Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

     We began this Advent series recognizing that we human beings struggle with a tension when it comes to our understanding of God.  We resonate with paradigms, but with time discover that every construct/metaphor has its limits, and we move into mystery – this is the dance between the kataphatic and the apophatic traditions.  Part of this tension is on full display in the birth narratives of Jesus.  For the three centuries leading up to Jesus’ birth, people assumed that God was silent and distant.  If God were going to speak, God would do so through the expected channels – prophets, priests, and kings – and surely in the Temple.  The characters that paved the way for Jesus’ birth experienced God in unexpected ways.  On old couple long past child-bearing years is told they would be expecting.  They had to be on board for that to happen – they had to do their part for the child to be conceived: a “leap” of faith (keeping it clean here!).  Mary was also told that she would conceive, and that God would not be absent in the process but rather very much involved.  Her response was one of deep, reverent submission to the controversy that lie ahead.  Her fiancé, Joseph, was inclined to walk away from Mary given what he knew but was invited to trust that God was somehow in the process, and invited him to be, too – an act of deep, humble obedience.  The lowly shepherds in the field tending their flocks were the last to expect God to show up, especially with a choir of angelic warriors!  They were invited to be the first visitors of the newborn, and therefore the first messengers of his birth.  None of the characters expected God to show up in these ways.  None of them expected God to be so intimately involved, so present in their lives.  None of them could have imagined such invitations extended by God, either, yet they were.  Each character had to be open.  Each character had to have faith.  Each character had to embrace the invitation, or the story wouldn’t be what we remember today.

     I don’t think it was much different for Jesus, regardless of how you determine how he was conceived.  Even if much more, he was still flesh and blood, still human, still needing to be open, to have faith, to be able to perceive what he was being invited to embrace, and embrace it.  If we roll with the story, we would assume that he was more aware than most of how present God is in everyday life and would therefore have greater sensitivity to what God was doing in the world and in his life.  We should naturally expect him to have a leg up on most human beings given his faith-filled upbringing.  It makes sense that he would have greater insight, greater capacity to be a conduit for the Spirit, and greater flexibility since his origin story was such a mind-blower.  Identifying how incredible Jesus was is important. In the Christian tradition, identifying him as our pioneer and perfecter of our faith is central to how we perceive God.  But Jesus never taught that the point of his life was that we would simply come to utter a belief statement or ask for forgiveness so that we could go to heaven someday.  His whole agenda was to advance the Kingdom of God by modeling the Way of walking with God, of displaying what it meant to be incarnated with the presence of God, so that humanity would not simply believe in him intellectually, but to follow that Way.  The Way is radically different than the MO of the world, so much so that Jesus said it was like being born again.  It is a way of life that honors the incarnation in each of us, seeing ourselves and others as holy, worthy of dignity and respect, and seeks to live responsively to the flow of the Spirit of God that resides within each of us.

     Why would anyone do the hard work required to live according to the Kingdom of God, to walk in the Way of Jesus, the Way of faith, the Way of the flow of the Spirit?  Why bother?  Do you want more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in your life and in the world?  The Apostle Paul called these the fruit of the Spirit, byproducts of living life in response to the Spirit’s ever-active presence in and around us. What does the Way look like and how do we learn more about it?  Learn everything you can about how Jesus lived his life and emulate it.  If you are paying attention, you will realize that you will never outgrow it or come to the end of the depths of the Way as it gets deeper as we grow deeper.  It is as simple as following in the footsteps of Jesus, which is only difficult because it is so counter-intuitive and counter-cultural at times.  Yet it delivers on abundant life, meaning, hope – everything worth actually living for.  You are invited to live in God With Us.

     To recap, we need to be open to how we think about God because our constructs are helpful but also inherently limiting.  We need to be open to how God might interact in the world – God is everywhere, in everything, in us – this is the panentheistic view which replaces a more common dualistic view where God is separated from us.  Jesus grew into his understanding of being one with God and achieved it as much as humanly possible.  His prayer was that his followers experience the same, which means it is not only possible, but also the longing of God.  In order to experience the responsive, abundant life-in-the-Spirit like Jesus did, we need to follow his example, not simply believe in him.

Need a little inspiration? Listen to this song Voctave’s This Is My Wish. You’re welcome.

