I've been doing this for a minute. I was thinking the other day I'm gonna be 47 in
January. I'm coming up on 25 years of being a pastor in one way or another.
Getting old. Y'all remember when you thought 40s was old? Yeah. And now I'm
like, no, I think like, no, that's not old. It's not even close to being old. It's
funny. I mean my knees feel a different way, but that's fine. Yeah. Well good
morning and welcome to the house. If we've never met, my name is Greg. I'm one
of the pastors here and I would love to meet you. I know it's kind of a busy time
of the year, but if you fill out the connection card at the end and maybe put
a note in there or check the box so you'd like a pastor to contact you, I'd
love to get together with you for a coffee maybe after Christmas, after the
new year if that works better for you, but I would love to hear your story. Get
to know you and if you'd like to, I really enjoy talking about Jesus and so
I would love to do that as well. This is our last Sunday of 2024. Next Sunday is
what we call a rest Sunday. We have three of those every year. Memorial Day weekend,
Labor Day weekend, and the Sunday after Christmas. We want to give all of the
teams time to rest so that they can come back ready from living and to be able to
work together to really to serve the people that call this their church home.
Now here because it's the last Sunday, I thought I would just give a few
highlights from this last year. We started last year in January turning 10
and which means that this coming day in just a few weeks that we as a church
will turn 11. That was my star birthday as a child because my birthday is
January 11th and so I think that's kind of cool because I'm still just a child
inside somewhere and so that's kind of cool to think about. But we will be
turning 11 and we had 11, this is a coincidence, 11 different people preach
this last year. I love that we have a church that has a diversity of voices
and a diversity of backgrounds and we want to make sure that we continue that
giving different people opportunities to preach the word as they understand it.
18 different people led us in praying for Greenbush. We had three baptisms in
multiple baby dedications. We had three seasons of community tables if you've
never been part of one of those. Those are coming up again in February and
March. We'd love for you to get connected to one of those what we call our small
groups. This last summer we had our third annual worship in the park. It's a
shared service with other churches. The last couple times we've done it with Two
Rivers UMC and New Journey AME. We took the Shed, the students, the high school
and junior high students on their second annual trip to Chicago for the day. Not
that it's definitely always gonna be annual but it just it's worked out that
way. They got to go and see a Chicago Fire soccer game and enjoy foods that we
don't have around here and get to start building continuing to build
relationships with each other in maybe a way that you don't get to build if
you're just hanging out at home. And then of course this summer we went through
the gospel according to John. This fall 23 people served in the Labor Day
Parade. I think that's the most we've ever had serve and we had 275 people
sign up for the chance to win a custom-built backyard playhouse that we
gave away for free. That was the first time we ever did that. That was pretty
awesome. We launched new Tuesday night activities for each week of the month
with worship and prayer, a green bush walk, with spiritual conversation group,
with an opportunity to to come and care for the facility. Dave Hodge started
hosting a tabletop game day once a month on Sundays after church. That happens to
be today. If you don't have plans after service feel free to stick around and
play some some games with some friends. And then of course Robin our treehouse
director started teaching a class twice a month about worship dance. This winter
we had our first youth retreat with a few other churches in the area out in
Camp Mylan. We added monthly youth events. The Norths are leading those. The
next one happens to be the next Saturday January 4th. You should be getting an
email about that. If you have a 6th through 12th grader it's gonna be a blast.
We only missed our monthly budget goal once this last year which is really
phenomenal but we also exceeded our yearly yearly budget need and so it was
all made up for which means that we ended up giving away thousands of
dollars to people that needed it for cars, for repairs, for missions, for
emergency needs and we did that all while growing our savings account from
around $8,500 to $10,500 and so it's been a really beautiful year. And then of
course finally we partnered with DCFS for the 10th straight year and we gave 75
gifts and y'all know it was more than 75 gifts right because you looked in some
of those bags and you were like someone checked out one thing and they brought
three things back in a bag. So we gave quote-unquote 75 gifts to 25 kids that
are experiencing foster care right now. Yeah it's a beautiful thing. We also gave a
Walmart gift card to each of those individual families and we partnered
with Closet to Closet which is here in the same building as us. They serve
children there in foster care by providing clothing and supplies for them
and we partnered with them as we have in the last handful of years and they
created 25 more care packages that included another gift for those kids for
a grand total of well over a hundred gifts to all these kids and so guys
they're gonna have a great Christmas. I know that they're experiencing an
extremely troubling thing sometimes but there's gonna be a moment that we know
that we contributed to because of the way that God has loved us and we're
trying our best to show our love to them and so can we praise God for what he's
done this last year? Now as always we end our calendar year with advents and I
promise this will be the best sermon you've heard all year. I say the best for
last year everyone and if you don't feel that way you just weren't listening.
