Scripture Reading: Luke 2:1-7,  Luke 2:22-35

Hope with Gemma Ryan

Being human means being acquainted with waiting. We all know the pain and discomfort of waiting. And we’re all desperately in need of learning what it is to wait with hope.

Advent is a season for waiting. And it’s actually a gift to us because it gives us permission to slow down and to sharpen our awareness around what we’re waiting for and how we’re waiting for it.

We’re going to take a look at Simeon to help us explore these ideas.

We meet Simeon when Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to consecrate him to the Lord. Simeon was waiting. In verse 25, we read that “he was waiting for the consolation of Israel.” Simeon was waiting for this promised Messiah. But the time has actually come. Simeon just doesn’t know that yet. He is in a place of in-between.

And when we find ourselves in these places of in-between, there is a danger that we take on a posture of indefinitely preparing to live, rather than living: “When I have my baby, I will feel so happy.” “When I have this job, I will feel fulfilled.” “When I meet the person I’m going to marry, then I’ll feel complete.”

We often associate waiting with being a very passive thing, a kind of hopeless state where circumstances are completely out of our hands and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

But in Simeon, we do not see someone who is passive. He is active in his waiting. Verse 26 says, “It had been revealed to him by the spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” So Simeon waited with God’s word, and therefore he waited with a sense of promise. He believed that God’s word would be fulfilled.

Simeon wasn’t waiting wishfully. He was waiting hopefully. Hope is the foundation of waiting, and our hope is based on the goodness and faithfulness of God.

Our hope is not in circumstances working out the way we want them to. Our hope is in a person: Jesus. And our hope is based on his word that he will never leave us or forsake us. That he is always redeeming, always good, always working for our good.

Do you believe that?

Everything in us wants to resist waiting. And yet waiting is actually the very thing that transforms us. Sometimes the change we’re waiting for seems so external, but the change that is most necessary is actually internal.

So who are you becoming as you wait? Is it growing you? Is it diminishing and depleting you?

Let’s take another look at Simeon. Verse 25 tells us a very important factor about how Simeon waited. The Holy Spirit was on him.

On this man’s life, there was a powerful anointing and manifest presence of the Spirit of God, bringing revelation and comfort, enabling him to wait. And I think one of the reasons why waiting is so hard and exhausting is that we often try to do it in our own strength. But waiting well requires dependence on the presence and power of God.

One of the Greek words for waiting is paromeno. Meno is the Greek word for abide that we read in John 15 when Jesus calls us to abide in him. So in this Greek word for waiting, I hear the invitation of Jesus to stay with me even in the struggle, even in the confusion of waiting. Would you remain in me, endure with me? Because if you do, you will bear the fruit of waiting.

It is the indwelling Spirit of Christ through the Holy Spirit who sustains our hope, who enables us to wait actively in expectation. This is how we keep our hope alive.

And on the day when Mary and Joseph were due to present Jesus to the temple, we’re told that Simeon, moved by the Spirit, went into the temple courts. So he was simply going about his ordinary day, being present to the Spirit of God within him, and sensing a nudge to go to the temple courts.

And God causes him to arrive at the right place at exactly the right time. And the Holy Spirit within him says, “There he is. This is the one you’ve waited for.”

Simeon can now face death or life because he has tasted the peace that can only be found through embracing the Savior.

He has waited, and he has now experienced what he waited for, the fulfillment of the promise that is not just for him, not even just for his peace, but for the world. And his joy surpasses anything he could have imagined.

Ultimately, we can wait because we know a God who also waits.

All of our waiting is held in the great waiting of God.

God has been wherever you are, and he alone has the power to sustain you and strengthen you, and comfort you until the fullness of time has come in your life.

–

Gemma Ryan is a Practicing the Way Teaching Fellow and spiritual director based in Ireland. She formerly served as Associate Pastor at Oaks Church Brooklyn.

Scripture Reading: Colossians 3:15

Peace with John Mark Comer

Last year, 43% of Americans reported feeling more anxious than the previous year. Almost 20% of Americans were diagnosed with clinical anxiety disorder. Nearly half of Americans are on some form of medication for mental health, mostly for anxiety and depression. And of course, all these numbers ratchet up the younger you are for 20-somethings and in particular for Gen Z.

But God’s desire for us is not anxiety, but peace. Look with me at Colossians chapter 3 verse 15:

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.”

The opening line is “let …” It is a command, but it is passive. It’s a command less to do something and more to let something be done to you.

