(Click HERE to find the FBLive video of this service; starts at 7:30, sermon at 21:50)
Click HERE to donate to Lidgerwood church’s mission and ministries)
1
Mark Wheeler
Luke 1:39-55
Fourth Sunday of Advent, 12/19/2021
“Making Room … for Love!”
Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church
MP3 – Hope Waits Accompaniment
Welcome everyone! Happy Advent!
This has been an Advent season of praying with prophets: Jeremiah, Baruch, Isaiah, Micah. And today the prophet is Mary – the woman who was the “original House for the Holy”. She was “the Inn,” her womb gestating love for the world. With all her heart, she proclaims that the lowly are lifted, the hungry are fed, mercy reigns.
Like Mary, we must envision, we must see, we must proclaim and we must act on that vision for the world that God continues to call us to co-create.
What is the view from the Inn that God has prepared?
MP3 – Hope Waits Verse 4
2-3
Advent Song of Love
Love waits for us at Advent Joy waits for us to care.
Love waits for our compassion freely offered, freely shared.
In this time of preparation for the work of co-creation,
for the birthing of a world where faith shapes all we do. Love is born in us anew!
Lighting the Advent Candle of Joy . . . . . . Ashley & Jake Davis
Jake: Today we offer the Light of Love to illumine the Door of Welcome.
Ashley: May this light shine in our hearts, in our lives, and in our church.
Hope: May Love awaken us to possibilities and lead us to greater hospitality.
Oran: There IS room in this Inn, a House for the Holy.
MP3 – Hope Waits Verse 3
Jake lights the Advent Candles of HOPE & PEACE & JOY & LOVE
4-5
Thank you, on behalf of our Elders’ Council, thank you for … continuing to be a place of LOVE even in this continued COVID Season by:
“Wearing your mask while inside the building.”
This is not because we are afraid, but because we want to love our neighbors. We truly want that no one should feel judged, and everyone should feel safe, so continue to be gentle with each other. Listening to the Philippians 2:4 passage:
“ in humility, each counting others better than himself; each of you not just looking to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others.” Philippians 2:4
We are gathered in our church sanctuary – a holy place – and it’s also a safe place – where the divine and the human connect together. Welcome to this holy sacred and safe place today.
CAMERA
Let’s take a second to welcome each other, and those in the room, look at the camera and say HI to your friends who are at home. Tell your loved ones, whoever you can see , “The Love of Christ be with you – and also with you!”
Welcome to this “gathering” in God’s name. We are assembled in NorthEast Spokane, WA, along with people from all over the world. We are very glad you are “here” with us.
Be filled with God’s Holy Spirit presence and power, in your homes, through your phones and computers, in this building here, and in your lives. Pray with us … and hear and be transformed by God’s Word.
Our opening song of praise and devotion –– #133 – O Come, O Come, Emmanuel – led by Jake Davis!!Please join him and sing these words of invitation together.
6-10
11
We pray today with the Prophet Micah from the book of Micah 5:2-5:
As for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
though you are the least significant of Judah’s forces,
one who is to be a ruler in Israel on my behalf will come out from you.
His origin is from remote times, from ancient days.
Therefore, he will give them up
until the time when she who is in labor gives birth.
The rest of his kin will return to the people of Israel.
He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
They will dwell secure,
because he will surely become great throughout the earth;
he will become one of peace. Amen.
In this Advent Season of discovering the Inn where the Holy Family was staying, of hearing that we are welcomed into the Inn that welcomed Mary and Joseph, and then of becoming the Inn where “God with us” enters into our lives and where God now dwells, and where we, in the image of God, welcome others into God’s presence with us… let’s imagine, with appropriate biblical references, Old Testament promises and prophecies and New Testament proclamations and professions, what that place looks like, what it sounds like, what it smells like, how it feels, what it means … for us … today.
Today, from the New Testament Gospel According to Luke and we read part of Mary’s story, after the “annunciation”, but still months before Jesus’ birthday.
Listen to God’s Word from Luke 1:39-55 —-
12
1 39 Mary got up and hurried to a city in the Judean highlands. 40 She entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 With a loud voice she blurted out, “God has blessed you above all women, and he has blessed the child you carry. 43 Why do I have this honor, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. 45 Happy is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill the promises he made to her.”
13
46 Mary said,
“With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
47 In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my Savior.
48 He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.
Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored 49 because the mighty one has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
14
50 He shows mercy to everyone,
from one generation to the next,
who honors him as God.
