If we've never met, my name is Gregg. I would love to get to know you, maybe take you out for a coffee, something like that here.
Your story. We are in the second week of our series on Advent, but it's not just us, right?
The majority of the global church observes Advent.
Statistically, of the 2.6 billion Christians in the world, I think 1.38 billion of them are Catholic,
and the church calendar in Advent is extremely important in the life of the Catholic Church.
And so just right there, we already know that half the Christians in the world are going to be paying attention to.
I grew up Presbyterian. We always did Advent. I've worked in Methodist churches. We always did Advent. I worked in the Luther Church.
I've always did Advent. Advent is something that globally speaking, I love that we know that this time of year that everyone's talking about,
focusing on, looking at the same things. The only other time of the year where we're pretty sure that that's happening is Easter.
This is the time of the year where for a whole month we know that the global church, yeah, we talk about Jesus every week, yes.
But hope, peace, joy, light, and love, this is the time of the year where we become unified in another way with the global church.
We're all looking. We're all waiting. We're all considering how the Lord will and has arrived, because that's what the word Advent means, is arrival.
So we remind ourselves that 2,000 years ago that the world was waiting for the arrival of the Messiah, and today we remind ourselves that we're in a new kind of waiting
for God and Jesus to arrive again and bring his perfect peace to the world and make all things new.
And so with that, let's open up our Bibles. It's open to Luke chapter 2 or Isaiah 9. I'm going to read both of those.
You can choose for yourself. Isaiah is in the first testament, Isaiah 9. Luke is in the second testament, Luke 2.
If you don't have a Bible, we have a bunch of blue Bibles that are on the bookshelf out in the lobby.
Feel free to take one of those. Those are free. If you need one, feel free to take that home so that you can read it and you can bring it back and forth.
But also you can just download a digital Bible from any of the digital app stores. I use the Bible app. I use the Bible Project app.
I've used a couple of different Bible sources. And then we like to give the Scriptures our full attention when we read them during the message.
We can do that any number of ways. One of the ways is just to join me in standing as we read the Scriptures as you are able or as you desire.
And so let's go ahead and read the Scriptures together. First, Isaiah 9 verse 6 says this. You've already heard it today.
For us, to us, a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Luke 2 starting in verse 8.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all.
The people today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be assigned to you. You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger.
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly hosts appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.
Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia,
that we still have them, that we can read them and consider what they mean.
And I pray that today, whatever you have for us to learn, I pray that it would stick.
I pray that it would become part of the framework of our faith that we would become stronger in the likeness of your son Jesus.
Your name? Amen. Thanks, y'all. I can have a seat.
Do you ever feel like you were perfectly fine until God showed up?
Maybe you had a time where your life was just cake.
Life was going just fine. You were minding your business.
Doing all the things that you're supposed to be doing, being all the things that you're supposed to be being.
You were keeping watch over the sheep at night.
When God showed up and threw a monkey wrench in your plans, these shepherds, they were living out in the fields.
This was their living. It's not, for a shepherd, it wasn't so much just a job as much as it was an identity.
This is what they did. This is where they lived.
They're keeping watch over flocks at night. They're doing their job, working third shift, getting that paycheck, taking care of the family.
And then an angel appears and it says they were terrified.
They must have thought that they were about to die.
Shepherds aren't the kind of people that scare easily.
A shepherd's job, especially at night, was to protect sheep from thieves and predators.
Think of King David. He was a shepherd even as a teenager.
And when he goes and says that he'll fight Goliath, he's not saying that just because of his confidence in God.
He's saying it because he's boasting that I'm young. I'm a shepherd.
I have killed a lion. I have killed a bear as a shepherd.
I can defeat a giant. But these shepherds are terrified.
Why? Well, A, they'd never seen an angel before.
Maybe that doesn't sound all that scary, but that's probably because what we think of when we hear the word angel is something like this.
You put that up there, Brennan? We think of something like this.
That's an angel to us. That's cute, isn't it? That's cute.
Yeah. We think of something like this. But this is probably closer to what angels actually look like.
Take that in, everybody. Just soak it in.