“Let the peace of Christ …”

Not just peace, but the peace of Christ. Paul is not just saying — Hey, everybody, just relax. He’s not referring to a generic peace that is available to all people in those fleeting moments where the stars align with the right mood and the right circumstance and the right setting, but to a very specific peace: the peace of Christ.

It’s a peace that we see in the person of Jesus in story after story. When the storm is raging and he’s asleep on the boat. When he’s being crucified and obscenities are being thrown into his face, and he’s saying, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they are doing.”

And it’s the peace of mind that we receive through the salvation of Christ when we know in the depth of our being that we are saved, our sins are forgiven, and there is no more shame. We are safe and secure in his love.

“Let the peace of Christ rule …”

We are to let this peace of Christ rule. Paul uses a unique word here that isn’t the traditional word for rule. In Greek, it’s bravruo, a word used when a judge in an ancient court would issue a ruling. It was also used in the Olympic Games when an umpire would rule and say in-bounds or out-of-bounds, winner or loser, foul or no foul. To let the peace of God rule means to let it decide or direct your heart in the word used by Paul.

“Since, as members of one body, you were called to peace.”

There’s a shift here that’s lost in the English translation from singular to plural. That phrase, “your hearts,” is singular. But in “you were called to peace,” that’s a plural “you.”

Paul is writing to a community. And in context, he’s writing about how we become a community of love, how we get along, how we live in harmony and not in tension with each other. And that begins, in Paul’s mind, with each of us letting the peace of Christ drive out all fear and letting it rule.

But the thing is, when you read the New Testament, it becomes very clear that whatever Jesus and Paul and the others mean by peace is not what I think of by peace.

Jesus was beaten and stripped naked, and killed. Paul was arrested time and again and thrown in prison and stoned and left for dead and beaten up and tortured and shipwrecked, and in the end, they cut off his head. Not a very peaceful life, but par for the course for all of the early Christian leaders.

We think of peace as the absence of conflict. An end to all evil and injustice. And one day, this kind of world will come to pass at Jesus’ final return to rule as the king of kings and lord of lords. And the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Prince of Peace.

But the peace that Jesus is offering us now is what the biblical writers call a sign and a foretaste of the future world right in the middle of the chaos of the present one. That outer state is mostly yet to come. But the internal state is available now through Jesus.

Now, how do we do this?

Let me just offer you two very simple observations from Paul’s command of the Colossians.

One, peace comes when we just spend time with the God of peace.

When I lived in Oregon, I had a spiritual director. I don’t really remember anything that we talked about (other than one conversation that was life-changing). What I most remember is that I would almost always go into those conversations feeling anxious. And as I would just sit and visit with him prayerfully, I would literally just feel my central nervous system calm. He was so calm. He was not in a hurry. He was pervaded by peacefulness. And by the end, I would walk out of that chapel feeling profoundly at peace, just by being, just by breathing the air around him.

That’s just, I think, a sliver of what it’s like to breathe the air, so to speak, around God. Prayer is the non-negotiable pathway to peace. It is the first and most important step that we can and must take to carve out time every single day, just to sit quietly before the God of peace.

Secondly, peace comes when we surrender to the God of peace.

The command is to “let the peace of Christ rule.” Another way to say that is to surrender, yield to the direction of the peace of Christ. So much of our anxiety is because we are grasping for control rather than learning to surrender.

I have come to believe that living from the peace of Christ is one of the most important tasks of my apprenticeship to Jesus. I fail at this every single day. It may take 50 more years, but I know this is the path.

Today, as Jesus said, you will face trouble. I really pray it’s minor and not major. But you will certainly face troubles.

In those moments, remember Jesus’ words: “Do not let your heart be troubled” and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Scripture Reading: Luke 1:26-38, Luke 2:34-35, Romans 15:13

Joy with Ken Shigematsu

During World War II, a chaplain known as Chaplain Mac was taken prisoner into a POW camp. Unknown to the German guards, the Americans had built a small, homemade radio with which they could receive news from the outside world. And one day, the Americans received news on their radio that the German high command had surrendered and the war was over. People are shouting, they’re dancing, they’re laughing, and the guards have no idea what’s going on.

A few nights later, news reaches the German guards. And so they flee into the night, leaving the gates of the prison camp unlocked. And so the very next morning, the Americans and the British walked out as free men.

But three days before, the soldiers were technically free. When they heard the news, the war was over. They knew that there was a turn in their story, and so they began to experience joy.

