Saturday Sermon from the Sidelines

We’re All Temporary

The Third Sunday in Advent, 2020 — Isaiah 61; 1 Thessalonians 5

One of my favorite parishioners was a great teaser. She could always give as good as she got. When her husband dished out a particularly spicy zinger, we could always count on her stock reply. “You can be replaced, you know,” she’d say with a grin. It was a marvelous retort, in part, because we all knew her absolute and unending devotion to her spouse. But it also always had the function of putting him a little bit back in his place.

You can be replaced, you know. Of course, that’s true. We’re all temporary. Forbes Magazine reminds us that we’re all temporary workers, no matter what we pretend. At our house, we’ve moved enough times to know that at least some of our improvements and repairs will benefit the next owners more than they benefit us. Life has an expiration date, someone else reminds us. That great American philosopher, Hank Williams, puts it best when he sings, “No matter how I struggle and strive, I’ll never get out this world alive.”

Photo by judit agusti aranda on Pexels.com

We’re all temporary. But we spend most our time and energy pretending to be permanent. We act as if our jobs, our homes, our cars, our relationships, our institutions, our traditions, and practices will all continue without end. It’s a way to deny the reality of decline, decay, and death. But it really is just all play-acting. The Covid crisis makes that abundantly clear.

I can be replaced, you know. And I will be, sooner or later.

In this season of Advent, we’re reminded that we’re all temporary. Last week, the prophet bemoaned the inconstancy of life in this world. “All people are grass,” a voice cried in Isaiah 40, “their constancy is like the flower of the field.” Those summer flowers are in the yard waste bag and the compost pile – here and gone in the blink of an eye. And we are just like them.

It’s good, of course, that some things aren’t permanent. That brings us to the first reading for the third Sunday in Advent. It’s good that oppression, broken-heartedness, captivity, and incarceration are temporary. It’s good that mourning, destruction, and ruin come to an end. It’s good that tyrants and abusers and bullies can be replaced. The prophet proclaims an end to all those who traffic in deceit, domination, and death.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” the prophet announces, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is the Year of Jubilee, first described in Leviticus 25. The Year of Jubilee – when all debts are wiped out, when all ancestral lands go back to their original owners, when wealth is redistributed, and when economic power is rebalanced. Sounds like a damned socialist conspiracy if you ask me! The whole idea seems just un-American.

Well, yes – that’s right. What’s your point? We’re all temporary, and so are all our schemes and systems. Even the “invisible hand of the market” is a human construction.

The purpose of the Jubilee Year was to ensure that there would be no permanent underclass in Israel. “The commission to ‘proclaim liberty’,” writes Elna Solvang in her workingpreacher.org commentary, “is language from the instructions for observing the Jubilee Year. During the Jubilee property and people held as payment for debt were returned to the families to which they originally belonged (Leviticus 25:10). The use of the Leviticus language in Isaiah 61 is a clear indication,” she proposes, “that the liberty proclaimed is intended to be made permanent in new social and economic relationships within the community.”

But the real world of the prophet looks nothing like the vision. Reality was a disappointing parade of just one damned thing after another. It seemed that nothing had changed.

Disappointment with reality on the ground – the first reading once again seems to connect so deeply with events around us in the present moment. We expected The Pandemic (by now I think it deserves capital letters) to be long over by now. We expected, perhaps, that something, please God – anything, would have been concluded on the day after the presidential election – either the pandemic or structural racism or snarky tweets or political ads or pleas for money. In fact, the day has come and gone, and the ruins still surround us. If anything, the mourning deepens as the death tolls mount. The reality of life for many of us is nothing like we had hoped.

But we’re all temporary, and so is our disappointment. Paul knows this when he writes to the Thessalonian Christians, “Rejoice at all times.” Food insecurity grows by the minute. Unemployment payments will cease momentarily. Businesses board up, some never to re-open. Racist, xenophobic, and psychopathic policies still unfold. Climate havoc and disaster continue apace, hardly noticed amid the churn of all the other troubles. Rejoicing in the midst of this seems frivolous at best and criminally cruel at worst.

It would be cruel indeed if we believed that nothing could change. But I can be replaced, you know. So can all the systems and structures that loot and pillage the oppressed, including a president and his cronies who just don’t seem to know how to leave. John points to the first coming of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We live after that first coming and point to the second coming in how we live our lives.

Whenever Christ returns, we have time between now and then. So, we are called in positive terms to rejoice, to pray, to give thanks. This is what is best for us in Christ Jesus. And we are called to resist the forces that would threaten us – to not turn down the living presence of Divine Holiness in our hearts, to not disdain new words from the Lord (when subject to appropriate testing), to not be dragged into the multifarious evils on offer from the world.