Amen. Scott pointed us to peace on the first Sunday of Advent. We considered
the hope of Advent. Robin and the tree house last week pointed us to joy and
today is Advent love. I'm gonna read a number of passages but let's go ahead
and open up our Bibles to the book of Matthew. We're gonna open up to Matthew. If you
don't have a Bible there are copies that are on your table right now. You can
download a Bible from any of the digital app stores for free. You can also take
one of those blue Bibles home if you don't have one of your own. We're gonna
open up to Matthew. Matthew is the first book of what's called the New Testament
or the Second Testament. It goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. If you see any of those you're in
the right neighborhood but let's go ahead and we have a tradition of standing
together as we are able to give the scriptures our full attention. If you'd
like to join me in doing that, Matthew 1 starting verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus
the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to
Joseph but before they lived together she was found to be pregnant from the
Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph being a righteous man and unwilling to expose
her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. But just when he had
resolved to do this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said
Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child
conceived in hers from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son you are to name him
Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Let us pray. God of every
tribe, of every tongue, every color, every nation, we thank you for the
scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia. We still have
them to read, to consider. Whatever you would like us to learn today I pray that
it would stick, that would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our
faith would become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus. Amen. Amen. You
can all have a seat. Thank you.
Advent love takes responsibility. It says Joseph was unwilling to expose her to
public disgrace and planned to divorce her quietly. I suppose the first question
some of us might ask is why would he need a divorce if they were engaged? The
first verse says they were engaged but in their culture once you were engaged
effectively you were married. The families would have been involved, the
promises would have been made, contracts would have been signed. Joseph's family
had probably already given a dowry and gifts to Mary's family as part of the
marriage agreement. All that Joseph knew was that while he was getting ready to
start his family, Mary became pregnant and so it falls to him to decide what to
do. It's not an exaggeration to say that he very literally held her life in his
hands. If he had publicly exposed her, her community would have been well within
their biblical right to stone her and put her to death for adultery. That is
what the biblical standard would have allowed. My guess is that most of her
neighbors probably weren't gonna buy the God got me pregnant story. Because we are
so far removed from this, we take her vulnerability for granted. Because we
know how the story ends, most of us, we take the story for granted. We don't have
a sense of worry for her because we know what will happen. But we have to
remember that they didn't. They were told, they were acting on faith, but they were
still in the moment. So says the Joseph, it was righteous and he thought that it
was reasonable to divorce her quietly. Maybe, maybe in his mind, he thought that
if he got this over with quickly that it would give her a chance to marry whoever
she had gotten pregnant with. Maybe if I get this over quietly and quickly, maybe
this she could even marry this guy before the baby's born. Maybe I can help
avoid harassment. Maybe I can help further embarrassment by not making a
big deal about this. Seems reasonable. But God wasn't looking for what felt
righteous and God wasn't looking for what felt reasonable to the mind of a
man. God wanted Joseph to take responsibility. It's one thing to be
solution-minded. It's another to take responsibility for a problem that you
did not create. The kind of love that we see in Advent says that not only will I
care about your problem, I will make your problem my problem. That is what God is
asking of Joseph. Isn't that what he's asking of us? You can hear the love that
our world is missing when people say that's not my fault. I didn't do it.
That's not my problem. It's not my responsibility. It shows up in a thousand
ways, not least being how some white communities respond to racism in our
world, how the wealthy responds to the poor, how citizens respond to immigrants,
how unprepared men respond to pregnant women saying you should have been on the
Hill. You hear it in how the well-fed responds to the hungry. By one estimate,
it would cost $40 billion a year for less than 10 years to end all of world
hunger. There is one person in America, just one person right now, that's worth
$429 billion. One, just one. And no one's asking that one person to solve the
problem. The point is that there's enough in the world, but there's enough of us
saying that's not my problem. That we're unwilling to make someone else's problem
our problem. It is a lack of God love, a lack of Advent love that says I bear no
responsibility in a world that only works when we take responsibility for
problems that we didn't create, or in some cases problems that we don't think
that we created. Advent love is taking responsibility because Advent love is
the embodiment of God. Advent love is the embodiment of God. John 1, 14 says the
word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth and found that we had become pregnant
with sin and selfish desires. It would have made a lot of sense. It would have
been reasonable for Him to send us off forever, to never speak to us again, to
let us marry the one that had led us into sin, to leave us quietly, to start
the life that we wanted. It would have been reasonable for God to divorce us.
Instead, time and time again throughout all of the scriptures, we see that God
takes responsibility. Instead of moving us out, God moves in. There was nothing,
there was nothing in the law of Moses that required of God that He take on
flesh. But Jesus is born with a human body incarnate with flesh and blood and
He enters our every problem. He takes them on as His own.
Listen, listen carefully. We are not meant to merely imitate the limitations
that we see in each other. So often that is our standard. We're willing to go up
to but not beyond the limitations that we see in each other. And so the bar just
keeps getting lower. But we are not meant to imitate the limitations that we see
in each other. We are meant, we aren't meant to justify our behaviors by the
lowest common denominator. We are meant to embody the likeness of Jesus. 1st John
4, you heard part of it a little bit earlier. This is love. Not that we loved
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Ephesians
4 put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness. Joseph thought that he was righteous in his decision to marry her
quietly. We are being asked to put on the likeness of Christ that is actually the
true righteousness. Galatians 6, carry each other's burdens. Now listen, and in
this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Jesus bore the weight and
responsibility of the sins and the struggles of a humanity that was caught
cheating. Just like He took our likeness and bore our burdens, He's asking us to
put on His likeness and bear one another's burdens. Because Advent love
doesn't pass the buck, Advent love pays the bill.
