Hopes and Expectations: The Advent 2019 Devotional from Austin Seminary

HOPES

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ADVENT

DEVOTIONAL

EXPECTATIONS

Theodore J. Wardlaw, President Board of Trustees G. Archer Frierson II, Chair James C. Allison Janice L. Bryant (MDiv’01, DMin’11) Claudia D. Carroll Katherine B. Cummings (MDiv’05) Thomas Christian Currie James A. DeMent (MDiv’17) Jill Duffield (DMin’13) Britta Martin Dukes (MDiv’05) Jackson Farrow Jr. Beth Blanton Flowers, MD Stephen Giles Jesús Juan González (MDiv’92) Walter Harris Jr. John S. Hartman Keatan A. King

Steve LeBlanc Sue B. McCoy Matthew Miller (MDiv’03) W. David Pardue Denise Nance Pierce (MATS’11) Mark B. Ramsey Stephen J. Rhoades Sharon Risher (MDiv’07) Conrad M. Rocha Lana E. Russell Lita Simpson John L. Van Osdall Teresa Welborn David F. White Elizabeth C. Williams Michael G. Wright

Trustees Emeriti Lyndon L. Olson Jr., B. W. Payne, Max R. Sherman, Anne V. Stevenson, and Louis H. Zbinden Jr.

Cover: “The Visitation,” stained-glass window from a church in Porto, Portugal; photo by Jose Goncalves

Sunday, December 1 Matthew 24:36 -44

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n all honesty my preparation for Advent involves searching my hall closet for our Advent wreath, buying new candles, and changing the dining room tablecloth before setting up the wreath so that we are ready for Advent candle lighting, devotions, and prayer. I prepare, mindful of the long arc of this season: I anticipate the comfort and joy of the birth of God in our midst. We draw near again to the church’s annual feast of the Nativity of Christ, born to unite heaven and earth, born so that death and sin are not our end, born for the salvation of all creation.

So it is jarring to read this passage, the initial Gospel text this Advent, with its stern declaration about the coming of the Son of Man. I lean toward Christmas, so it is disconcerting to consider instead the days of Noah, the ones taken and the ones left, and the thief breaking into our home.

Yet Advent begins this way. With the end. It begins with the Son of Man who comes to judge. We may anticipate comfort and joy but first we start with the end times. Some will be found worthy and some found wanting.

Underscored here: we cannot know the time or day of the Lord’s coming again so we must be prepared at all times.

This reading is a part of Matthew’s discourse on the coming judgment (24:1– 25:46). Let us notice that this section ends with the parable of the sheep and the goats. Matthew shows us what it looks like to live in expectation of the coming of the Son of Man: it is in our care for “the least of these.” So while some have preached these texts to force Christ’s disciples into fearful obedience and others have preached these texts to turn followers of Jesus toward a fascination with the afterlife, Matthew preaches: live expectantly!

And this means deeds of mercy, forgiveness, deep care for the lost and the least.

Are we ready? May our preparations enable us to stand blameless before the one who will come again in glory.

– Reverend Dr. Jennifer L. Lord The Dorothy B. Vickery Professor of Homiletics and Liturgical Studies

Monday, December 2 2 Peter: 1-11

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here do you imagine God to be when you pray? Maybe God stands in front of you as you kneel or sits next to you on your bed. Perhaps you like to stand and look up, praying to God above.

What would it be like if instead you imagined yourself encircled by God all around? How would your prayers change if you were to pray from within God rather than to God? In Advent, the fires of hope are kindled as we look toward God’s birth as a human child. Jesus Christ, flesh of our flesh, makes way for us to dwell within God. It is through the incarnation of God in Christ that theologian Catherine Gunsalus González says, we become “part of the body of the second person of the Trinity.” There is no more intimate a space than being part of another’s body.

As intimate, invited ones, we no longer must pray kneeling before, standing in front of, or sitting at a distance from God. Rather, we can pray from within the life of God, because we dwell inside the circle: Father/Mother, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is God’s promise and God’s gift to us.

We are, as 2 Peter proclaims, partakers of the divine nature. It is from within God that we wait, we pray, we cry out for the world to be made whole. It is from within God that we are transformed into likeness with God. We fail, we faint, we rise, we try again. The whole time God encircles us. We are running a marathon and God surrounds us: cheering us on, handing out water, ready to help us if we fall. God is there from beginning to end: above us, below us, within us, and all around us. And we are within God.