The Spirit of the Lord Jesus is upon us to proclaim and to live in the year of the Lord’s favor. We may all be temporary, but the Lord’s favor is everlasting. All that sin, death and the devil could dish out was concentrated in the cross of Christ and defeated in his death and resurrection. So, we rejoice in the temporary nature of the world’s brokenness and live into the light of the Lord.

We live in the Year of Jubilee. And we can take our cues from the prophet. After all, Jesus quotes this passage in his inaugural sermon at Nazareth. What does this look like?

The Year of Jubilee sounds to me like abolishing the death penalty and reforming our criminal punishment system (read yesterday’s post for more on that: https://wordpress.com/post/lowellhennigs.com/546).

The Year of Jubilee in our context sounds to me like restoration of land to Native communities. Every Christian congregation should know whose land their buildings occupy and should make concrete efforts to begin to make that theft right.

The Year of Jubilee in our context sounds to me like racial reparations. We don’t know if the Hebrew Jubilee Year actually happened, but it was at least the ideal. And in some cases, it did happen in part. We white Christians think reparations at just too hard for us. But we haven’t really tried. In fact, our history is littered with times when we simply turned down the chance to begin the process. Not trying is quite different from failing.

The Year of Jubilee sounds to me like continuing work to remedy our housing and education segregation. Dominant culture people benefit every day from one hundred fifty years of systematic and legally enforced segregation. We don’t even have to work at it now because it is so intertwined with realities on the ground. We can start by understanding how it happened. And we can begin to disentangle ourselves from a system that continues to build on the ten-fold wealth gap between white and black households in America.

Remember, you can be replaced. I take that seriously. White churches in America are complicit in forming and sustaining systems and structures of organized and ongoing injustice, violence, and hatred. If we are unwilling to replace those systems, then I fear that we will be ones replaced by folks who take the Year of Jubilee seriously.

Fortunately, it’s not up to us by ourselves. We can trust that God will keep us sound, without blemish, and at peace in the midst of this good work. If the good news were simply up to us, something we worked to put together, rejoicing would be foolish and cruel. But the good news comes to us from God as a gift in the midst of the grieving, as light in the midst of the darkness. That gift will keep us whole in the end.

May we be worthy of our calling until our time is done. Remember, we’re all temporary. But God’s Word endures forever. Amen.

Text Study on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

Gaudete!

The third Sunday in Advent has often in the history of the Church been known as Gaudete Sunday. “Gaudete” is the Latin for “rejoice.” The second reading for this Sunday focuses us on rejoicing.

“Rejoice at all times,” Paul urges the Christians at Thessalonica. That urging is directed to us as well. But how dare we rejoice in such difficult times? The Covid case numbers and death toll continue to mount. Not only are medical facilities in some places simply overwhelmed with bodies, but care centers lose track of the dying. And funeral homes require additional storage to manage the new clients. Rejoicing in the midst of this seems tone-deaf at best and callous to the core at worst.

“Rejoice at all times.” Food insecurity grows by the minute. Unemployment payments will cease momentarily. Businesses board up, some never to re-open. Racist, xenophobic, and psychopathic policies still unfold. Climate havoc and disaster continue apace, hardly noticed amid the churn of all the other troubles. Rejoicing in the midst of this seems frivolous at best and criminally cruel at worst.

“Rejoice at all times.” We have not yet touched the personal pains and specific suffering below the horizon of public peril. The anxieties of the moment reduce our defenses and denials, and the troubles of the moment surge to the surface of our thoughts. Rejoicing in the midst of this seems impossible at best and at worst.

Of course, I may think that no one has ever had it worse than me, but that is self-serving nonsense. A fine preacher in northeastern Iowa recently reminded me, for example, of the story of Pastor Martin Rinker – faithfully serving in the midst of the Thirty Years’ war, plague, famine, and the loss of spouse, children, and other family and friends. Rinker is reported to have officiated at as many as fifty funerals a day at the height of the cataclysm. It has been this bad and worse many times.

Of course, I didn’t live in those times. The Christians at Thessalonica grappled with their grief and fear, and I grapple with mine. Martin Rinker was pastor in his time, and I am pastor in mine. It is in the midst of the disruption, dislocation, and disaster here and now that the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is proclaimed. It is in the midst of the sin and sorrow, the “thorns that infest the ground” that we sing “Joy to the world!” We can do that, not because of some great courage or conviction on our part but rather because “The one who calls you is faithful…”

“With the sound of the trumpet ringing in their ears,” writes Lucy Lind Hogan in her workingpreacher.org commentary, “and the vision of Christ returning to lead their loved ones home, Paul turns to words of exhortation and encouragement. If we are confident in the news that there will be a second coming, the question remains,” she notes, “how are we who are alive to live our lives in the light of that knowledge and certainty?”

