeah. Well good

morning and welcome to the house. If we've never met, my name is Greg. I'm one

of the pastors here and I would love to meet you. I know it's kind of a busy time

of the year, but if you fill out the connection card at the end and maybe put

a note in there or check the box so you'd like a pastor to contact you, I'd

love to get together with you for a coffee maybe after Christmas, after the

new year if that works better for you, but I would love to hear your story. Get

to know you and if you'd like to, I really enjoy talking about Jesus and so

I would love to do that as well. This is our last Sunday of 2024. Next Sunday is

what we call a rest Sunday. We have three of those every year. Memorial Day weekend,

Labor Day weekend, and the Sunday after Christmas. We want to give all of the

teams time to rest so that they can come back ready from living and to be able to

work together to really to serve the people that call this their church home.

Now here because it's the last Sunday, I thought I would just give a few

highlights from this last year. We started last year in January turning 10

and which means that this coming day in just a few weeks that we as a church

will turn 11. That was my star birthday as a child because my birthday is

January 11th and so I think that's kind of cool because I'm still just a child

inside somewhere and so that's kind of cool to think about. But we will be

turning 11 and we had 11, this is a coincidence, 11 different people preach

this last year. I love that we have a church that has a diversity of voices

and a diversity of backgrounds and we want to make sure that we continue that

giving different people opportunities to preach the word as they understand it.

18 different people led us in praying for Greenbush. We had three baptisms in

multiple baby dedications. We had three seasons of community tables if you've

never been part of one of those. Those are coming up again in February and

March. We'd love for you to get connected to one of those what we call our small

groups. This last summer we had our third annual worship in the park. It's a

shared service with other churches. The last couple times we've done it with Two

Rivers UMC and New Journey AME. We took the Shed, the students, the high school

and junior high students on their second annual trip to Chicago for the day. Not

that it's definitely always gonna be annual but it just it's worked out that

way. They got to go and see a Chicago Fire soccer game and enjoy foods that we

don't have around here and get to start building continuing to build

relationships with each other in maybe a way that you don't get to build if

you're just hanging out at home. And then of course this summer we went through

the gospel according to John. This fall 23 people served in the Labor Day

Parade. I think that's the most we've ever had serve and we had 275 people

sign up for the chance to win a custom-built backyard playhouse that we

gave away for free. That was the first time we ever did that. That was pretty

awesome. We launched new Tuesday night activities for each week of the month

with worship and prayer, a green bush walk, with spiritual conversation group,

with an opportunity to to come and care for the facility. Dave Hodge started

hosting a tabletop game day once a month on Sundays after church. That happens to

be today. If you don't have plans after service feel free to stick around and

play some some games with some friends. And then of course Robin our treehouse

director started teaching a class twice a month about worship dance. This winter

we had our first youth retreat with a few other churches in the area out in

Camp Mylan. We added monthly youth events. The Norths are leading those. The

next one happens to be the next Saturday January 4th. You should be getting an

email about that. If you have a 6th through 12th grader it's gonna be a blast.

We only missed our monthly budget goal once this last year which is really

phenomenal but we also exceeded our yearly yearly budget need and so it was

all made up for which means that we ended up giving away thousands of

dollars to people that needed it for cars, for repairs, for missions, for

emergency needs and we did that all while growing our savings account from

around $8,500 to $10,500 and so it's been a really beautiful year. And then of

course finally we partnered with DCFS for the 10th straight year and we gave 75

gifts and y'all know it was more than 75 gifts right because you looked in some

of those bags and you were like someone checked out one thing and they brought

three things back in a bag. So we gave quote-unquote 75 gifts to 25 kids that

are experiencing foster care right now. Yeah it's a beautiful thing. We also gave a

Walmart gift card to each of those individual families and we partnered

with Closet to Closet which is here in the same building as us. They serve

children there in foster care by providing clothing and supplies for them

and we partnered with them as we have in the last handful of years and they

created 25 more care packages that included another gift for those kids for

a grand total of well over a hundred gifts to all these kids and so guys

they're gonna have a great Christmas. I know that they're experiencing an

extremely troubling thing sometimes but there's gonna be a moment that we know

that we contributed to because of the way that God has loved us and we're

trying our best to show our love to them and so can we praise God for what he's

done this last year? Now as always we end our calendar year with advents and I

promise this will be the best sermon you've heard all year. I say the best for

last year everyone and if you don't feel that way you just weren't listening.