– Reverend Erica Knisely Director of Programs, Educaton Beyond the Walls

Tuesday, December 3 Matthew 21:1-22

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hese three stories—of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, driving the moneychangers from the temple, and the withering fig tree—seem like an odd collection of ideas to juxtapose like this. Why are they placed side by side? What could the authors who compiled the gospel of Matthew have been thinking? In reality, these three texts bear significantly on the nature of Christ’s advent. In a sense these texts articulate the heart of the Christian gospel.

Unfortunately, we have read these stories so many times we forget how shocking they were in the context of Roman Empire. First, the Romans in particular and the ancient world in general valued power over everything else; humility was unthinkable. Great leaders were those with enormous armies, great physical strength and ruthlessness, and a wealth of resources. Jesus entry into Jerusalem on a donkey not only fulfilled the ancient prophecy of Zachariah, but also provided the very model for the new inbreaking kingdom—and the form of faith to be practiced by his followers. The new Christian movement is a paradoxical form of allegiance to a Lord whose power is not found in might but in kindness and compassion; a form of selfhood that empties one’s self in giving to others; a form of sociality that builds peace and not war. Jesus’ entry on a humble beast says all of this in an image.

The story of Jesus driving money-changers from the temple builds upon the image of the triumphal entry. In this second story, in driving the greedy men from the temple, Jesus is affirming a second thing about his Lordship—the Lord who manifests in peace and humility does not allow duplicity or idolatry.

One simply cannot declare Jesus as Lord and at the same time worship money or exploit the poor. Jesus’ Lordship is totalizing—it takes precedent over all idols of money, greed, gluttony, lust, crowns, nations, powers, principalities.

The third story of the barren fig tree reveals that even as Christ comes into the world offering the gift of peace, our response—and the response of all creation—is gratitude and giving gifts to others. In the advent of this Lord of peace we receive God’s gifts with gratitude and our lives bear fruit for others.

Just as a fig tree that does not bear figs cannot fulfill the purpose of its creation

by God, so a life that does not live in humility, that leaves room to worship other gods, and does not give gifts to others, does not live into the purpose for which we are created.

– Reverend Dr. David White The C. Ellis and Nancy Gribble Nelson Professor of Christian Education & Professor of Methodist Studies

Wednesday, December 4 2 Peter 3:1-10

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think the scoffers make a good point. I mean: How long can we Christians go on like this? Every Advent we hear the promise that Christ will come, and everything will be better. But do we ever actually get any closer to “peace on earth” and “good will to all”? We’ve been praying for 2000 years for God’s Kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven.” So where is it, already? How long shall we keep waiting? Praying? Hoping?

The scoffers suggest we should have given up long ago. Nothing has changed since the world was created, they say, so why expect anything to change now? There is an old adage that says the secret to happiness is to set one’s expectations low. If we let go of hope, we can avoid disappointment.

But this is not the way Christians are called to live. We are called to set our expectations high; to risk disappointment; to believe in and to watch for God’s inconceivable promises to be fulfilled.

Peter gives us tips for how to do this. First, he notes that many things have changed since the world was created—the earth was destroyed by flood, for example, and then restored. Second, Peter explains that God experiences time differently than we do. From the perspective of eternity, God is not slow to respond (v.9). This might not lessen our frustration as time-bound creatures, but it does give us another avenue to ponder. Third, Peter reflects on why God is taking time to fulfill God’s promises. God “does not want any to perish,” he says, “but all to come to repentance” (v. 9). In contrast to the days of Noah, when scoffers were summarily drowned, God is this time waiting patiently for everyone to hope in the covenant made with all creation (see Genesis 9:17).

It is scary to expect that this world, with all our uncovered deeds, will be burned away. May we set our hopes high nonetheless, trusting God to create a new heaven and earth where all will be at peace.

– Reverend Dr. Cynthia L. Rigby The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology

Thursday, December 5

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Matthew 21:33-46

esus has arrived. He stands in the temple in Jerusalem and teaches God’s message to those who surround him. Those in charge approach him and ask him who has given him authority to teach. He evades their question and then goes on to tell a series of parables. None of the parables are flattering to the men in charge of the Temple.

