Welcome to Trinity Sermons.
Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to share our sermons with you as we journey
together to love Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus.
And this is our final episode of our Advent Conspiracy Sermon Series.
And today Rob talks to us about how, through the example of the shepherds, we can learn
to love all this Christmas.
And before we begin, we would like to invite you to follow our podcast.
Please check us out on social media and visit our website at trinitystreetsville.org.
Thanks so much for listening and we hope you enjoy.
God bless.
Reading from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 8 to 20.
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 a sign to you.
You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger.
Suddenly, a great company of 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 favour
rests.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another,
let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger.
When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what they had been told to them
about this child.
And all who heard were amazed at the shepherds, what the shepherd said to them.
But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and
seen, which were just as they had been told.
The word of the Lord.
Well, once again, hello and welcome to everybody who is here this morning.
You know, I want to start by saying, you know, I am just so proud of you guys.
I'm just so proud.
It almost brings a little bit of a tear to my eye as I think about how we've journeyed
through these last four weeks.
Because over these last three or four weeks, you have been learning the practices.
You've been learning the disciplines of our Advent conspiracy movement.
You've even learned the secret handshake of that movement.
I'm just so proud.
Your training is nearly complete.
My little Padawans, it is nearly complete.
If you're if you're new here today, you're like, what is this guy talking about?
And I'm going to explain to you, I'll explain to what what's going on.
You see, a few weeks ago, we decided that we were going to make sure that we put the
meaning and the truth of Jesus back into Christmas.
So just as Christmas was crashing down on us and just as things were really starting
to get crazy, we said, you know what?
We're instead going to form a little conspiracy group and we are going to live by four principles,
four principles that are going to take us through this season.
So let me explain.
So about three weeks ago, we started off by saying the first principle of the Advent conspiracy
is that we are going to worship fully, which means just when the world is speeding up and
racing up and get ready for Christmas, we're going to find a way to slow down, to calm
down and create spaces in our lives where we can let Jesus be the center of our lives
and the center of our celebration.
We're going to worship fully, we said.
And then the week after that, we said there's a second principle of our movement.
And that second principle is we are going to spend less.
You know, Christmas, when it hits, it's always a time of overconsumption and overspending.
And we said, you know what we're going to do?
We're just going to spend a little less.
We're not going to spend nothing.
We're going to spend less.
We're going to set some limits.
We're going to set a budget and spend less.
And so we talked about that.
And then last week, we talked about how we are going to give more.
That's a third principle of our movement.
Now you might say, how on earth do you spend less while you're giving more?
That's a good question.
The way you do it is you give more relationally.
You give gifts that are personal, gifts that are meaningful, gifts that come from your
heart.
They might not be gifts that come from the mall, but they're very special and important
gifts that people will treasure.
So we worship fully.
And then we spend less and then we give more.
Guys, we're almost there as a, as a very famous Jedi master once said, though, done.
Your training is not more to learn.
Have you still?
And that brings us to the last principle, the last thing, the thing that actually separates
our conspiracy movement from every other conspiracy movements.
You see, you see a lot of conspiracy groups are very exclusive and a lot of those secret
societies, they have a very, very select group of people that they will let in.
They want people who look like them and who talk like them, who act like them and dress
like them.
And especially they want people to join who think like them.
And if you, if you hit all the criteria, then guess what?
You're in, you're one of us.
But if you don't, then get out, stay out, you're not allowed and you're not welcome.
That is what separates the advent conspiracy from every other movement.
The advent conspiracy is about loving all people.
Now that means we're not just loving our favorite people or we're not just loving some people.
You know, Christmas, we say things like Christmas is for family.
Christmas is for friends.
Christmas is for children.
We want to love those groups of people, especially.
And that's okay.
But actually Christmas is about way more than that.
Christmas is about loving all people.
Right?
Christmas is about loving all.
Now that's our fourth and final commitment of the advent conspiracy.
And you might say, well, Rob, that's kind of a, you know, the word love is a little
overused these days.
You've probably heard that the Inuit people have like 30 words that describe snow, but
we've got this one word for love.
We'll say in the same breath that I love my wife or I love Taylor Swift or, you know,
I love tacos.
I love Jesus.
What does this word love mean?
