Another Voice on Advent
I’d like to take a fresh path with these ARC monthly updates and introduce and highlight some of the other leaders in the ARC.
I recently read Mike Sares’ newsletter for December and he brought up the church calendar, Advent in particular.
I like his reference to Isaiah and festival keeping and it’s one of the things I like about the church calendar. It presses us to focus on the things that truly shape our worship—–like the Incarnation, and the Resurrection, and the outpouring of the Spirit as the new covenant community is launched on its mission. Advent and Lent are preparation times to re-engage these central truths and the Realities that they hearken once again.
Mike has been pastoring the Scum of the Earth Church (SOTEC) for about a decade. Most of you know the story out there but might not know Mike as well. He is one of the most human leaders that I have had the privilege to know. And he is incredibly generous. Two stories come to mind. The first occurred during a Phil Keaggy concert inDenverwhere Mike arranged to give a gift to his departing worship leader, Deva Yoder. It was a very expensive guitar that Mike also arranged to have Mr. Keaggy play during his set on stage and then dedicate the song (I believe it was the Beatle’s “Here Comes the Sun”) and the guitar to Deva. Further he worked it out that between sets, Phil would present the guitar to Deva. Really, all very charming and honoring. But what I loved the most was watching the delight that was unfolding in Mike as he arranged all of this. It was a lot of work and quite expensive but he was perfectly childlike in his anticipation of the delight of another. It seemed to me that this was part of what Jesus meant when He called us to embrace the kingdom like children. Mike did it beautifully.
The second story had to do with Gothic Nathan, who Mike called the best evangelist at Scum despite his struggles with his own humanity. I was in the car as Mike was giving Nathan a ride home (wherever that happened to be at that time) and Nathan was enthusiastically trying to engage me in the merits of techno music. Not a big fan and Nathan didn’t pick up my cluelessness. And he wouldn’t stop even when we got to his drop off spot. And Mike wouldn’t “rescue” the situation but patiently let Nathan go on….and on. And I finally got it. This was a piece of Mike’s pastoral generosity and I was getting a much needed lesson in grace.
Finally, if you haven’t yet read Pure Scum, it’s worth your time. It will soften your heart with grace and you can hear a lot more stories of generosity.
Here’s Mike Sares. Listen to his Advent encouragement.
Ned
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Isaiah 30:29 And you will sing as on the night you celebrate a holy festival; your hearts will rejoice as when people go up with flutes to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are about taking time out to celebrate God’s goodness to us. In one sense, we shouldn’t have to set aside special times during the year – we should always be grateful – but that’s simply not the case, so we mark our calendars to remember. We have begun, for several years now, to celebrate Advent as a rule at Scum of the Earth. We need to meditate upon the awesome wonder of God becoming one of us since we all are people infected by a consumeristic culture. God went to great lengths in order to secure Jesus a place in our hearts. It is almost impossible to get away from the busyness and commerce which surround the holidays. We’d have to live like monks or like the Amish. The best we can do is to focus on the important stuff within the church so that, in at least one community, we are not bowing to the culture.
The church has got to be the place where (or rather, the church has got to be people who believe that) God is the heart of the holiday season. We can’t expect that from anywhere else on the planet. It is our responsibility to remind each other what the holidays really mean – and I’m not talking about some sanitized version of Thanksgiving (for example) that whitewashes the terrible way the government has dealt historically with native Americans. That first Thanksgiving may have been us at our best. Nor am I talking about Christmas being the time of year when we are “not naughty, but nice.” It is imperative to be brutally honest in our view of ourselves if we are ever to have an honest view of God’s goodness at holiday time. We are thankful because He loves us in spite of the fact that He knows us – what we’ve done and left undone.
So celebrate the season within the context of community. Celebrate with your church, with your friends, or with other families who know that Jesus is the Heart of the Holidays. Better yet, become the community that celebrates God’s goodness with someone who has no community at holiday time. Help the helpless, feed the homeless, and befriend the friendless for the time we have left this year.
In Him,