In today’s parable, Jesus compares God to a landowner who has leased the land on which is vineyard grows. When the landowner sends slaves, and even his son, to collect the fruit, his tenants betray him and kill those whom he has sent. Jesus warns those in religious authority that they only have the kingdom of God because of God’s pleasure. What is important is not pedigree, but the fruits of the kingdom. Will those in charge of God’s kingdom welcome the people God sends?

Being open to God is harder than it sounds. Devotion easily turns into control. Those people in charge of the Temple considered themselves devoted to God, but they weren’t prepared for God expressed through Jesus Christ. We can have a hard time seeing Jesus, too. We get fixated on doing things in church a particular way, our way, and forget to think about the bigger picture. Years ago, I interned in a church that was having an argument about whether or not to bring an upholstered chair into the sanctuary, so an ailing parishioner could join the congregation for worship.

The outcome ended up being negative. Having only matching pews in the sanctuary became more important to the congregation than welcoming one of their own. Imagine if God had sent a stranger into their midst!

Today, take an inventory of the places in your life where devotion has turned into control. Are you ready to let go? Practice seeing Jesus in the unexpected.

– Reverend Sarah Gaventa Dean of Students

Friday, December 6 Matthew 22:1-14

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he parable of the wedding feast is joyously beautiful. It is also terrifying. It tells of a King with boundless love: a King who welcomes everyone, good and bad, to the table. It also tells of a King who condemns: a King who throws the unprepared guest into darkness. How shall we read the parable this Advent season? God is coming. Shall we rejoice in the coming of this God of grace or shall we fear the coming of this God of judgment?

Perhaps the purpose of the parable is not to tell us what we ought to feel, but to awaken us to how we do, in fact, feel. When you read of the wedding feast, what seizes you? Do you rejoice in the vision of radical hospitality? Do you balk at the welcoming of the “bad”? Do you worry about your own invitation status? Do you fret at the impossibility of preparing for an unexpectedly large crowd? Do you long for the redemption of the man thrown out? Perhaps our responses offer us clues as to whether or not we have donned our wedding clothes. Which responses pull us into relationship with the King, and which leave us trapped in our own doubts, biases, and expectations?

For the passage certainly does not bend to our expectations. Nor does it conform easily to our agendas. We cannot explain why a more exclusive group of invitees precedes the radical openness of the second invitation.

We cannot explain why the ruler welcomes the bad, only to then punish the one in the wrong clothes. Perhaps the warning of the passage is on some level this: if we demand that God’s arrival look exactly as we think it should, we shall surely miss it.

So may we remember this year that Christmas is shocking. And as we are warmed by the familiar glow of stars, shepherds, angels, and the little baby in the manger, may we reawaken to their strangeness. And may we expectantly await not the god of our expectations, but God ... who is sure to exceed or subvert them all.

– Ms. Jean Corbitt Senior student from Conway, Arkansas

Saturday, December 7 Amos 5:18-24

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ost of us want to do what is right. We want to be good people. Yet despite these desires, we inevitably mess up. Our intentions do not accord with the results. Such seems to be the case in Amos 5:18-24. In these verses, Amos charges the Israelites of doing deeds that, though done to please God, actually displease God: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” (v. 21). Rather, instead of these things, what God desires is to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (v. 24).

These verses are frustrating. People offer sacrifices, go to church, celebrate religious holidays, and give up meat for Lent not because they despise justice or righteousness but because they are trying to be pious the only way they know how. Justice and righteousness are vague, confusing, and as a result, more difficult to understand. We have difficulties knowing what justice and righteousness really are and how we are to go about helping to increase them.

And therein lies the key difference between these religious acts and the righteous and justice demanded by God. Righteousness and justice are things for which we need wisdom, understanding, and clarity to discern.

They require thought, and in thinking about them, we are confronted with our limitations. Though made in the image of God, we, many times, do not know how to “let justice role down like the waters.” Indeed, we are frequently lost, confused, and confronted with ambiguities. And in being so indelibly flawed, the demand for righteousness and justice shows us how much we, as limited creatures, can only hope in God and God’s promises of a better world.

– Dr. Suzie Park Interim Dean & Associate Professor of Old Testament

Sunday, December 8 Matthew 3:1-12

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dvent makes me think of my father. He was a maintenance man for a mall and a pastor. This combination of being worker and pastor manifested itself in many oddly beautiful interactions for my brothers and me. Every day waiting for dad to come home from work was a wild adventure. One day he showed up with a 3-foot-tall solid Lego train.

