Advent - Peace

Well, good morning. My name is Gregg. I am one of the pastors here if we've never met.

I would love to meet you, I'd love to buy you a coffee, something like that, hear your

story. I really like to get to know people, like to talk about Jesus if that's something

that you're interested in talking about. I would love to do that.

As has been established, we are in the second week of Advent. Advent is the beginning of

the global church calendar. It sets the path as we walk through the story of Jesus toward

the cross and Pentecost and then eventually the largest part of the calendar year is just

ordinary time. You'll notice the colors change. It's green for a lot of the year because it's

just reminding us that we are people of this earth, that God has so much for us to do in

the ordinary time. Last week, Scott brought a message about hope and today I'm bringing

the message about peace. I'm going to jump right in. If you want to grab your Bibles,

we're going to be opening to Luke chapter 1. Luke is in the second testament, the newer

Luke 1 · chapter mention

testament. It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. If you see any of those, you know you're

in the right neighborhood. There are Bibles on the table. You can use a digital Bible

as well if you would like. We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention

as we read the passage in the context of the message. One of the ways we do that is by

standing together as we are able, but you're more than welcome to sit. Let's give the scriptures

our full attention. Luke 1 starting in verse 8. Luke 1 verse 8. Once when Zachariah's division

Luke 1:8

was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by Lot according to the

custom of the priesthood to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the

time for the burning of incense came, all of the assembled worshipers were praying outside.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him standing at the right side of the altar of

incense. When Zachariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said

to him, do not be afraid. Zachariah, your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear

you a son. You are to call him John. Let's jump to verse 18. Zachariah asked the angel,

how can I be sure of this? I'm an old man and my wife is well along in years. Let us

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

scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia that we still have them to read,

to consider, to learn from. I pray that today whatever you have for us to learn, I pray

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

faith would grow and become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus. Amen? Amen.

Alright, so Zachariah and really all of Israel had been waiting for a messiah. For hundreds

of years there was this concept that a messiah, that a leader would come along and would free

them from their oppressors, would begin a season of eternal peace. In Zachariah and

Elizabeth we know they were waiting personally for their own child. Long past when people

in their season of life would have been having kids. And that parallel is on purpose, the

waiting. The waiting for a messiah, the waiting for a child. The scriptures are reminding

us on purpose that when we wait longer than we think is possible for something earthly

and physical, that it shapes what we think God can do with the heavenly and spiritual.

In this story we can see that the waiting has given Zachariah a level of pessimism.

This last week on my Facebook page I posted a real simple thing, pessimism is poison.

Zero comments. When the angel Gabriel says to Zachariah, your prayer has been heard,

your wife will have a son. It doesn't say that he smiles, it doesn't say that he breathes

a sigh of relief, it says that he questions whether it's possible. And this isn't the

first time that this has happened either. In the Bible, if you're familiar with more

of the story in the Bible, this actually echoes the story of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and

Sarah are the mother and the father of the Israelite people and more than 1800 years

earlier the scriptures say that God told Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child in

their older years. And Abraham said this, to God. Can a child be born to a man who is

100 years old? Can Sarah give birth at the age of 90? What did Zachariah say to the angel?

How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years. The waiting

is parallel. The promise from God is a parallel. Whether it's God or an angel, it is a pretty

normal response when we're told that something we've hoped for, asked for, prayed for, for

years and years and years is finally on its way to wonder if it's true. To ask big questions,

maybe even pessimistic questions. Cindy and I, we were pretty young when we started having

kids, I think at least by today's standards, people are waiting longer and longer. I was

26 and she was 22 and we found out that we were, well she was pregnant for the first

time, I know this modern thing, we had a baby, she had a baby. And an angel didn't tell us,

a pregnancy test did, but we were fortunate. We know that we're fortunate. We didn't have

to try for years. Eugene Peterson translates the word blessed in the message as lucky.

Zachariah and Elizabeth, so many others, had to wait. But I can relate to Zachariah at

least a little bit, because it felt like when we found out in that season of being pregnant

for the first time, there was a lot of uncertainty. Just months before we became pregnant, this

is back in 2004, we had just left our job at a church, a paid job. We left a paid job

at a church and we started working as volunteers. I was a full time volunteer, worship pastor

at a church and we sold our house. And we moved into the basement of the pastor that

we were working with, because that was the only way that they could pay me. There was

the promise of next year. And that's when two major things happened. One was that we

became pregnant. Second, the senior pastor of the church at large changed their mind.

They decided that the ministry that we were helping start was no longer needed. Where

would we live? What would we do? We had a baby on the way. Jen, you remember, you were

there. It is amazing how when people here on earth make and change plans that it can

leave us thinking that God has changed his promises. But God was still working. We just

had to figure out what faith looked like now. We'd had the faith to sell the house. We'd

had the faith to quit the job. We'd had the faith to move into the basement. We had had

the faith to say, yes, we'll start that thing. But we had to ask, what does faith look like

now? I remember when we went for the ultrasound to find out the sex of the baby. We were in

this dark little room and they had the screen and they had all the equipment and gel on

Cindy's baby belly. And the nurse asked us what we wanted to know. We wanted to know.

She said that we were having a son. Man, the way that I remember it, I felt like God surrounded

me in that room. I went out into the hallway. I left the room because I needed to weep.