In what we now call the first century, a 14 or 15-year-old teen girl from the tiny town of Nazareth is approached by this large, luminous being. And the angel Gabriel says to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.”

Mary had many reasons to be anxious. She would become pregnant supernaturally through the Holy Spirit. And people would have assumed that she had sex outside of marriage. When her fiancé, Joseph, learns that she is pregnant, he knows he’s not the biological father; he assumes she has cheated on him. And so he begins a process of breaking off the relationship.

Mary’s story is not without pain and sorrow, but when she hears from the angel Gabriel that she is favored and loved by God and will give birth to a son whom they will name Jesus, which means Savior, she knows that her story has experienced a sudden, joyous turn and that she has cause for her heart to lift in joy.

And whether you know it or not, with Christ’s coming to earth, like Mary, you too can experience the sudden, joyous turn.

Have you ever experienced in any part of your life or any season a sudden, joyous turn where somehow you knew that your future would be different and for the better?

Maybe you were admitted to a school that you really wanted to study at, and somehow you knew that your life would be tracking in a different direction. Or perhaps you made a sports team or a musical group that you really wanted to play for. Or perhaps you got an offer for a dream job.

So Mary experiences this sense of being favored and loved by God through the message of the angel Gabriel, and then knows this sudden joyous turn, but she also knows joy because the Holy Spirit will come into her.

Now, the Holy Spirit will not come upon us in exactly the same way so that we conceive and give birth to the Son of God. But if you come to God and receive the forgiveness of sins, which is on offer for you because Christ died for you, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and you will have reason for joy.

The great C.S. Lewis, in his classic Mere Christianity, wrote these words: “If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire. If you want to get wet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to or even into the thing that has them … If you want eternal life, that is the life of the most joyous being in the universe, get close to God, immerse yourself in the water of who God is, and you will grow in joy.”

So Mary recognizes she’s favored and loved by God and experiences the sudden joyous turn. And then she is filled with the Spirit, and her joy grows.

And the same can be true for us. When we recognize that we are loved by God, we will know this sudden joyous turn. When we are filled with the Spirit, our joy will grow.

That does not mean, however, as some of us know from experience, that our lives will be free of sorrow and pain. Mary, as I alluded to, had sorrow and pain in her story. When Joseph assumed she had cheated on him, he understandably broke up with her. And then Scripture tells us that when Jesus, her son, was in his early thirties, he was nailed to a cross to become an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The Bible tells us that it was like a sword was thrust through Mary’s heart. She experienced so much pain.

A mentor of mine says that joy is like a tree. It won’t always be in visible bloom, but even in the wintertime, we know the tree is still growing and that it will bloom. And knowing it will bloom is a reason for hope. And if we have a reason for hope, even during painful times, we can know a quiet undercurrent of joy.

So as we experience the sudden joyous turn, as we connect our life to Christ, or Christ connects his life to us, as we are filled with the life of God, joy grows in us. And then finally, as the life of God is birthed in us, but also through us to the world, we will know a unique joy.

Mary had the experience of not only being filled with the Spirit of God, but conceiving a real flesh and blood human being who was God as one of us. And that was just obviously a cause for monumental joy for Mary. It’s also the cause of considerable grief as well, but a lot of joy. And when we have the privilege of not only being filled with the Spirit of God but becoming a channel of God’s life to others, we will know a joy that we have not known before.

When you sense that you have been favored by God like Mary, you can see that your story is now on the arc of this sudden, joyous turn. And like the shepherds, when you understand that a Savior has been born for you, and that Savior begins to live in you by the Holy Spirit and then begins to manifest God’s life through you to the world, you will experience the lifting of your heart to joy.

May that be so for you.

–

Ken Shigematsu is the Senior Pastor at Tenth Church in Vancouver B.C., a Practicing the Way Teaching Fellow, and author of several amazing books, including God In My Everything and Now I Become Myself.

Scripture Reading: Micah 5:2-5

Love with Bethany Allen

Let love find you.

This year, more than any other, I have wrestled with the love of God. I have longed to know it more fully and more deeply. And in that I have struggled to understand how it can be both painful and redemptive, how it can break you open and heal you at the same time.

Love, it turns out, isn’t something I understand as clearly or as fully as I thought.

It is one thing to know that you are loved. But it’s another thing entirely to live as though it’s true.

