A sermon preached by the Reverend Sarah Grondin, at St. Jude’s Oakville, on the 1st Sunday of Advent, December 1st, 2024.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Happy New Year!
The confused looks on people’s faces when I say that on the 1st Sunday of Advent seriously never gets old!
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to get down to business. I want to welcome you to the first meeting of the Advent Conspiracy.
The first order of business is that Christmas is coming. I triple checked the calendar, and besides that, all the tell-tale signs are there: Mariah Carey is playing on the radio 24/7, the coffee shops have all changed the colour of their cups, the trampling of Black Friday has happened, there’s parades and lights, and it's all happening.
Yes, Christmas is coming, and that's why today I want to introduce you to the advent conspiracy. Now some of you might be thinking, “Conspiracy? I thought I was just coming to a regular church service.”
But let me tell you this, these two words advent and conspiracy might just save your life, and they might just save Christmas. But they’ll certainly save your heart from exhaustion, your mind from going crazy, and your bank account from depletion.
The first word, advent, is an ancient Latin word which means coming or arrival, and so for hundreds of years Christians have been preparing for Christmas by setting aside the four weeks that immediately precede Christmas to get their hearts, their minds, and their spirits ready for Jesus.
Maybe if you're like me, you're just longing for a quieter Christmas, or a more peaceful Christmas… something with less hype and more holiness. That's what advent is about, it's to help us enter Christmas not just as a holiday, but as a holy day.
But why that second word, why the word conspiracy? It’s because if you’ve looked around at our popular culture lately, you'll probably have noticed that that simpler, holier idea of doing Christmas, has been completely crushed under the Hallmark Christmas Movement that’s already spinning out of control… with the parties, the gifts, the shopping, the decorations, and on and on.
Our celebrating the mystery of the birth of Jesus exhausts us. How many of you after Christmas have ever said, “Man, I’m glad that’s over!” Yet we’ve barely had a moment to reflect on the awe-inducing, soul-satisfying mystery of the incarnation – that God is with us, that God has come to us.
Instead of drawing us closer to Jesus, the way our culture celebrates Christmas often pushes us further away from Jesus, and we’re relieved when it’s over! We’re relieved when the greatest miracle in the history of the world is put back in boxes and bins until next year.
But the Advent Conspiracy is all about pushing back against the cultural pressures: the culture of consumerism, the culture of commercialism, and the culture of distraction… and by pushing back we're saying: “this year we're not going to do it that way.” This Advent, instead, we’re going to practice the four core beliefs of the advent conspiracy: Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All.
It’s a 2000 year old conspiracy that we need now more than ever. So let's conspire together this advent, and it all starts by learning how to worship fully.
Worship isn’t just something that happens at church. Worship is a state of heart. Look at the Christmas narrative, almost all of the main characters express their worship in a variety of ways: Mary was moved to sing a song of gratitude to God, in which she worships and confesses his great love for, and future deliverance of the oppressed.
Joseph obeyed and followed God’s plan, despite the social cost, to help God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Elizabeth opened her home in an act of hospitality, and provided a safe and loving refuge for her cousin and the child she carried within her.
The shepherds, who were often despised as thieves and unfit for polite society, stopped their work to go find and worship the Christ-child, and then they spread the glorious news far and wide.
The Magi confronted anything that stood in the way of worshiping the one true God, they brought costly gifts that nearly cost them their lives, but they answered the call of the new-born King.
Worship was at the heart of the very first Christmas, and worship needs to be at the heart of this Christmas too. Because the reality is, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in the Manger when we’re rushing from store to store. It’s so ironic, but it feels like the time of year when focusing on Jesus should be the easiest, is actually the hardest.
So, what can we do about it? We can conspire together to declutter and slow down our lives this advent. We know what it means to declutter when company’s coming over: shove that in the closet, go put that in your room, throw that in the garage! So what would it mean for us to declutter our souls, and slow down our lives this Advent to create space for Christ to dwell in our heart?
One of Jesus' names is Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” God wants to be with us, God wants to speak with us, but the question is, is there room for God to do that? Can we fit God into our calendar, and into our life? Because this is the time of year when our lives get so cluttered up, that God gets crowded out.
And while we're decluttering, and while we're slowing down, we’ll also be letting go of the stress that builds up and threatens to swallow us whole.
Did you know there’s a strong link between Christmas and the rise of health concerns like stress, anxiety, and depression? But not just mental health, also physical health…the months of December and January have the highest rate for things like heart attacks as well. Doing Christmas the way that our culture wants us to do Christmas, is actually killing us.
I want you to take a moment and imagine yourself as a teenage girl…
Ok, and now imagine you’ve just been told by an angel that you’re going to give birth to the Messiah, and the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you.
I imagine if that were us, we’d be overwhelmed with anxiety, and we’d be terrified… but not Mary.
Her response is to trust in worship, and she sings a beautiful and powerful song of praise called the Magnificat. In the middle of all that stress and anxiety about what the future is going to hold for her, Mary chooses to worship fully. It’s a choice that we can make too. Even when our lives get complicated and everything seems surrounded by uncertainty, we can choose to worship fully too.
So I invite you to join me in this subversive plan this advent… when the pressure is on to stuff your schedules so full that you can hardly breathe, I invite you to conspire to declutter your lives to create spaces where you can be still and meet with Jesus.
When the world is going crazy this December moving a mile a minute, I invite you to slow down your lives, so that you can catch up with God, and God can catch up with you.
And when the stress comes, and it will… and when unexpected things happen, and they will… rather than choosing worry and panic, we can choose to worship fully.
As followers of Jesus, our options are clear: we can inhabit the story of a corrupt world and bow to a counterfeit king, or we can enter the story of God and celebrate the world's one true Lord.
We can attempt to incorporate consumerism into our devotions, making a quiet compromise with every decision, as stone by stone our monument to another god grows; or we can leave behind our ease in order to witness, and worship, something (or someone) infinitely better.
In this season of advent let’s break into song like Mary and declare the greatness of our Lord, let’s have times of silence like Zachariah and reflect on what God is doing in our lives, let’s jump for joy like Elizabeth and the baby within her when we hear the good news of Christmas.
Let’s worship with our obedience like Joseph, let’s be like the shepherds glorifying and praising God wherever we are, and let’s find time to be like the magi, and draw close to the manger – to come and adore him.
Do you know what would happen if this year Christmas wasn't about stuff?
Do you know what would happen if this Advent we worshipped fully, spent less, gave more, and loved all?
It would make Christmas not just a holiday, but the holy day it was always meant to be.
Advent can change you.
And Christmas can change the world. Amen.