We are, according to Paul, to live in the disciplines of Advent. This season of the church year is hardly an exercise in delaying Christmas because our foolish commercial culture can’t wait a second longer than necessary to enter the season of year-end survival (although it is that). Advent is a season for re-learning and practicing the disciplines necessary for living and loving, striving and serving, between the first and second comings of our Lord.

Whenever he returns, we have time between now and then. So, we are called to in positive terms rejoice, to pray, to give thanks. This is what is best for us in Christ Jesus. And we are called to resist the forces that would threaten us – to not turn down the living presence of Divine Holiness in our hearts, to not disdain new words from the Lord (when subject to appropriate testing), to not be dragged into the multifarious evils on offer from the world.

We can trust that God will keep us sound, without blemish, and at peace in the midst of this good work. If the good news were simply up to us, something we worked to put together, rejoicing would be foolish and cruel. But the good news comes to us from God as a gift in the midst of the grieving, as light in the midst of the darkness. That gift will keep us whole in the end.

I expect that many congregations will sing Isaac Watts’ great hymn, “Joy to the World,” this Sunday. I always find it surprising to remember that Watts did not intend this to be a Christmas hymn, or even a hymn at all. The lyrics are a poetic rendition of Psalm 98 with a New Testament twist. The focus is not on the first advent of Christ but rather on the final advent, the Second Coming.

The fact that it has become a prototypical Christmas (well, Advent) hymn reminds us of the intimate connection between the Advents. And it reminds us to live in joy in that between time. Verse three is especially poignant and pointed in our historic moment.

No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found…

Gaudete!

Resources and References

Berge, Paul. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28-2.

Buggs, Courtney. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28-5.

Carvalho, Corrine. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-611-4-8-11-4

Hogan, Lucy Lind. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-1-thessalonians-516-24-3.

Lewis, Karoline, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.

Solvang, Elna K. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-611-4-8-11

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (p. 14). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Isaiah 64:1-4, 8-11

Jesus reads this text in the Nazareth synagogue and then preaches a sermon to open his public ministry in Luke’s gospel. “Today,” he declares to the listeners, “this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus points out that in his view this text extends the release and redemption in the text to those beyond the social boundaries of Israel. In response to that inclusive perspective, the home folks try to pitch the presumptuous preacher over a nearby cliff. So, it is a significant text for understanding the nature of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It is literally a “messianic” text since the prophet claims to have been anointed with the spirit of the LORD God. The word for “anointed” is a form of the Hebrew Mashiach, from which we get the word “Messiah.” This anointing is a call to proclaim good news – liberty to captives and release to prisoners. It is to be the Jubilee year when all debts are forgiven and all in bondage can begin again. The word for “vengeance” has much more the sense of recompense, of paying another back in kind.

“The commission to ‘proclaim liberty’,” writes Elna Solvang in her workingpreacher.org commentary, “is language from the instructions for observing the Jubilee Year. During the Jubilee property and people held as payment for debt were returned to the families to which they originally belonged (Leviticus 25:10). The use of the Leviticus language in Isaiah 61 is a clear indication,” she proposes, “that the liberty proclaimed is intended to be made permanent in new social and economic relationships within the community.”

This great reversal will “comfort all who mourn,” a theme taken up in last week’s first reading as well. The ashes of grief will be displaced by a garland of joy. Mourners will be anointed with gladness and clothed with boisterous praise. The garden of paradise shall be restored, perhaps in the rebuilding of the Temple with a forest of oak pillars as had once been the case. But those pillars will represent the righteousness of the faithful, not merely the extravagance of the monarch.

But the real world of the prophet looks nothing like the vision. “The mourning in Isaiah 61 rises out of frustration and humiliation over the failure to rebuild the city and the temple to match its former glory,” Solvang writes “and the failure to reconcile the economic disparities and the religious and political factions within the city. The reality of life in Jerusalem was nothing like the expectations for a restored Jerusalem and a righteous community,” she concludes, “as proclaimed by the prophets and as envisioned by the returnees (e.g., Isaiah 60).”

The setting of the first reading may well be at the beginning of reconstruction after the return from Exile. The building up of the ruins and devastations seems yet to be in the future of this text. It’s necessary to note the omitted verses which put the restored Judahites in positions of royal power over the strangers and foreigners in their midst.