Questions to consider...

1.     How are you affected by the fact that Jesus prayed that you would be one with God as he was one with God, which means it is both possible and longed for by God?

2.     How have you already experienced this reality in part?  Are there areas of your life where you began to follow Jesus more closely and it resulted in some of the fruits of the Spirit showing up in your life?

3.     What areas of your life do you know you need some of the fruits of the Spirit sooner than later?  How can you follow Jesus more closely in that area of life?

4.     Who do you know that would appreciate this Good News?  How might you begin to share it with them in word and deed?

Resources to use for reflection...

Galatians 5:13-26 (MSG)

     It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

     My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

     It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

     This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.

     But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

     Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

     Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

Philippians 2:1-15 (MSG)

     If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

     Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.

     Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

     What I'm getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you've done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I'm separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God's energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.

Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night.

Philippians 4:8-9 (NLT)

“Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.”

Annotated Lord’s Prayer

By Nadia Bolz-Weber

     Our Father, Our Mother, Our Holy Parent, The Source of All Being from whom we came and to whom we return, You who knows us better than we know ourselves. Jesus called you Abba and so shall we, even as we may have an ambiguous relationship with parenthood - Be to us our Holy Parent, the one who loves without condition. 

     Who art in heaven… Our Father who art in everything. Our Father who art in orphanages and neonatal units, and jail cells and luxury high-rises, who art in law offices and adult bookstores, and in rooms alone with suicidal people. Our Father who art in the halls of Congress and the halls of tenements. 

     Hallowed be thy name. Holy is your name.  Ever since the beginning we have attributed our own sin and ego and wishful thinking and greed and malice and racism and ambition and manipulations of others to you and to your name – and yet your name remains holy. We print “In God we trust” on the US dollar and then worship that dollar and the power that dollar brings us, and yet still, your name remains holy. 

     Thy kingdom come… God, right now we beg you to bring more than just a small measure of heaven to earth because, if you haven’t noticed, we are in the middle of a global pandemic and millions are sick and dying, not to mention, the Earth is on fire. It’s a mess down here Lord, so we need your Kingdom to speed the hell up. We need wise leaders, and just systems and an extra dose of compassion for all of us.

     Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Thy will and not ours be done. Forgive us when we use prayer as a self-help technique by which we can get all the cash and prizes we want out of your divine vending machine if we just kind of bug you to death through ceaseless prayer, because when it comes down to it, we know better. You are our Father whose name is holy and whose love is boundless and who wants, as our holy Parent, to hear our prayers.

     Give us today our daily bread. Give us today our daily bread, our daily naan, our daily tortillas, our daily rice. Lord, give us real bread, even when we keep reaching for those literal and metaphorical Krispy Kremes. Give us the gift of enough-ness. May our response to perceived scarcity always be increased generosity for we are your children and from you we receive everything. Give us today our desire for the neighbor to be fed. Give us today a desire for a good that is held in common.

     And forgive us our sins. As we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us when we hate what you love. Forgive us when we would rather anesthetize ourselves than feel anything. Forgive us for how much we resent in others the same things we hate in ourselves Forgive us for the terrible things we think about our own bodies, bodies you have made in your image. Forgive us for thinking we know the hearts of our enemies. 

     And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Deliver us from the inclination that we too do not have evil in our hearts. Deliver us from religious and national exceptionalism. Deliver us from addiction and depression. Deliver us from self-loathing. Deliver us from self- righteousness. Deliver us from high fructose corn syrup. Deliver us from a complete lack of imagination about where you are in our lives and how you might already be showing up. Deliver us from complacency. Deliver us from Complicity. As Jesus taught us, we are throwing this bag of prayers at your door. We are not asking nicely, Lord. We are your children and we are claiming your promises as our own today. Some of us are holding your feet to the fire, some of us don’t know if we believe in you, some of us are distracted and just going through the motions, some are desperately in love with you.... but all of us are your children. Use these prayers to hammer us all into vessels that can accept the answer when it comes (Fred Craddock). 

     For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. 

     And the children of God say, AMEN. 

St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer Song/Video:

Christ with me
Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me

Christ beneath me, Christ above me
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me
Christ in every eye that sees me
Christ in every ear that hears me