Advent Theme: A Different Kind of Christmas by Mike Slaughter

    As we were cleaning the dishes from our Thanksgiving feast or returning with our bargains from our Black Friday shopping, the season of anticipation began on Sunday, November 30^th. With this season of festivities and lists comes a tendency to mute the quiet voice of the Spirit whispering to us to watch in the stillness of the night for God to come in new and surprising ways.

     The Advent/Christmas story is the opening scene of our faith story and it sets the stage for the rest of the Christ narrative to come to its full impact at Easter. We begin by understanding God’s intent for taking on humanity. The creator of the universe came into the world through a poor unmarried teen to challenge the political and religious authorities of the day so that everyone could experience fulfilled hope, abiding peace, unconditional love and uncontainable joy. God became a vulnerable, perishable, and suffering servant so that no one had to feel thrown away, forgotten, invaluable or unlovable. 

    Isn’t it amazing how comfortable we are with ignoring the radical and compassionate message coming from the crèche? We spend more time considering what gifts we will buy or events we will plan to try to create the perfect Christmas when the perfect Christmas has already been created. With each year’s commemoration of that first nativity, we have an opportunity to approach God with honesty and awe hoping to encounter the holy in order to be forever changed by the magnitude of God’s love. God is trying to be born into our hearts and the hearts of all people.

    We have a choice. We can go through the next five weeks of red and green decorations, Christmas card lists, decadent foods, and wish lists with our goal to create a party for ourselves and our family, or we can refocus our hearts to the message the child has for us this year to be different as a result of God’s spectacular love.

     As a church, we are going to work together to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming season. We are offering in five of our seven Sunday School classes to study the book, Christmas is Not Your Birthday, by Mike Slaughter. We will also have an opportunity for you on Wednesday nights at 6 pm in Room 113. We will have weekly theme reflections with daily meditations provided by Jason Redick, Rev. Susan Bryan, Rev. Debbie Chapman and myself. We will place them on the Pastor’s Blog on the website and send a weekly email.

     Through our thematic approach to study and worship, our church will be able to pay attention to how God wants to create hope, peace, love and joy in our spirits and in the world. As a part of this work, we will learn more about the very people to whom we are to be the good news. God wants this community to know that Jesus was born on the corner of Peters Colony and Josey Lane through the people we call Holy Covenant United Methodist Church. Let’s bring a gift to God this year that honors the child laying in a manger and does not trivialize the gift of love to bring joy to the world!

Blessings,

Pastor Carol