The season of Advent

Pastor Richard Baker
Trinity United Methodist Church

(12/2024) I want to wish all my Christian friends a Happy New Year. You may say that I’m a month early but I am talking about the Christian year which begins with the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. The Christian church uses something called the "Lectionary." The Lectionary provides four scripture choices for each Sunday, with the idea being that if all the scriptures were read, believers would hear the majority of the Bible read to them over a three-year period. We break down each year to an A, B, or C. We are currently in Year B but we will begin Year C on the first Sunday of Advent. That means our New Year will begin on December 1.

The Lectionary has its roots in the fourth century and has been revised, most recently in 1981. As I said, if all four scriptures are read, the reader or listener would hear the majority of the Bible over a three-year period. Going back to the fourth century, many Christians could not read or write. Typically, only the local church owned a Bible, and the priest would read those passages every week and explain them. This same thinking was used in the visual depiction of the Stations of the Cross. People may not have had access to a Bible, but the images portrayed a vivid picture for believers.

There are over four hundred and fifty known versions of the Bible, with it being translated into seven hundred and thirty-six languages. My sister-in-law worked at Borders Book Store and told me that the Bible is the most stolen book in their stores. We have all these translations and yet so many people do not know what is in it.

Some people heard harsh words of condemnation when they were children and left the church before they had the ability to properly understand it. Some people do not like the truths that are contained in it, but it is given to us as the inspired word of God, and we come to know the Lord through the written word.

In the movie, Princess Bride, a grandfather stops by to read a book to his grandson, who is less than enthralled with the idea of reading a book and asks if there is anything good in it. The grandfather tells him, "Are you kidding? Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles." There is all of that and so much more, in our Bibles. We start off with the story of our Creation. We see God create us, and bless us and give us boundaries to live by, but as we all know, we could not abide by those boundaries. That caused us to lose our place in paradise but it revealed a truth about God. God, even though we angered him could not stop loving us. And even as we were put out of paradise, God provided another path.

The first five books in our Bibles show how God continued to provide and how we kept God at arm’s length. There were some success stories, as in the story of Abraham, who God referred to as a friend. We all remember the story of Joseph and how his brothers sold him into slavery and how God used those circumstances to save the young nation of Israel.

We can read about Moses’ birth and how God protected him and placed him in the home of Pharoah’s daughter, who raised him as a prince. Moses sinned by killing an Egyptian and fled into the desert, but again God stepped in and used that time to prepare Moses to lead the people of Israel to safety.

We have the story of the Judges who led Israel and how they continued to fall into sin, and time and time again, God delivered them. We are given the history of Israel with their faults on display for us to see. We can read the Prophets who faithfully attempted to lead Israel to following God.

For four hundred years, God was silent, but then the New Testament opens with God’s greatest plan yet. God would come to us in the person of Jesus to show us what a God-centered life could look like. And when we still failed to understand the depths of his love, God died for our sins so we could be made right with him.

All of these events are chronicled in a book that many dismiss as outdated or out-of-touch. If we believe in God, and if we desire to join him in eternity, this book is a must read. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul in Romans 7, we would not know what sin is and how it separated us from God apart from his word. John expressed his gratitude in his first Epistle saying, "How great is the love that the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God."

I am a student of history. I can tell you all kinds of interesting facts about the Founding Fathers, but I do not know any of them personally. Even their own biographies fail to provide what they were thinking as they built our nation. But I come to know God through his written word. And as I come to know the person of God, I am introduced to someone I want to devote my life to following. I come to know the person of God as he speaks through his written word. I come to understand his intent, his perfect will, for my life. The Prophet Micah said it best. "God has shown us what is good. And what does the Lord require of us, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with the Lord." We keep looking for the answers to life’s biggest issues and here God explained his will for us.

Ask people about heaven and they’ll talk about it like it’s the best retirement community in the world. Ask them how they get to heaven and they’ll say they hope to go there based on their own good works. Neither idea is scriptural. Heaven is not a first-class country club. Heaven is not a place filled with good people. Heaven is a place where people who realized their own moral bankruptcies, called out to God, and asked for the gift of salvation.

It's almost humorous to think that sixteen hundred years ago, people needed the scriptures read to them because they could not read or afford a Bible, and now with the word so readily available we seem to know even less than we knew then. We continue to look for ways to get the word out to newcomers, and perhaps the best way to do that is by believers sharing their stories of how God’s word delivered them during their darkest moments. I will state, without hesitation that the Bible is the inspired word of God. It is a love letter from God, declaring his love for us. It is the story of how we continued to fumble our relationship with our Creator and how God refused to give up. Every day, I can find a fresh nugget to hold onto.

One I would like to leave you with comes from Peter’s second Epistle letter. Peter, like so many of us, struggled to understand the depths of God’s love, but he finally got it and wrote for us: "God is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but for everyone to come to repentance." We all fit in because all of us are somewhere between anyone and everyone. I invite you as we approach the New Year to recommit to reading the greatest story ever told. Remember, it’s got "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles." Knowing this, how could possibly resist?