Well, this morning I want to show you two things, two ways that we can understand how
we are supposed to love all this Christmas.
Basically it's this.
We'll see how Jesus came on Christmas day, Jesus came even as an infant to love all.
And then secondly, we'll understand how we are sent to love all people.
So let's begin.
Let's begin.
How do we know that Jesus came to love all people, even as a child, even as an infant,
he hadn't even uttered his first word and yet somehow he has come to love all people.
The answer is yes, we actually do know that.
And we know that because of the strange and unique way that his birth was announced.
You see, you would have thought that an announcement like this would have gone to a very selective
group, a very elite group of the brightest and the best and the most accomplished people
in the world, right?
The cream of the crop, they'd be the ones who'd be on the receiving end of such an announcement
like the announcement of Jesus.
But no, no.
Instead, what God does is he takes this message to one of the most reviled and hated and forgotten
bunch of people that you would ever have heard of.
And of course you're saying, well, who are you talking about?
I'm talking about the shepherds.
One of the early biographers of Jesus was a guy named Luke, and he was a historian.
He wrote about the early Jesus movement.
And he writes this, that on the night that Jesus was born, there were shepherds living
out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night.
Now when we think of shepherds, we probably think of someone like this cute little Linus
there he is.
Do you on a little side note, do you know that I wanted to watch this movie with my
family this Christmas and it has been purchased by Apple TV.
And so you cannot watch this, the Charlie Brown Christmas special, unless you have an
Apple TV subscription.
Is there nothing sacred in this world?
Oh goodness.
But when we think of shepherds, we often think of cute little adorable Linus with his blankie
wrapped around his head like a headdress.
We're going to have a children's Christmas pageant today here at four o'clock and there'll
be children with towels around their heads and they'll be wearing bath robes and they'll
be cute as a button.
But I have to tell you, when we think of shepherds in Jesus day, the word cute does not come
to mind.
A modern day shepherd, this is a modern day shepherd.
This fellow is from Afghanistan.
Now you might think he's cute.
I'm not saying he's not cute, but there is, but even modern day shepherds, there is a
very big difference between a shepherd today and a shepherd that existed in Jesus's time.
In Jesus time, the shepherds were just despised.
Why were they despised?
Let's talk about it.
One of the first reasons they were despised is they were considered unclean.
They spent almost all their time around animals, dirty animals.
They were sweaty, they were filthy, and they were unable to perform all of the ritual washings
and ceremonial cleaning stuff that the Jewish religious authorities demanded.
So they weren't even allowed to go into synagogues.
They were considered ceremonially unclean.
Secondly, they were also considered very unstable.
They were transient.
They were nomads.
They walked around from place to place.
Unlike farmers, farmers had like a certain place, like this is my land, this is my farm,
these are my animals.
It didn't work like that for shepherds.
They were always all over the place.
And because of that, they never really got connected with someone like the social circles
in various towns and stuff like that.
And they were always therefore marginalized.
They never got included in that way.
They were also considered unsavory.
They were grizzled.
They were tough characters.
They had a reputation of being shifty and shady.
In fact, one commentator said that they were known for being manipulative con men who got
into a lot of fights.
Fourthly, they were untrustworthy.
They were just assumed to be liars and cheats and swindlers.
In fact, their testimony in Jesus' day was not accepted in court of law.
They couldn't testify in court because they were just considered way too untrustworthy.
They were also underprivileged.
You did not make a lot of money being a shepherd.
You would never be able to save up for a house or a homestead or something like that.
They were the lowest social status that was out there.
And finally, all of this meant that they were unwanted.
One of the books I read said that one of the biggest problems with these shepherds is they
were such a nuisance.
They'd be grazing their sheep on your land.
They'd be trespassing on your property.
And that created all sorts of animosity toward them.
They'd be like, get out of here.
And people didn't want them around.
They wanted to avoid them.
They pretended that they weren't there.
So let's just review this, right?
Unclean, unstable, unsavory, untrustworthy, underprivileged, unwanted.
This meant the shepherds lived on what you might call the forgotten fringe of the world.
This place, the forgotten fringe, is the periphery of society where nobody cares about you and
nobody notices you at all.
You're like the wallpaper.
You just blend into the background.
No one actually pays attention to you.