Perhaps these images are deemed uncomfortable and require too much explanation. In fact, these verses try to describe the “recompense” the prophet sees coming to the people who have suffered for so long in Exile. We can see that fact in verse eight, where the word “recompense” reappears in English but is a different word in Hebrew. In verse eight the people receive God’s faithful reward, the everlasting covenant with them. The fruits of that covenant are described in verse nine.

Verses ten and eleven show the response of the prophet, perhaps on behalf of the people, as a result of this reward. All that the LORD promised has happened, at least in the heart of the prophet. The prophet responds with joy and trust. The LORD’s goodness will produce a witness to all the nations that the LORD is faithful and just.

We are surrounded by those who “mourn in lonely exile here” (see the hymn). Have we ever lived in a time where that phrase is clearer than right now? This is the text about moving through mourning into joy. This is not a denial of pain and suffering, despair, and death. This is a witness to the overcoming of the darkness by light. We are anointed in our baptism to be agents in that ministry of overcoming through the steady and persistent works of love.

“This reading of the poem places the contemporary audience in a different conceptual location with respect to the text,” writes Corinne Carvalho in her workingpreacher.org. comments. “Rather than hearing these words as exaltation of a deity who serves my needs, we should hear them as divine command to go out and bring healing to our broken world. Or, to put it in Advent language, we are called to be Christ to others.” This is, of course, precisely the role for us that Luther describes at length in The Freedom of the Christian.

This text certainly provides an opportunity to talk about the importance of criminal justice reform as a priority for Christians in the United States. The cash bail and probation systems in most jurisdictions often increase the economic distress and disability of the accused, whether they are prosecuted or not. These systems serve primarily as cash transfer mechanisms, moving money out of poor communities and into the coffers of local jurisdictions. A different system would certainly produce “liberty to the captives.” I’d refer you to Michelle Anderson’s The New Jim Crow as one resource for understanding this issue better.

I am part of an anti-racism book study group. We are currently reading Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. This book is, among other things, a dark journey into a criminal justice enterprise broken by systemic, institutional, administrative, and individual racism. Stevenson writes “about getting closer to mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America.” He describes “how easily we condemn people in this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger, and distance to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us.” It’s worth reading or at least skimming the book as you think about Isaiah 61.

The text proclaims a Year of Jubilee that is “off schedule,” that is, out of the scriptural sequence of every fiftieth year. The need for such a Jubilee Year is nowhere more evident among us than in the continuing disparity of intergenerational wealth between races in the United States. This disparity is due in large part to housing segregation and the educational, employment and health care segregation and disparities that have resulted.

I would suggest that you consider Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law for more detailed information. Rothstein writes, “Today’s residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States.” Oppression and extraction are no more accidental in the United States than they were in the first century Roman Empire. “The policy was so systematic and forceful,” Rothstein concludes, “that its effects endure to the present time” (page viii).

If this text is not an opportunity to talk about such topics, then so such opportunity will be taken. Good news means that things are going to change. Otherwise, as N. T. Wright observes, it is merely “good advice.” I wish I had preached more good news in my parish ministry and less good advice.

Resources and References

Berge, Paul. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28-2.

Buggs, Courtney. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28-5.

Carvalho, Corrine. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-611-4-8-11-4

Hogan, Lucy Lind. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-1-thessalonians-516-24-3.

Lewis, Karoline, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.

Solvang, Elna K. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-611-4-8-11

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (p. 14). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for John 1:6-8, 19-28

A witness points to someone other than self. “This is not about me. That is the one,” the witness says. We don’t get this verse, but in verse twenty-nine, John precisely this. “Behold,” John says. “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” It’s worth looking at the Isenheim altar piece in particular. But in many old paintings you can tell who John the Baptist is by the fact that he points to Jesus.

It’s not about me. People say that all the time, but how many people actually believe it? John says “I am not…” In John’s gospel, Jesus says over and over, “I am.” This is God’s proper name, as we learned in Exodus. Moses asks, “Who shall I say sent me?” The answer is astonishing. “I am what I am,” the LORD replies. “Tell them ‘I am’ sent you.’” Now the great “I am” is the Word made flesh, dwelling among us.

In Mark’s account, John prepares. In John’s account, John points. Both functions are important and necessary, but they are not the same. Once again, John begins where the synoptics end, both literally and figuratively. The purpose of the witness is “in order that all might believe.” John is not calling people to intellectual assent. Believing in John involves joining Jesus in the light.

This is the nature of witnessing. A witness brings information from a particular perspective. But a witness is not a journalist. A witness offers testimony in a process of decision-making. That judicial horizon is always in the background of John’s gospel. After all, we will get to the trial before Pilate where the real question is “What is truth?” What heightens the tension of witnessing is that “witness” in Greek is the same as the word for being martyred. A witness, in John’s gospel, has (no pun intended) “skin in the game.”