Amen. Scott pointed us to peace on the first Sunday of Advent. We considered

the hope of Advent. Robin and the tree house last week pointed us to joy and

today is Advent love. I'm gonna read a number of passages but let's go ahead

and open up our Bibles to the book of Matthew. We're gonna open up to Matthew. If you

don't have a Bible there are copies that are on your table right now. You can

download a Bible from any of the digital app stores for free. You can also take

one of those blue Bibles home if you don't have one of your own. We're gonna

open up to Matthew. Matthew is the first book of what's called the New Testament

or the Second Testament. It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. If you see any of those you're in

the right neighborhood but let's go ahead and we have a tradition of standing

together as we are able to give the scriptures our full attention. If you'd

like to join me in doing that, Matthew 1 starting verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus

the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to

Joseph but before they lived together she was found to be pregnant from the

Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph being a righteous man and unwilling to expose

her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had

resolved to do this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said

Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child

conceived in hers from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son you are to name him

Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Let us pray. God of every

tribe, of every tongue, every color, every nation, we thank you for the

scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia. We still have

them to read, to consider. Whatever you would like us to learn today I pray that

it would stick, that would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our

faith would become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus. Amen. Amen. You

can all have a seat. Thank you.

Advent love takes responsibility. It says Joseph was unwilling to expose her to

public disgrace and planned to divorce her quietly. I suppose the first question

some of us might ask is why would he need a divorce if they were engaged? The

first verse says they were engaged but in their culture once you were engaged

effectively you were married. The families would have been involved, the

promises would have been made, contracts would have been signed. Joseph's family

had probably already given a dowry and gifts to Mary's family as part of the

marriage agreement. All that Joseph knew was that while he was getting ready to

start his family, Mary became pregnant and so it falls to him to decide what to

do. It's not an exaggeration to say that he very literally held her life in his

hands. If he had publicly exposed her, her community would have been well within

their biblical right to stone her and put her to death for adultery. That is

what the biblical standard would have allowed. My guess is that most of her

neighbors probably weren't gonna buy the God got me pregnant story. Because we are

so far removed from this, we take her vulnerability for granted. Because we

know how the story ends, most of us, we take the story for granted. We don't have

a sense of worry for her because we know what will happen. But we have to

remember that they didn't. They were told, they were acting on faith, but they were

still in the moment. So says the Joseph, it was righteous and he thought that it

was reasonable to divorce her quietly. Maybe, maybe in his mind, he thought that

if he got this over with quickly that it would give her a chance to marry whoever

she had gotten pregnant with. Maybe if I get this over quietly and quickly, maybe

this she could even marry this guy before the baby's born. Maybe I can help

avoid harassment. Maybe I can help further embarrassment by not making a

big deal about this. Seems reasonable. But God wasn't looking for what felt

righteous and God wasn't looking for what felt reasonable to the mind of a

man. God wanted Joseph to take responsibility. It's one thing to be

solution-minded. It's another to take responsibility for a problem that you

did not create. The kind of love that we see in Advent says that not only will I

care about your problem, I will make your problem my problem. That is what God is

asking of Joseph. Isn't that what he's asking of us? You can hear the love that

our world is missing when people say that's not my fault. I didn't do it.

That's not my problem. It's not my responsibility. It shows up in a thousand

ways, not least being how some white communities respond to racism in our

world, how the wealthy responds to the poor, how citizens respond to immigrants,

how unprepared men respond to pregnant women saying you should have been on the

Hill. You hear it in how the well-fed responds to the hungry. By one estimate,

it would cost $40 billion a year for less than 10 years to end all of world

hunger. There is one person in America, just one person right now, that's worth

$429 billion. One, just one. And no one's asking that one person to solve the

problem. The point is that there's enough in the world, but there's enough of us

saying that's not my problem. That we're unwilling to make someone else's problem

our problem. It is a lack of God love, a lack of Advent love that says I bear no

responsibility in a world that only works when we take responsibility for

problems that we didn't create, or in some cases problems that we don't think

that we created. Advent love is taking responsibility because Advent love is

the embodiment of God. Advent love is the embodiment of God. John 1, 14 says the

word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. In the beginning,

God created the heavens and the earth and found that we had become pregnant

with sin and selfish desires. It would have made a lot of sense. It would have

been reasonable for Him to send us off forever, to never speak to us again, to

let us marry the one that had led us into sin, to leave us quietly, to start

the life that we wanted. It would have been reasonable for God to divorce us.

Instead, time and time again throughout all of the scriptures, we see that God

takes responsibility. Instead of moving us out, God moves in. There was nothing,

there was nothing in the law of Moses that required of God that He take on

flesh. But Jesus is born with a human body incarnate with flesh and blood and

He enters our every problem. He takes them on as His own.

Listen, listen carefully. We are not meant to merely imitate the limitations

that we see in each other. So often that is our standard. We're willing to go up

to but not beyond the limitations that we see in each other. And so the bar just

keeps getting lower. But we are not meant to imitate the limitations that we see

in each other. We are meant, we aren't meant to justify our behaviors by the

lowest common denominator. We are meant to embody the likeness of Jesus. 1st John

4, you heard part of it a little bit earlier. This is love. Not that we loved

God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Ephesians

4 put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and

holiness. Joseph thought that he was righteous in his decision to marry her

quietly. We are being asked to put on the likeness of Christ that is actually the

true righteousness. Galatians 6, carry each other's burdens. Now listen, and in

this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Jesus bore the weight and

responsibility of the sins and the struggles of a humanity that was caught

cheating. Just like He took our likeness and bore our burdens, He's asking us to

put on His likeness and bear one another's burdens. Because Advent love

doesn't pass the buck, Advent love pays the bill.