I just want to stop for a second before we go any further and just ask this question.
Who is on the forgotten fringe of your life?
Who are those people that are there but you just don't see?
That just blend into the background.
You've forgotten them.
You've overlooked them.
They're invisible to you.
You know, the other day I was in Tim Hortons, as is often the case, and I was early in the
morning and I wandered in and I went up to the counter to the lady there and I was about
to place my order and she said to me, she said, oh, a dark roast, black, right?
And I was shocked.
I was like, oh my gosh, she knows me.
She notices me.
She remembered my order.
Whereas I didn't notice her.
I didn't know who she, I couldn't remember her.
I didn't know her name.
Even though she had a name tag on, I didn't recognize her and I felt really bad.
She was someone.
She is someone on my forgotten fringe, right?
She just blends into the background of my life and I paid no attention to her there.
Have you had like some kind of experience like that?
Maybe you got a neighbor and you've been living by this neighbor for like 10 years.
Yeah, you wave from time to time, but you've never actually talked with them.
You've never actually developed a relationship, you know who they are, but you don't know
who they are.
They're invisible.
They're in the background of your life.
They're forgotten.
Or how about this time of year, I'm thinking about all those people who work at Amazon,
all those people who are taking your orders, all those people who are rushing around the
warehouse, getting those boxes and packaging them up and then putting them in the delivery
cart or, or, and those, how about those delivery people?
They come around, they do us a great service.
They drop off these gifts on our front porch and we don't often even see them.
We never get to say hi.
They just show up and they're gone.
I mean, these people are on the forgotten fringe and yet we depend on them, right?
They're important, but we don't see them.
We don't see them.
Of course, what about the homeless?
What about the poor?
What about the countless, you know, refugees that are right now in Mississauga and Toronto
living in hotels?
You drive by them, you walk by them.
We don't see them.
They're part of that forgotten fringe.
And lastly, let me say this.
There could be some of you here, even this Christmas, and you feel like you're on the
forgotten fringe.
Could be your first Christmas since you lost a loved one, or it could be the first Christmas
since you're single again, or your first Christmas without a job, or maybe this Christmas you
just you couldn't be with your family and everyone else is carrying on.
Everyone else is going about their business.
They seem all holly and jolly, but you feel lost and forgotten like the world just moved
on without you.
Here's how we know that Jesus came to love all is that he came first to the forgotten
fringe of the world.
Shepherds, they probably thought, what on earth?
Why is he coming to me?
Why are we being entrusted with this great news and this great announcement?
We're just shepherds.
But see, that's what Jesus does.
He flips the script and the forgotten ones become the first.
In fact, this happens so often throughout the Bible.
God does this.
The theologians have given the whole thing a term.
They call it God's preferential option for the poor.
It's like God just has this soft spot for those who feel like they're on the outside
looking in.
The shepherds were first in two ways.
Number one, they were the first ones to hear the long awaited Messiah is coming into the
world and who does that message go to?
Does it go to the kings and queens?
No.
Does it go to the philosophers?
No.
Does it go to the politicians?
Does it go to the university professors?
Does it go to the judges?
And no, no, it went to the poor.
It went to the rejected.
It went to the forgotten.
It went to these shepherds.
So strange.
I was thinking of Megan and Harry as we all do all the time.
We're always thinking of Megan and Harry.
Just look at them, don't they?
But when little Archie was born, you know, of course there was going to be an announcement
about his birth and what an announcement it was.
First they put this plaque outside of Buckingham Palace and it said, you know, congratulations,
here you hear you.
Baby Archie is born.
It was probably gilded and gold and guarded by those guys with the big fuzzy hats.
And then and then they on the BT Tower in downtown London, there was a big sign.
It's a baby boy announcing to the whole world.
Everybody was kind of celebrating and seeing this happen.
And then even here in Toronto, do you know that the CN Tower was illuminated in kind
of a purpley blue to celebrate and to get in on the act of baby Archie's birth?
That's not what God did.
God did not go to the, you know, the palaces or the billboards or the skyscrapers.
God didn't go to the Instagram influencers out there and get the word out.
No, he went to the outcasts.
He went to the castaways.
He went to the forgotten because God wants to make his intentions so crystal clear to
you and me this Christmas.
Jesus came to love all.