“On this Third Sunday of Advent in Year B, we have a unique opportunity to identify the role that all persons of faith are called to by God’” Paul Berge writes in his workingpreacher.org commentary. “Each one of us who has heard the words of this text have seen the importance of John’s witness to Jesus. Like John,” Berge continues, “God commissions us to bear witness to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the one who has come in the flesh, the one who is here with us, and the one who will come again in his reign as Lord of all. In this,” he concludes, “there is no greater witness to the truth of God’s work of salvation.”

Whenever possible, the form of a sermon should follow its function. If we’re talking about witnessing, then perhaps this is the opportunity for personal witnessing in the sermon. The preacher might spend some time sharing a bit of one’s faith story as a way to point to Jesus.

It’s going to be a dark winter; the experts have said so for months. They have, unfortunately, been right. We are neck deep in darkness and death as the pandemic rolls on. So, where is the light John is so sure he sees? “John’s testimony of Jesus reverberates across time as we look forward in this Advent season,” Courtney Buggs reminds us in her workingpreacher.org commentary. “We are reminded to thoughtfully consider our testimonies of word and deed—do our lives witness to the light of God within? In the midst of darkness, disappointments, and dreary outlooks, God sent Light into the world. Trying times have the possibility to yield tremendous testimonies,” she notes. “May God’s people ever bear witness that the Light is come and is now here. Thanks be to God.”

Can we do anything more countercultural at this moment than to witness to our joy at the Lord’s coming? (Please see the commentary on the second reading on Wednesday for more on this). Is this just more delusion and denial in this time of depression and disaster? No, there is not light without darkness. The light shines in the midst of the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it (verse 5). In this time of raging pandemic, racist policies, and ridiculous rhetoric, perhaps this theme is the one that demands expression in a sermon.

“In this time of anticipation,” Karoline Lewis writes in her workingpreacher.org commentary, “perhaps we can imagine that our welcome for the Word made flesh might be where and how we can shine the light of God’s presence into the shadows of our human brokenness, bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and releasing those imprisoned to freedom.” The turn toward the first lesson Lewis makes is powerful and helpful.

In some traditions, December 13 is the Feast Day of Saint Lucy or Santa Lucia. Because of various traditions associating her name with light, she came to be thought of as the patron of sight and was depicted by medieval artists carrying a dish containing her eyes. In actuality, Lucy was probably a victim of the wave of persecution of Christians that occurred late in the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian. References to her are found in early Roman sacramentaries and, at Syracuse, in an inscription dating from 400 CE. As evidence of her early fame, two churches are known to have been dedicated to her in Britain before the 8th century, at a time when the land was largely pagan.

In traditional Santa Lucia programs, the main character actually goes around “with her hair on fire.” She is crowned with candles and brings light to the house. What if Christians were known as the people go around like their hair is on fire for Jesus?

An illustration: But what kind of light is shining here? It’s not the overwhelming light of prize-winning Christmas displays. In fact, most of the world does not see the true light of the Messiah. This is the kind of light that is illustrated at the end of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Even though Snoopy has won the decorating contest, that’s not the real light. That’s not where the Merry Christmas comes.

Instead, it is when the kids see Charlie’s pain and respond with love. They take the light from Snoopy’s doghouse and use it to decorate the dead little tree. It is love that makes the tree beautiful, not the wattage. It is when Charlie Brown receives that gift of love that the children can launch into “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

An Action: But I’m not opposed to Christmas lights. This year I think is a year to do as much with our lights as we can. We’re not going to be able to have much in the way of family gatherings in Advent and Christmas. That will make it a darker time for us. So, we are doing everything we can to put as much Christmas light into our house as possible “in order that we might bear witness to the light.”

Is this “disrespectful” of the pain and suffering going on among us and around us? No, I don’t think so. We can acknowledge the pain and suffering without surrendering to it. We can do that because we trust in the One who is both the Beginning and the End – the Alpha and Omega who has come in the middle.

Of course, many people decorate their houses with lights. Will we have opportunities to share with our neighbors why we fill our homes with light at this time of year? Will our lights be an opportunity to witness, to point to Jesus? That’s what makes the light holy.

Resources and References

Berge, Paul. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28-2.

Buggs, Courtney. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28-5.

Carvalho, Corrine. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-611-4-8-11-4

Hogan, Lucy Lind. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-1-thessalonians-516-24-3.

Lewis, Karoline, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-john-16-8-19-28.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.

Solvang, Elna K. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-611-4-8-11

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (p. 14). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.