Another day he might bring home some very cool high schoolers, with no place else to stay, with their loud music to liven up our after-school hours.

Another day he had a clownishly huge, real Hershey’s candy bar that a store was using for staging. Other days huge, muscle- and tattoo-laden men, fresh out of prison, would show up looking for a place to land, and they would share wild stories of life in far-off places. Some days he would pick us up in his work van and we could ride around in the back with all the tools.

In a world of immediacy, waiting is a hard thing to do. Waiting is what we do for a light. Waiting is what you do for your teenager. Waiting is incongruent with your plan. What we can sometimes forget is that we are not being held up by God. God doesn’t run late. The language we need to acquire is “actively waiting”! We are not supposed to be bored waiting. We are not to be still while we are waiting. We are to be like the parables of the bridesmaids and the slaves, busy waiting. Actively waiting.

John the Baptist crying out. Isaiah the prophet crying out. The scriptures are crying out, telling us of the awesome gifts that wait for us at home. We need our childlike excitement about the messiah, for beyond all measure is the gift we have been given.

This Advent season I pray we are able regain that childlike excitement. Find again what we are waiting for. Christ is the way; Christlike should be the way we wait! Amen.

– Reverend J.D. Herrera Vice President for Enrollment Management

Monday, December 9

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Psalm 122

erusalem evokes intense feelings of nostalgia and historical grounding in Christians. For centuries it was the location of the Jewish temple and the place where Jesus spent his final week before his crucifixion.

The Book of Acts (ch. 2) relates how the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem. The city is the heart of “the Holy Land” for Christians and Jews. In medieval times, Christian and Muslim armies fought to control the city. The New Testament ends with the evocation of a new Jerusalem coming down to earth (Rev. 21:2). In the Christian tradition, Jerusalem was often interpreted as a synonym for heaven, the place where God’s promises for us are fulfilled.

For the psalmist, Jerusalem is the focal point for the worship of the Lord God. It is important as the place “where the tribes go up … to praise the name of the LORD” (v. 4). Jerusalem is a city of peace by the very sound of its name (salem/shalom, peace) and because the LORD God, whose presence dwells there, brings peace.

Today Jerusalem sometimes provokes conflict. It is a city divided between Palestinians and Israelis, each of whom make claims on it as “theirs.”

Muslims and religious Jews clash about access to the part of the city where both want to pray. President Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, providing support to Israeli claims of sovereignty over the city. Some American Christians agree that the city should belong exclusively to Israel; others that the city should be shared between Israelis and Palestinians. As in the time of the psalmist, so today the city needs our prayers for peace (v.6).

In Advent, Christians intentionally ground our hopes for global justice and peace for Jerusalem—indeed, our hopes for shalom in our everyday experience—in the God revealed to us in Mary’s child, Jesus. Christian hope is not anchored in a single geographic location (as freighted as some places may be with historic or personal significance) but in the risen Jesus’ promise to be with us always (Matt. 28:20). This Advent season we pray and work for the peace of Jerusalem with our feet (as a hymn from my childhood puts it) standing on the promises of God.

– Reverend Dr. Timothy D. Lincoln Research Professor in Theological Education, Director of the Stitt Library & Associate Dean for Institutional Effectiveness

Tuesday, December 10 Matthew 22:34-40

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ur Lord’s words—in response to the final question posed by the Pharisees—are all too familiar: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus had a buffet from the Law of which to choose, but he offered up these two commandments, one from Deuteronomy, the other from Leviticus. Jesus landed on love.

The commandments and laws numbered in the hundreds—Maimonides listed 613—so it’s hard to guess which specific commandment the questioning Pharisee was expecting. Would Jesus say the greatest commandment is to honor father and mother? Do no wrong in buying or selling? Do not take revenge? Do not bear a grudge?

Jesus landed on love!

Jesus landed on love—and where he landed says a lot about our Creator’s hopes and expectations for the world. We can easily wade out into the thick of it, making sure we feed enough people … give a full ten percent of my full income … care specifically for the widows and orphans. While these are good commandments to follow, Jesus was less concerned about the specifics of the rules and laws. Jesus was more concerned about love.

Because of your love for them, care for your neighbors. Because of your love for your parents, honor them. Because of your love for God, don’t misuse God’s name. Jesus landed on love and encourages us to start there as we live out the commandments given to us.