When Joseph found that Mary was pregnant, he could have bankrupted her. He could
have bankrupted her family. He could have left her a single mother, or worse, he
could have literally left her dead. Instead, he was told that he would be the
earthly father of God in flesh. A couple weeks ago I talked about the joy that I
felt, a sense of hope of knowing that I was going to be a father. I do not, cannot
fathom or imagine the weight of being told by an angelic being. But this one's
different. This one happens divine. You know, you're just a regular old guy, but
your kid, yeah that one's from the Holy Spirit. I don't know what that would be
like, but we know what He did. Instead of leaving her, instead of using His idea,
He followed the Lord. Before Jesus gave His life for the world, Joseph gave His
life for Mary and Jesus. When He did not have to, it was not His problem.
Some of us have been running from our responsibilities and it's time to stop.
Some of us are running from our responsibilities because we still don't
believe that it's our responsibility. Because it's not my fault. Because I
didn't do it. Because that's not my problem. There's too much. That's not my
problem. There's too much. That's not my problem in this world. There is too much.
It's not my fault in this world. The beautiful thing about the way that the Bible tells
the story of God is that the writers, I've said this a hundred times in the
past, Eric's a writer, he gets it. Like writers are always trying to tell you
something that isn't just there. Writers are always asking you to pay attention
to something else. And if you go all the way back to the very first sin in the
world, right? You got Adam and Eve. Eat from the fruit they're not supposed to
eat. The next sin that is recorded in scriptures, as far as I can recall, does
anybody remember what it is? It's Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel. It says that Cain
takes Abel out into a field and he says, let's go out to a field. And it says
that he killed him there and he buried him in the field. And then God came
along and said, Cain, where is your brother? Who remembers what Cain said to God?
Am I my brother's keeper? What is implicit in that scripture is that the
answer is yes. You are your brother's keeper. Sin from the very beginning,
humanity has tried to pass the buck of blame. From the very beginning, we have
tried to pass responsibility to others, even when it is our responsibility. But
especially when we are convinced that it is not. This world, your world, your family,
your neighborhood, your job, your block, your clients, your friends, need someone
that will look at them and will say, I will carry that with you, even if it
wasn't my fault. I will carry that with you, even though, and according to the
laws of this world, I bear no responsibility. I could walk away scot-free,
I could put my head on my pillow with lightness and wake up with joy. But
Advent love says, Joseph, be this father's son, be this son's father, be this boy's
dad. In Jewish culture, it was the father that had to say, yes, this is the name of
my son. The angel says, you will name him Jesus. He bears the name Jesus because
Joseph said, it's now my responsibility to name this boy. That for all he knew,
maybe he was having an hallucination. For all he knew, maybe he ate something bad
and he thought he saw an angel, but he wakes up and he goes, I'm gonna marry a
woman that's already pregnant and I'm gonna give her a name. Then I'm gonna
give this boy a name that is not even in my family. And then I'm gonna raise this
boy. I'm gonna take him to Jerusalem with me every year and we find out as a
teenager, right on the verge of becoming an adult, he skips, he leaves behind.
He stays back and they're frantically looking for him and they find him and he
says, well didn't you know I would need to be in my father's house? And he's
saying that to Joseph and Joseph somehow is going, yes, but you're my
responsibility. It says that he taught his son a trade. He raised a boy that for
all he knew was not his, but he taught him how to be a carpenter and he
prepared his family for when he died, that his wife and son, Jesus and other
children, would not be left out on the street. He took responsibility for
something he did not have to. And I hope that you hear the Spirit of God telling
you in your heart that it's gonna be okay if you do that too. It is going to be
okay if you do that too. The responsibility that you decide to take up might run
off and leave you behind and you will not know where it is and then you will
go after it anyway and you will find it and it will say, oh I was just praying. Oh
I was just... you say, yeah it's time to go home, come on. It will be okay. You want to
know why it's gonna be okay? Look around this room because we are here to bear
each other's burdens. Because when you take up the responsibility that God is
asking you to take up, every one of us will be there with you. And when you feel
that it is becoming too heavy to carry something you didn't know you would ever
pick up, we will lend you our hands.
When you find that the money runs out because you tried to help, we will be
your bank.
When you are tired, at the end of the day we will be your rest. Because that's what
a church is supposed to be. It's not about how many people signed up to win a
free playhouse. It's about how many people experience the very presence of
God and the people that are near them.
Because this is Advent love. Amen? Let's pray.
God we thank you that in your wisdom that you sent your only begotten son to
be born of flesh and blood, to share this life in our skin with lungs that
breathe the same air and oxygen that we use every day.
Lead us into lives of taking responsibility as you put it in front of
us. Lead us away from running from the responsibilities that we have felt rise
in our hearts. And help us be a family, church, community, united by the Spirit of
God that when one needs help the others chip in. When one is tired the other
works. Yeah, just like that. Amen. Amen.