He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in the house of my Abba?”
~Luke 2:49
 
The Majesty of the Heavens said that God would dwell in thick darkness.
~1 Kings 8:12
 
Where does God live?
Jesus and his relatives go to the temple (Jesus is already 12?) for the Passover festival and in this familiar story, when he is not with the group on the way home, the frantic parents go searching for him. “Did you not know that I must be in the house of my Abba?” is his mystified reply to them. But Solomon understood, along with the ancients, that Araphel, thick darkness is God’s familiar home. (cf. Deuteronomy 4:11, Psalm 18:9, Job 38:9).
 
Where does God choose to live?
 
The writer and activist Kelley Nikondeha reminds us that Jesus’ birth occurred in occupied territory—that God engaged with “human trauma of a specific place and specific people. God experienced the excruciating reality of empires and economies from the position of the weak and powerless ones. God absorbed loss and pain in that body.” From a distinctly disadvantaged stance, “Jesus lives out God’s peace agenda as a counter-testimony to Caesar’s peace.”[i]
 
This Christmas story of God’s incarnation, God’s advent appearing in flesh and blood in our midst is a story of concreteness and particularity. God hears and is here in the very midst of our human struggles and hopes. God’s advent is of a different kind of peace than Caesar’s. It is a peace resistant to empire and power, a peace that comes to be in the practice of hospitality and solidarity. It is an appearing in the specifics of our own world where we need it most.
 
​Enter into worship.
 
Readings: 1 Kings 8:12-13, 27-30, 41-43 † Psalm 68:15-17, 19-20, 24-27, 31-35 † Revelation 22:10, 22-27 † Luke 2:41-51
 
 
About the Art: The art for this Christmas season is shaped around the theme of “Many Pieces, One Story.” Each week the art will feature a quilt that holds meaning within the community. The quilt pictured today comes from the Resor family, received from his grandmother and dating to the Spanish American War. Note the very fine hand quilting detail.


[i] Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2022), 182–183. 

​Wisdom’s womb is full of love and faithfulness,
slow to anger and overflowing with faithful love.
~Psalm 103:8
 
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among peoples whom God favors!”
~Luke 2:14
 
We have have been rehearsing for this night, preparing the way. And now the air is pregnant with possibility as we enter again into the promise of Good News and Great Joy. But what do you notice? What do you hear? Smell? Taste?
 
It’s earthy, but it lacks the citrus and pine notes of frankincense. There is that woody, warm and slightly medicinal pungency, but that’s not myrrh.These gifts, with all their weight, will come soon enough. All that glitters is not gold in this labored room.
 
And what’s that sound? Lowing? Do you imagine the animals were sensitive to her labored pains? Do you imagine they shared her relief as the Christ child entered the world? There is something about being a living being that connects us to one another. You can sense it in the breathing, the beating and bleating. Come and see. Come and remember. Come and sing. The Creator becomes a creature. Ponder, along with Mary. But above all, come!
 
Come and adore him. Enter into worship.
 
Readings:  Isaiah 66:10-13 † Psalm 103:1-17 † 1 Peter 1:22-2:3 † Luke 2:15-20 or 2:1-20
 
 
About the Art: The art for this Advent season is shaped around the theme of “Many Pieces, One Story.” Each week the art will feature a quilt that holds meaning. The quilt pictured is of a baby quilt created by a family friend to celebrate the birth of Scott and Barbara Anderson’s son Peter.

Behold! God is my salvation;
I will trust and I will not fear,
for God is my strength and my might
and has become my salvation.”.
~Isaiah 12:2
 
Now blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of those things spoken to her by the Holy One.
~Luke 1:45
 
We do just about everything we can not to be (or appear to be) vulnerable. The idea of being at the mercy of others can create a crisis within us. And yet, with each of the texts for this Sunday trust in God for salvation comes amidst various degrees of precarity. As much as we might prefer it otherwise, this is the territory of faith.
 
Isaiah 12 is written in a time when the world as it had been known is gone. It simply no longer exists. The psalmist calls for intentionality in our choice to celebrate no matter the circumstances—not at the right time, but the appointed time. Revelation is written in a time of extreme danger, so it is written in code—for those with “ears to hear.” And in Luke, the promise both Elisabeth and Mary hold in their very bodies are at constant risk, as are they themselves.
 
We are by no means the first to find our faith in the midst of hardship and uncertainty. These stories of ours are written by those who know trouble all too well, who face it constantly. And yet, they write and they sing of belief and hope and promise, of joy and love and peace from deep within those circumstances. They know God’s people have been this way before and look across the ages to remind us of the same.
 
​Enter into worship.
 
Readings:  Isaiah 12:1-6 † Psalm 118:1-9, 14-21 † Revelation 1:4-6, 8, 12-18 † Luke 1:39-45
 
 
About the Art: The art for this Advent season is shaped around the theme of “Many Pieces, One Story.” Each week the art will feature a quilt that holds meaning. The crib-sized quilt pictured on the front is probably 90 years old. It was passed down from Pat Sharpe’s mother who was not a quilter.

For suffering for doing good is better, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.
~1 Peter 3:17
 
“I don’t go looking for trouble,” said Harry, nettled. “Trouble usually finds me.”
~Harry Potter in
Prisoner of Azkaban
 
The old adage about not seeking out trouble has been passed through generations in many societies. Harry Potter wasn’t the first to say it, by any means—nor the first to then pursue his troubles through the remainder of his adventures!
 
The thing is life has its troubles—no matter how hard we work to insulate ourselves from them. This seems to be the point of Peter’s letter to the church: You’re going to have trouble; it is a feature of life, so you might as well be doing something worthy of them. To receive a message from God or an angel, for example, rarely seems to offer blessing in any straightforward way. For Mary it will spell profound trouble—a double-edged sword of loss and her own soul pierced as well—but oh, what is gained!
 
The promise of Advent seems to be that if we have something worth troubling about, we just may find ourselves with more abundant stores of resilence, open to the possibility not of despair, but of joy. If there is a difference that faith and its purposefullness offers it may be that we find in our trouble the promise of meaning that sustains us and helps us (all) to thrive. Doesn’t it seem then, that we might as well double-down on the good?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings:  Isaiah 41:4-5, 8-10, 17-20 † Psalm 27:4-5, 7-10, 13-14 † 1 Peter 3:13-17 † Luke 1:26-38
 
 
About the Art: The art for this Advent season is shaped around the theme of “Many Pieces, One Story.” Each week the art will feature a quilt that holds meaning. Today’s image is of a baby quilt for Barbara and Scott Anderson’s first child Claire. They were living in Missouri at the time, away from family and long-time friends. A group of college friends sewed the quilt to welcome Claire into the world.