They were the first ones to hear the news, but they were also the first ones to see.
It's hard to imagine, but do you realize that that outside of Mary and Joseph, who were
the first group of people to see the face of God?
It was the forgotten ones.
It was the rejected ones.
Why?
This is remembered again.
Jesus came to love all.
In fact, why don't you say with me, say Jesus came to love all.
You see, we may be part of a conspiracy.
We've been playing around with that.
This conspiracy group, but don't get the wrong idea.
It is not an exclusive group.
Jesus came to love all, not just the powerful, but the poor, not just the faithful, but the
forgotten, not just the strong, but the suffering as well.
And if you're here today and Christmas is difficult for you and you feel overlooked
and left out and you are hurting, just know this, you are not forgotten.
God loves you.
And if I were you, I would do exactly what the shepherds did.
I would get up and I would go to Jesus because he is inviting you.
Jesus came to love all, but there's more.
You see, Jesus came to love all, but he also sends us to love all.
See when the shepherds heard about Jesus, what did they do?
Of course they got up and they went and they saw Jesus and they could not, they could not
keep that love for themselves.
They could not keep that news to themselves.
So they ran out into the street and they started to spread the word concerning what had been
told them about this child and everyone who heard it.
This is amazing.
Everyone who heard it was amazed.
God used a group of no names to get the word out about the name.
They took those words they had heard.
They took what they had saw and they went viral with it.
So actually what it turns out is that this isn't a secret society at all, right?
Because Jesus came to love all, not just some, and then we are sent to love all, not just
our favorite people.
This is not a secret.
Do you know someone this morning who needs to be blown away, who needs to be amazed by
the love of God?
I am telling you, I am telling you there are people in your life who are waiting for you
to share God's love with them this Christmas and it will amaze them too.
I'm going to end this morning just by talking about a few very, very, very practical ways
that you might take the love of God to other people this Christmas.
Right?
Here's the first one.
One way we can do this is just through simple little actions.
How can we care for those on the forgotten fringe of our life?
Well, listen, what if you hand delivered some cookies to that neighbor that you never talked
to?
What if you gave a Christmas card to your My Way bus driver?
They're in the background, the forgotten fringe.
Let them know you see them.
What if you gave a gift to that cashier or to your barista or whatever?
What if I?
I thanked my Tim Horton server by name.
What if I gave her a point set and said, thank you.
I appreciate you.
God loves you.
You're not forgotten by me.
You're not forgotten by God.
Or check out this little video.
This is how one family tried to show love to those forgotten delivery guys that I was
talking about.
You guys are the best.
Every year, Toni Hilleson Barnett from Kentucky and her family ensure delivery drivers are
taken care of.
Oh my God.
You guys are the best.
Which got this UPS driver named D very excited.
Oh, Capri Suns are my favorite.
Yes.
Along with the snacks was a note.
Thank you for the delivery.
You make our holiday shopping so you can please take snacks to the red.
This one and sprinkles.
Oh my.
Thank you.
D came back a few days later and said, I'm going to make you a Christmas card.
I'm going to make you a Christmas card.
A few days later and that response was just as sweet.
Oh, no way.
Yeah.
Oh, dude, we're back again with Capri Suns.
This is where I went viral, isn't it?
Yeah.
You guys are awesome.
A FedEx driver also got in on the goodies.
I got the best snacks.
Thank you, guys.
My favorite.
Toni says this is her way of saying thanks.
She believes the world needs more of D's energy and attitude.
And we agree.
Thank you.
Have a great day.
Thanks for making me go viral.
For Inside Edition Digital, I'm Andrea Swindle.
You guys are the best.
Little, little acts of kindness like that let other people know that they are not forgotten.
And more than that, that God loves them.
The second way that we can show others that God loves them is through our purchases.
Now, we got to say this, but where did that t-shirt come from that you bought at the garage?
And where did those shoes come from that you bought at the Gap?
The truth is, most of this stuff probably came from places like Bangladesh and sweatshops where people were working for pennies a day.
Places like Bangladesh where they still, you know, they have child labor.
There's children making that stuff for us.
These are forgotten people.
We do not see them.
They are on the fringe.
And I know no one wants to talk about that, especially on Christmas Eve.