51 He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.
52 He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.
15
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty-handed.
54 He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
remembering his mercy,
just as he promised to our ancestors,
55 to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants
forever.”
16
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Right? On this 4th Sunday of Advent we are, in fact, very close to Christmas Eve. And this House for the Holy, this Inn where Jesus is born, we discover, is a room with a view.
We hear the Old Testament prophet Micah here, of course, a great prophet.
Prophets are those who believe in God’s story. So the prophet is one who is like, you know what? This is God’s story.
And so we’ve walked with these prophets who have helped us make room, create room at the Table. They have helped us to understand what is enough, and here now, we discover Immanuel, God-with-us, in a place like a small-town, back-woods, cattle trough!
But, our view from this Inn shows us that Mary is also a prophet. In the tradition of all prophets, her words come to us.
Kenyan-born, Pastor Grace Imathiu, reminds us that “Mary, is a young girl. Okay. We’re going to dismiss her. Okay. She is young so we dismiss her. Okay. She is not married. Okay, we dismiss her. She is pregnant and not married. Okay. Look, I’m going to dismiss her completely.
Oh my goodness. That’s the old story. That’s the old social construct.”
So what is the view from the room that God is building?
If we take up residence in that place that God is building no matter what state of repair or disrepair it is in, I think, the beauty of looking at the place where Jesus was born which – there’s a lot we cannot know about it – but at least we can know that this is not a usual place for a baby to be born. This birth had to happen, no matter what, no matter where. And this is the room that God is building in the most unlikely of places.
God is building something right in the middle of our church when we don’t know how we’re going to survive or what we’re doing next. This is where God is building a House for the Holy to reside.
So the view is the Kingdom of God. Thy Kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven!
That is the view. And to see the Kingdom of God, then we have to be on our tiptoes and we cannot be weighed down by all the junk of the old story that the prophets have been trying to help us unload through Advent 1, 2, 3 and here it’s now Mary glimpses this.
There are so many things will try to pull us down so that we can’t get on our tiptoes. And that’s why the prophets tell us we’ve got to make room. That’s why we had to do a lot of cleaning up on Advent 1. And the people around the Table having enough. All that was in order to be able to get on our tiptoes.
And we face the danger of cleaning out the room and then just sitting there and feeling the emptiness and feeling like we have to fill it up with something and all we fill it up with is what we’ve known before because it’s all we can see.
Micah points us to the labor that it takes to give birth. And then Mary really chimes in with the labor of what will happen in this birthing of a new world, a new world order.
Micah’s word is strong because he’s so simple. And after some of the prophets we’ve had in the previous weeks in talking about the glory of God that will be seen throughout the whole earth and things like that, Micah starts out this passage focusing on almost unknown city…. Bethlehem is one of the, today we would say, suburbs of Jerusalem. It’s not a very classy suburb. It is not the part of town where you go to get the good stuff. But there is an air of hope here – one of the terms that the Old Testament uses for cities around Jerusalem is “daughter of Zion”.
But it starts to pick up on some of the vulnerability that becomes such a strong theme this close to Christmas. God‘s work through the vulnerable ones. In the midst of the vulnerable and disregarded places, God has already been bringing us a Ruler. Even if our eyes are on the capital city, on the big headlines, on the flashy things of the world, God is preparing salvation in a place we would discard. And it is there amongst God’s vulnerable people that God‘s greatest work is just about to unfold.
So it starts in a place like Bethlehem. The vulnerability of that moment of labor, the defenselessness, the inability to do anything else except what your body is telling you to do right now. This is, again, vulnerability. And it is in the places of helplessness, defenselessness, in the places where people don’t have other choices, that God is alive and active.
For those of us who think we’re in control of our lives, much of the time, this is a hard passage because it’s so much simpler than we make our lives to be. And it shows God‘s activity among people who have fewer choices than we do.
How can we tell where God is working, where God is active, where God is in the midst of saving us? Well, in this case, it’s someone who smells like sheep.
Mary understands that what is happening in her is a sign that God is always bringing new life in the lowest places of the earth. And so she’s not praising herself here. She’s pointing out and saying that in the vulnerable places, God is always working and is always planting new seeds that we often forget to look for.
This is very much a song, the Magnificat. Like Miriam’s song after coming through the Red Sea. And this is a song of such vulnerability and of such joy that it’s a moving experience. And she is singing this with Jesus in her womb. These melodies of God working among the lowly is what Jesus first learns to dance to.