Because I had no idea what our future was. I had no idea what it held. There was so much

uncertainty, but something about that moment, being told that I was having a son, it just

swept over me. I felt seen. It felt like God still knew where we were. In that same season,

we took a trip up to Minneapolis to visit a church called Solomon's Porch. The pastor

there, Doug Padgett, he set us up to stay with a couple from the church. As we talked

to them, they talked about how they'd really been through the wringer. They talked about

how they had a new word for faith. We were sitting at the table there in their kitchen,

in their dining room, and saying, we have a new word for faith. We said, what is it?

They said, bravery. In the midst of not knowing what was next, in the midst of plans falling

apart, but knowing and believing that God was still with us, we'd already picked out

a name for our son. He was going to be named Brennan Reed Hampton, but instead, we gave

him the name Brennan Brave Hampton. Not just as a sign to him for his life, but to always

remind us to be bold, to remind us that faith requires bravery in the midst of uncertainty.

If you fast forward, when Brennan was just 15 months old, we took a pretty brave step.

We moved to Colorado Springs so that I could go to a one-year school of worship at a church

out there called New Life Church. And just two months in, again, we're living in a basement,

a furnished basement, two months in, it came out that the senior pastor at that church

had committed adultery, was abusing methamphetamines, and he was fired. Now, very suddenly,

this whole faith as bravery idea looked a lot like foolishness in disguise. When we saw

the way that so many of the leaders and pastors there set their hearts on the line to care

for the church, to kneel in prayer, to stand for goodness and faithfulness, we watched

as so many people faced one of the greatest challenges of their lives with grace and humility.

Did they know exactly what they were doing? No. They had no clue what they were doing.

At the same time, I could see what kind of character that they had as they walked through it.

In the midst of all that chaos in Colorado, we became pregnant with our second son.

And we knew after naming our first son Brennan Brave that we could not name our other kids

normal names. And so, once again, we began looking at what faith meant now. Faith meant

honor and respect. Faith meant being trustworthy. Faith meant being a person of your word, being

full of kindness in difficult moments. And so we named him William Noble Hampton.

And then, if you fast forward a few years, William was born in Georgia, and then we moved

back to Colorado from Georgia, and I was hired on at that same church after they had gone

through everything. New Life Church. Now, by then, Brennan was about five and a half,

Liam had just turned three. I had been hired on at the church. We felt like, all right,

our feet are under us. It's okay. It's time for us to begin growing the family.

And we were, again, fortunate enough to get pregnant when we tried. But this pregnancy

ended up being really different. For the first time, the doctors were telling us that there

might be issues. The placenta wouldn't attach. Scans found small bubbles in the fetus's

brain. Cindy spent a lot of that pregnancy in a bed, on bed rest. There was a real chance

that we would either lose this boy or he could be born with serious medical issues. So here

we were again, wondering what does faith mean now? As we looked to Jesus, we kept coming

back to this feeling over and over and over again that we could trust him. That no matter

what happened, he was the truth. No matter what. So not only to give our child the path

to follow, but to give ourselves a reminder, we decided whatever happened, this little

boy's name would be Wallace True Hampton. Cindy stayed on bed rest. Bubbles disappeared.

And we were very fortunate that Wallace True was born a healthy little boy. And then if

you fast forward just one more time, a few years later, we felt like God wanted us to

move back here from Colorado to plant a church. At the same time, Cindy said, can we try for

one more baby? I promise if it's a boy we can be done. But I really want to try for

a little girl. And so we did. And the doctors told us that she had all the same issues with

this pregnancy as the last one. All the same risks. All the same medical issues. So we

thought back through living a faith that is brave, through choosing a faith that is noble

trusting that God is true. And in those moments we thought after all we had experienced, what

is faith right now? We thought if faith in God is anything, it is wisdom. So no matter

what her name would be and her name became Adleria Wise Hampton. And wisdom is personified

as wisdom as a woman. Yes. Thank you for editing my sermon. The love of my life. Now some of

you may be wondering what does any of this have to do with Advent? What does this have

to do with Zechariah and Elizabeth and peace? Because you're brave, noble, true, wise. Well

I left something out when we read the passage earlier. See immediately after Gabriel tells

Zechariah, you're going to have a son and you will name him John, and immediately Zechariah

questions how any of this could happen. It says that Zechariah lost his voice. It was

nine months later when it was time to name his son. Everyone wanted to know what to name

this child. Everyone in the family was saying his name will be Zechariah after his father.

His name will be Zechariah after his father. Zechariah grabs a pad and he writes down his

name will be John. It says immediately he regained his voice and he began singing a

prophetic song about what this son of his would be in the world. How this son of his

would lead the way for the son of heaven to shine on the darkness and on the valleys of

death of the earth and to set their people's feet in the path of peace. Nine months earlier

Zechariah had one idea about faith, about what faith was now. On the day that it was

time to name his son, he had a completely different idea of what faith was. And that

was the word peace. The cherry on top of it is the word peace. Far path as Hampton's to

be brave and noble and true and wise has taught me anything about faith. It's that there

is no greater peace than the peace that is found in following Jesus. Whether it's to

move to a house and live in a basement. Whether it's to move to Colorado and live in a

basement. Whether it's to move to Georgia where you don't know a single soul with a

pregnant wife that will give birth to our second son in a place that we didn't know

anybody. Or if it was to move back to Colorado without the job yet, believing that it would

happen. Or when you're working at a really great church in a really great town in a

really great state, believing that God was calling you back to a place called Rock Island.

There's no greater wisdom because there is no greater peace than following in the path

that Jesus sets. The path of peace. My hope for you this Advent is that you'll take a

moment and ask what is faith now? What is faith now? And if I can suggest something,

if you cannot think of anything else, let it be peace. Let it be peace. Let it be peace.

Amen? Amen.