Love takes center stage in this season that we call Advent. Advent, as you’ll hopefully remember, is not merely a time of remembrance; it’s also a time of re-entry. It’s a time when we, as the church, return and re-enter the story of God’s coming, the moment when God entered into our chaos and redefined our understanding of hope, peace, joy, and love.

Chapter 5 of the book of Micah represents a crescendo moment. Yahweh has been speaking to the people about the redemption he will one day bring. And then he says in verse two, “But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you were small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be a ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.”

Bethlehem was the place where King David was born. It’s here in this first verse that Micah subtly hints at the kind of king he would be: humble, hidden, and emerging from the place you’d least expect. Bethlehem was far from a place of prestige. It was obscure, even insignificant. And yet from this unremarkable town would come the Messiah, the one who would change everything.

Next, Micah shifts to an even more unsettling reality: Israel’s present situation. They are abandoned, suffering, and waiting. Here, Micah begins to make a connection between the hope of the coming king and the painful reality that Israel was experiencing. The people would know a time of abandonment, not as a final rejection, but as a part of God’s larger plan for restoration.

And we see that highlighted in the next line, “Until the time when she who is in labor bears his son.” It’s here that we find the convergence of both the pain of Israel’s current situation and the hope of new life that would emerge from it.

Then Micah moves from describing this coming Messiah as a son to describing him as a shepherd, which is a striking image, especially for a king. This king — he would not simply rule with power and decree, he would enter into their story and into their struggles.

And this relationship is perfectly captured in the final statement of our text, which is verse 5a. It says, “And he will be our peace.” In the biblical sense, peace or shalom goes beyond the absence of conflict. It refers to the ideal state of flourishing, where everything is in right relationship. Our relationship with God, our relationship with one another, and the world around us, its wholeness or completeness, and a restoration of what was broken. The Messiah prophesied about would also create a new way of relationship, a new way to experience and know God and his love for us, a new way to know love fully, completely, like we were always meant to.

Let love find you.

That is easier said than done.

And while that’s hard, it is necessary because only by actively and regularly receiving God’s love can we truly understand the depth of what he has made available to us.

What does receiving love do for us?

First, receiving love fuels our relationship with God. When we truly receive God’s love, it is what keeps our relationship with him from becoming a mere religious exercise. Love, instead, transforms our relationship into something deeply personal and dynamic and real.

Second, receiving God’s love also frees us to see ourselves rightly. It radically changes how we viniew our own identity, which changes how we show up the world. Receiving God’s love helps me hold rightly to who it is that He has made me to be, and it gives me the gift of living into that dignity and offering it to others as well.

And finally, receiving God’s love forms us. When we can receive God’s love, we will always, always, always be changed by it. It orders in us what is disordered. His shalom meets our anxiety, and it casts it out. His perfect love pushes out all of the fear that lives in you, your mind, body, and imagination, and it is able to flood you with peace. His love is a force that changes us.

The love of God is a reality we are meant to know and meant to be changed by, day in and day out. We are meant to experience it over and over and over again.

So how can we receive this gift of love?

First, through surrender. To receive love is to surrender to something. It is yielding and letting go of what we cannot control, and yielding to the one who is offering love to us. It is the regular practice of releasing the ways we protect ourselves from pain, or the fear of it, and giving up to God our assumptions about what that will or could be. It is an invitation to be dependent, to set aside our self-reliance and self-sufficiency, and to open ourselves to the possibility of receiving something we cannot create on our own.

Second, through vulnerability. That means letting go of the walls we’ve carefully built to protect ourselves from being hurt. Love can’t be received if we don’t allow ourselves to be seen for who we truly are. Not just the parts of us that are polished or presentable, but the messy and broken parts too.

Finally, through trust. To trust is to believe that the other has our best interest at heart, that they will not harm us, but rather meet us where we need them most. In the context of receiving God’s love, of letting his love find us, trust means believing that he knows us completely, that he sees our flaws and brokenness, that he still chooses to love us without any reservations.

Receiving God’s love is more than a theological idea. It is an active, life-changing invitation to become the people we were always meant to be and to experience the life we were meant to live.

This is the heart of the Christmas story. From the prophets to the gospel writers, from Genesis to Revelation, we hear a constant refrain, a divine invitation.

And this year it sounds like, “let love find you.”

So this Advent, may we open our hearts wide to the love that finds us, that calls us, and changes us. Let love find you and let it make you whole.

–

Bethany Allen is an Elder and Associate Pastor at Bridgetown Church in downtown Portland.