But let's ask the question, how do we fix that?
Is there a way that we can fix that?
We can't fix it today.
We can't fix it tonight.
It's a big problem.
But maybe, maybe we start to think about how our purchases either care for or don't care for the people that are behind those purchases.
On our website, in fact, Elizabeth has set up a little section that says purchase with a purpose.
And she's put a bunch of resources there about, you know, fair trade companies and ethical employers and stuff like that,
that we can maybe in the future make some of our buying decisions in such a way that we love the people behind the purchases as well.
A third way we can show our love this Christmas is through our generosity.
You know, we've been saying this all along, that if we worship fully, if we spend less, if we give more and love all,
then we are going to be able to give away some of that extra money that we didn't spend on stuff that nobody needs anyway.
Here, take a look at this.
With some of the money that we save from not buying, you know, Uncle Bill, that sweater he was never going to wear anyway.
Why don't we together as a family and what we do as a church is to say, why don't we pool some of that money?
Not all of it.
Why don't we take some of that money and pool it together and give it to the least of these?
Why don't we find something in our community, in our world that we say, hey, together we're spending less,
but some of that money that we now have, we want to give that away to those in Matthew 25 that Jesus says are the least of these.
That's exactly what we've been doing over this Advent season.
You'll remember that for the last three weeks, I have been pointing you to these offering envelopes in your pews.
You won't find them there anymore.
They're not there because the last day to make this Christmas gift to the Trinity Care Fund, to the open door,
our partners here in Mississauga who care for those who are in crisis and our New Wave of Frontera project here in our partnership with Honduras.
I just want to let you guys know that we've kind of tallied it all up and we've done the math.
And I want to let you know how generous you've been this December.
Here's what we know that you gave sixteen thousand dollars to the Trinity Care Fund.
You gave six thousand four hundred dollars to the open door.
Five thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars to the New Wave of Frontera project.
And also some people have given to our outreach fund earlier in the year.
And so we took ten thousand dollars out of the Trinity Outreach Fund and put it together.
And that means that we have already are in the process now of dispersing nearly forty thousand dollars to our partners at the open door in World Vision Honduras and the Trinity Care Fund.
So why don't we just take a moment and.
Yeah.
That is how we can love all this Christmas.
Indeed, you guys have done that.
Lastly, of course, one of the best ways we can love all is doing exactly what the shepherds themselves did.
They took the message to those who needed to hear it.
You know, here in Mississauga, people come from all over the world and they've never heard about Christmas, that they may never heard the name of Jesus.
Four weeks ago, I met someone at coffee hour after church.
It was her very first time she had ever been in a church.
It was the very first time she had ever heard about Jesus.
We have a message we can give to these people.
And the same is true online.
I was noticing there was a comment in our online YouTube channel.
And of course, some of the comments people make there are mean and nasty and others are like really encouraging.
But occasionally you come across one like this.
Who is Jesus?
I'm telling you, there are people out there who would be absolutely amazed just to hear the good news that we have heard this morning and be invited to church like you were invited this morning.
So all these things, our actions, our purchases, our generosity and our message, there's just so many ways that we can love all this Christmas.
But you're saying, Rob, it's Christmas Eve, tomorrow's Christmas.
What the heck?
How are we supposed to implement any of this stuff?
Well, as we said last week and the week before that and the week before that, don't worry.
Just think about doing it for one person, one person.
Who is one person this Christmas that you could love more through your actions, through your generosity, through your purchasing power or through the message?
Who's that one person on the forgotten fringe of your life?
And then, heck, you know what?
When Christmas is over, why not just keep it going?
Well, what if we actually extended the Advent conspiracy to the whole year?
What if actually worshipping fully and spending less and giving more and loving all?
It wasn't a Christmas thing, but it was an everyday thing.
What if it became a way of life?
That, my friends, would be a movement indeed.
That would change the world.
Imagine what it would be like if every day was like Christmas Day.
Well, may it be so.
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us today and we hope that you found the sermon one that you will carry with you this week and throughout the Christmas season.
And if you enjoyed the show today, please take a minute to rate and review our podcast so that we can continue to spread the good news with others.
Come back again next week and thanks again for listening.
Today's sermon was taken from the December 24, 2023 service at Trinity Church, Sweetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.