As we wait with hope and expectation this Advent season, let us take time to identify where we’re starting from: are we in the rules and commandments —doing the things and checking the boxes—or are we living out of love in the things we do? May we live by Jesus’ words, loving God and neighbor with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds.

– Mr. Sheth LaRue Senior student from Salida, Colorado

Wednesday, December 11 Matthew 23-1-12

Pride. Selfishness. Deceitfulness.

Duplicity. Vanity. Fraudulence.

Hypocrisy.

Self-aggrandizement.

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hese are all words Jesus could have used to describe the Pharisees and the temple scribes of Jerusalem. On one occasion he referred to them as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and warned his followers to beware of them. Jesus had little tolerance for leaders who were more concerned with their own success than with the well-being of others. And he had particular disdain for religious charlatans who intentionally “fleeced the flock.” The criticisms that Jesus levied against them illustrate how religion can get hijacked into something that is more about elevating ourselves than about ways we can love God and our neighbors.

“The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Jesus’ exhortation to humble servant-leadership gives us a glimpse of what the reign of God is really like: humility replaces hubris; service replaces selfishness; truth replaces deceit.

During the annual liturgical season of Advent, we are encouraged to reflect on our lives, our communities, and the world around us in light of the gospel.

We can’t help but to notice the incongruence between the way things are and the way Jesus says they should be. That is why we approach this time of year with a heightened sense of hope and expectation. Christmas is God’s reassurance to us that we have not been abandoned to the way things are.

Christmas is God’s reassurance that a New Day is coming—a day of justice, peace, and righteousness.

– Reverend Dr. Al Krummenacher Director of Development

Thursday, December 12 Psalm 126

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nce upon a Christmas eve, my younger brother and I were doing our best to fall asleep. But, alas, we were too excited about the next morning and the surprises it would bring. Eventually, sleep won, “Santa” delivered, and Christmas arrived! The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and I was awakened to only slightly muffled shouts of “Yes! Yes! Yeeeeesssss!” Without opening my eyes, I knew my brother was awake, that he was excited, and “Santa” had fulfilled his greatest annual wish.

The gift eventually wore out, fell apart, and was discarded, but the joy lasts even today. My brother and I spent hours in each other’s company, laughing until we cried. Our Psalmist smiles at these memories, knowing the true gifts that joy and laughter bring. My brother’s wish was a Nintendo with the original Super Mario Brothers, but the psalmist recalls the gift that only God could deliver. “The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.” (vs 3.)

But life is not always Christmas morning, is it? Sometimes, life is Good Friday … and our “Yes!” is veiled in the opaqueness of our shame, our hurt, and our disappointment. But I promise you that God hears our cries in the night, holds us even closer, and promises that the new day WILL come when there are no more tears and no more pain. Friends, our Christmas morning is coming, our gift will be front and center … and our rejoicing will be the loudest “Yeeeeesssss” we can ever imagine.

– Ms. Carrie Winebrenner Senior student from San Antonio, Texas

Friday, December 13 Matthew 23:27-39 “You scholars and Pharisees, you impostors! Damn you!”

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his text before us today contains two repetitions of Jesus’ chilling refrain. A dear friend once told me, “Being a faithful Christian is always an inside job.” Never more so than while we wrestle with this Advent lesson.

Our preoccupations of the Advent season jump around waving desperately: “Look over here!” This text demands otherwise. Demands that we look instead at our own penchant to cling to what is dead, to glorify our own tribal monuments. In this textual mirror, we see, and we wonder. Perhaps, we whisper to ourselves, we’ve rooted ourselves in some glorious graveyards too long?

Jesus singles out burial of the dead in extended metaphor. First, the hypocrisy of whitewashing the outside of graves. The ubiquitous practice of whitewashing graves was to avoid ritual contamination. Ah, but, what if our innards are dead, putrid and rotten, Jesus demands? What have we whitewashed over, in our own lives and faith communities? Then, Jesus confronts spiritual materialism that builds monuments that easily function as idols. “You scholars and Pharisees, You Impostors! Damn you!” Do we dwell in, turning our gaze from, systems that shed innocent blood, and do we bear the guilt for it?