So it’s not just a mental song that gets stuck in your mind or in your ear. This is flowing through the whole body. And provides strength we didn’t know we had.
So, as we talk about housing the holy, the idea that the Lord’s Prayer where we pray for God’s Kingdom in heaven can be God’s Kingdom on earth as well!
Here’s exactly where we see the incarnation that this season leads to.
For Micah and Mary, it’s about loving our neighbors and always looking for news ways to show God’s love!
16
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent 2021 we re-discover the love of faithful connection with the God of righteousness, and our connections to our fellow neighbors.
As we are welcomed into God’s presence, may we be such an invitingly warm welcome of righteousness to everyone around us.
There’s real Love in that! Amen.
17 Preparing Our Hearts in Prayer,
MP3 – Make My Heart a Stable – Advent 4
Make of my heart a stable, a house for the holy, a warm and sturdy place for love to live and grow.
In this moment we open the doors of our hearts to honesty before God
about what we’ve done and left undone that created less hope in a hurting world.
Let us breathe out this regret… [pause to breathe out]
and breathe in the life-giving, forgiving Spirit of God… [pause to breathe in]
and out again with the Peace of Christ… [another breath out].
18 Make of my life a stable, a house for the holy, a warm and sturdy place for love to live and grow.
In this moment we open the doors of our lives to the call of the Holy Spirit,
inviting us to become more than we can ask or imagine.
Let us breathe out our fear… [pause to breathe out]
and breathe in the courage of the Spirit of God… [pause to breathe in]
and out again, with the Peace of Christ… [another breath out].
19 Make of our church a stable, a house for the holy, a warm and sturdy place for love to live and grow.
In this moment we open the doors of this church,
filling it with the compassion of Christ for all those who are struggling.
As Pastor Kathy leads us in prayer, listen for the prompt, and call out a name or a situation … on]
We remember and pray for…
20-22
… those who are celebrating God’s presence with victory and faith;
may love abound!
… those who are suffering economic hardship, and insecurity in basic needs;
may abundance be shared.
… those who are suffering mentally, finding it difficult to cope;
may paths open and hope return.
… those who are suffering illness or injury;
may healing abound.
…. those who are suffering loneliness and isolation;
may companionship and solace arrive.
… those who are suffering discrimination, fear and violence;
may they know respect, respite, and safety.
May the Advent of Compassion be born in us,
reside within us,
move outward from us,
to meet the needs of the world,
making a house for the Holy that is each and every child of God.
We pray this in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray:
23 [The Lord’s Prayer]
24
Imagine living in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth. Little town with big expectations! As we heard, the prophet Micah, hundreds of years earlier, had predicted that a baby would be born in this “least significant” place, one that would “surely become great.” This was part of the sacred texts of the people and surely something that everyone in Bethlehem, including the Innkeeper, knew about.
But did they believe it?
Did they believe that someone great, a peaceful ruler, would come from their town?
Perhaps not enough to realize the possibilities of a pregnant woman on their doorstep that night.
Do we believe that we are capable of birthing something life-changing for the people in our community? As the Body of Christ, could we live with more expectation of what is possible? Could we look more closely at what is right in front of us?
– Offering (4449 N Nevada St, Spokane, 99207 ; or click HERE, or text 833-976-1333, code “Lidgerwood”)
25
Expedition Song – O Come All Ye Faithful? #173 –! – Jake Davis! Each week of this series we have “expedited” with a Christmas Carol. Yes, Advent is not yet the birth of Christ. Today’s closing carol is “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” an 18th century hymn by John Francis Wade. This carol invites us to come “joyful and triumphant.” It moves between exhortation and doctrine from the Nicene Creed. And each verse moves from boisterous to almost a hushed tone at the beginning of the refrain as we tiptoe into the stable with “O come, let us adore him”.
Each one of us has known the need to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven. May we approach each person we meet with the adoration of Jesus Christ, tender and merciful, loving and kind, and make this a house that welcomes all to adore Him.
26-29
30
We continue with this benediction: May God’s Door of Welcome
swing open in our hearts and in our lives.
May Christ’s humble first dwelling
remind us of the plenty we already know.
And may the Holy Spirit lead us into
more possibility and hospitality
than we can imagine,
making room in The Inn for all.
May it be so for you. May it be so for us.
May it be so for this church. Amen.
31-32 Announcements
Resources:
McFee, Marcia; “The Inn”; Worship design Studio; 2021. (Interviews with Jon Berquist and Grace Imathiu.)
lidgerwoodpresbychurch 