When Joseph found that Mary was pregnant, he could have bankrupted her. He could

have bankrupted her family. He could have left her a single mother, or worse, he

could have literally left her dead. Instead, he was told that he would be the

earthly father of God in flesh. A couple weeks ago I talked about the joy that I

felt, a sense of hope of knowing that I was going to be a father. I do not, cannot

fathom or imagine the weight of being told by an angelic being. But this one's

different. This one happens divine. You know, you're just a regular old guy, but

your kid, yeah that one's from the Holy Spirit. I don't know what that would be

like, but we know what He did. Instead of leaving her, instead of using His idea,

He followed the Lord. Before Jesus gave His life for the world, Joseph gave His

life for Mary and Jesus. When He did not have to, it was not His problem.

Some of us have been running from our responsibilities and it's time to stop.

Some of us are running from our responsibilities because we still don't

believe that it's our responsibility. Because it's not my fault. Because I

didn't do it. Because that's not my problem. There's too much. That's not my

problem. There's too much. That's not my problem in this world. There is too much.

It's not my fault in this world. The beautiful thing about the way that the Bible tells

the story of God is that the writers, I've said this a hundred times in the

past, Eric's a writer, he gets it. Like writers are always trying to tell you

something that isn't just there. Writers are always asking you to pay attention

to something else. And if you go all the way back to the very first sin in the

world, right? You got Adam and Eve. Eat from the fruit they're not supposed to

eat. The next sin that is recorded in scriptures, as far as I can recall, does

anybody remember what it is? It's Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel. It says that Cain

takes Abel out into a field and he says, let's go out to a field. And it says

that he killed him there and he buried him in the field. And then God came

along and said, Cain, where is your brother? Who remembers what Cain said to God?

Am I my brother's keeper? What is implicit in that scripture is that the

answer is yes. You are your brother's keeper. Sin from the very beginning,

humanity has tried to pass the buck of blame. From the very beginning, we have

tried to pass responsibility to others, even when it is our responsibility. But

especially when we are convinced that it is not. This world, your world, your family,

your neighborhood, your job, your block, your clients, your friends, need someone

that will look at them and will say, I will carry that with you, even if it

wasn't my fault. I will carry that with you, even though, and according to the

laws of this world, I bear no responsibility. I could walk away scot-free,

I could put my head on my pillow with lightness and wake up with joy. But

Advent love says, Joseph, be this father's son, be this son's father, be this boy's

dad. In Jewish culture, it was the father that had to say, yes, this is the name of

my son. The angel says, you will name him Jesus. He bears the name Jesus because

Joseph said, it's now my responsibility to name this boy. That for all he knew,

maybe he was having an hallucination. For all he knew, maybe he ate something bad

and he thought he saw an angel, but he wakes up and he goes, I'm gonna marry a

woman that's already pregnant and I'm gonna give her a name. Then I'm gonna

give this boy a name that is not even in my family. And then I'm gonna raise this

boy. I'm gonna take him to Jerusalem with me every year and we find out as a

teenager, right on the verge of becoming an adult, he skips, he leaves behind.

He stays back and they're frantically looking for him and they find him and he

says, well didn't you know I would need to be in my father's house? And he's

saying that to Joseph and Joseph somehow is going, yes, but you're my

responsibility. It says that he taught his son a trade. He raised a boy that for

all he knew was not his, but he taught him how to be a carpenter and he

prepared his family for when he died, that his wife and son, Jesus and other

children, would not be left out on the street. He took responsibility for

something he did not have to. And I hope that you hear the Spirit of God telling

you in your heart that it's gonna be okay if you do that too. It is going to be

okay if you do that too. The responsibility that you decide to take up might run

off and leave you behind and you will not know where it is and then you will

go after it anyway and you will find it and it will say, oh I was just praying. Oh

I was just... you say, yeah it's time to go home, come on. It will be okay. You want to

know why it's gonna be okay? Look around this room because we are here to bear

each other's burdens. Because when you take up the responsibility that God is

asking you to take up, every one of us will be there with you. And when you feel

that it is becoming too heavy to carry something you didn't know you would ever

pick up, we will lend you our hands.

When you find that the money runs out because you tried to help, we will be

your bank.

When you are tired, at the end of the day we will be your rest. Because that's what

a church is supposed to be. It's not about how many people signed up to win a

free playhouse. It's about how many people experience the very presence of

God and the people that are near them.

Because this is Advent love. Amen? Let's pray.

God we thank you that in your wisdom that you sent your only begotten son to

be born of flesh and blood, to share this life in our skin with lungs that

breathe the same air and oxygen that we use every day.

Lead us into lives of taking responsibility as you put it in front of

us. Lead us away from running from the responsibilities that we have felt rise

in our hearts. And help us be a family, church, community, united by the Spirit of

God that when one needs help the others chip in. When one is tired the other

works. Yeah, just like that. Amen. Amen.