Can you make heads or tails of that? Which way is up? Which way is down?
What do you look at when something like that appears in the midnight sky?
When you read the passages in the Bible that describe what angels look like, they are not pleasant.
I'm serious. I'm actually...this is your homework, okay? This is your homework.
Go home and look up the descriptions of angels in the Bible and tell me that you wouldn't be pooping your pants if you saw one of those at midnight in the middle of a field.
You can take it down. We're all scared now.
The Greek word for terrified means to be frightened, to put to flight. To be frightened, to put to flight.
Rule number one of being a shepherd is what? Don't run away.
All they wanted to do in that moment was run. That's why the angel had to say, don't be afraid. Don't go anywhere.
This meme online, I love this, says, yeah, don't be afraid. This is the scariest moment of my life.
Why wouldn't I run away right now? This is terrifying.
You can take it down. Two thousand years of children's Christmas programs, somehow,
as turned something that looked scary enough to terrify the toughest shepherds on the planet, somehow gets reimagined as something simple and safe.
So it's easy to forget or gloss over how scared they must have been.
Maybe the same way that you've probably had someone minimize just how scared you were when your life suddenly changed,
when you lost your job, when a relationship you thought would last forever suddenly ended, when you lost a family member.
Other people have experienced this already and look at them, they're OK. And so they say, you'll be fine. It'll be OK.
But God's response to our fear, to seeing something we cannot explain, to being afraid, is not dismissive.
It's not to diminish our feelings. Instead of diminishing our feelings, he offers to add an emotion of his own, which is peace.
Now, even saying that, saying God will give you peace, can do the same thing to the concept of peace that we do to the idea of what angels might look like.
We simplify it, we downsize it, we turn the idea of peace into just being calm. Just be still, just relax.
But the peace of God is so much more than that.
The word for terrified in the Greek means to frighten, to put, to flight. But the word for peace means to join, to tie together into a whole.
In Hebrew, the word for peace, as many of you probably know, is shalom. One of the meanings of shalom is completeness.
You get the picture that fear disperses us, scatters us, breaks us apart, sends our hearts and minds running in a hundred different directions.
Peace. Peace is what grabs every part of us that is running and pulls it in and makes it whole again.
To be absent of our emotions is to be less than ourselves.
So peace isn't the absence of our emotions, it is the alignment of our emotions.
That's because peace isn't just God making you complete, peace is actually making us whole in God.
What do I mean? It reminds me of a passage that was actually part of the readings today, but add the beginning back to it.
Be anxious for nothing but in all things with prayer and petition, bring your requests to the Lord with thanksgiving and the peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.
Peace will guard you in Christ Jesus.
Because peace doesn't just give us a sense of personal wholeness, peace gives us a sense of location.
Peace places us in the presence of God.
Peace reminds us where we are.
Even if two seconds ago where we were scared us.
I'm reminded of Jesus being in the boat as the waves and the wind and the disciples are there and they're afraid he's asleep.
They wake him up because they're afraid and he's like why did you wake me up?
I remember saying in a sermon years and years and years ago, if Jesus is at peace we need not be afraid.
If we are in the presence of God, then fear can be replaced with his peace.
I think that this is what the world was waiting for and the fullness of this peace, the final perfection of this peace is what we are waiting for now.
Because someday we as Christians have this very weird belief that Jesus is coming back.
It's weird. It's okay. But that's what we believe. Jesus is going to come back. He's going to make all things new.
And when Jesus returns we will no longer have to constantly remind ourselves that we are in the presence of peace.
We will see and know and be in the presence of peace.
Maybe you need more peace right now. I do most days.
What we need is an awareness of the presence of the Lord to know that the Lord is near.
And that's why every week we come to this table.
When Jesus shared this table with his disciples, he said whenever you do this, what do this in? Remembrance of me.
I've said it before. Most of discipleship, most of being a Christian, most of being a pastor is just reminding you something.
This is our reminder that God is near.
There's something beautiful about it because it is one of, it's actually the only Christian tradition that we have
that physically takes something outside of our body and puts it inside of our bodies
as a way of reminding us that Jesus is not just external, but that his peace is internal.