Advent studies that matter surprise me by arriving, just in the nick of time, even when I resist for all I’m worth. Come, Lord Jesus. Shake me awake from my torpor. In the words of the contemporary carol: Jesus, Oh What a Wonderful Child: “New life, new hope, new joy he brings. Won’t you listen to the angels sing? Glory, Glory, Glory To the newborn king.” Jesus is coming!

To drag us out of our comfortable graveyards, into the Glory of renewed relationship. Hosanna! (Save Us!) from ourselves! Deliver us to your light and your way.

– Reverend Dr. Rose Niles Development Officer

Saturday, December 14 Matthew 24:1-14

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ecular culture’s appropriation of Christmas is candy canes, sparkling lights, and a bump in sales. It is utterly disconnected from the Christmas story. Secular influence is so potent I am always taken aback, and then impressed and inspired by the unvarnished realism of the biblical narrative. In reality, the Christmas story was written in the wake of the cross and in the shadow of empire.

In the previous chapter, Matthew recounts Jesus’ calling out of religious leaders for hypocrisy—not in order to attack the faith (as is so often the case today—but as a call to repentance and renewal. In this chapter, Jesus addresses life under empire. The Pax Romana appears great if, unlike Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, and their families, you have wealth, power, and citizenship. As the Deuteronomist, the prophets, and Jesus in their stead discern, empires built upon exploitation are internally unstable. As disparities in wealth increase, empires crumble from within. Hardship and violence increase. Jesus discerns the signs. He warns many will “betray” and “hate one another” (24:10), that “the love of many will grow cold” (24:12). But, Jesus urges, despite the persecution, “endure.” Endure so the good news of God’s gracious love might be manifest and “proclaimed throughout the world” and the “telos” (end/goal) will arrive (24:14). In the next chapter, Jesus makes clear some ways God’s love endures in a harsh world. He praises “sheep”: those who welcome strangers, visit prisoners, clothe the naked, give medical care to the sick, feed the hungry. He speaks from and to the margins. He speaks as a man about to be imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

The Christmas story, then, is first from and to those who are struggling, needy, and persecuted. Then it is to those wealthy but with ears to hear.

Christmas giving, the giving of sheep, the eternal gift of the Son, the love of neighbor which is love of God, is an empowering act of gracious resistance to worldly powers. So today may we find ways to give, no matter the gift— perhaps just a word of affirmation—so we all might endure in love.

– Dr. WIlliam Greenway Professor of Philosophical Theology

Sunday, December 15 Matthew 11:2-11

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hen Carly Simon penned the lyrics to her 1970s pop hit, “Anticipation,” I’d be surprised to learn that she had Advent, John the Baptist, or the second coming of Christ in mind. Yet, the phrase, “anticipation is making me wait, keeping me waiting” is an indication of the emotion experienced by John in Matthew 11:1 - 6. He’s incarcerated, and he can only receive the news reports about what is going on in Jesus’ ministry. He had reluctantly baptized Jesus, convinced only when Jesus assured him that they were in the act of fulfilling prophecy. He had witnessed divine blessing as Jesus came up out of the water; and, he believed! This man—his cousin—was the “The Coming One”! While John is waiting, he must have wondered whether Jesus was truly the Savior for an Israel suffering oppressive military occupation by a foreign power. Could Jesus secure John’s freedom from captivity? John is waiting, anticipating, looking for Jesus to make a messianic move. During this season of expectations, not only is John frustrated. He’s doubtful.

We, too, are amid a season of waiting, watching, expecting. We have evidence, proof, that a celebration of Christmas awaits us. However, in the meantime, we also wait for Jesus’ return in power, might, justice, and peace—and he couldn’t come a minute too soon. We live in a world plagued and preoccupied by ‘isms (racism. ageism, ableism, totalitarianism, nationalism) and phobias (xenophobia and homophobia, among others). Like John, we find ourselves captive to 24-hour cycles of bad news. We are incarcerated by fear of random acts of violence, real and imagined threats to our safety or security, and unpredictable weather catastrophes. We find ourselves frustrated by increasing political, social, and cultural polarizations—yet, we wait for Jesus to return and fix all of this! He didn’t come last year. He didn’t come last month. He didn’t come yesterday, and all we can do is anticipate—God is making us wait.

Jesus’ response to John’s emissaries is affirmation for generations to come, ours included. “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matt. 11: 6). Jesus is telling us that despite all that is bad, ugly, and horrible, we can look for the good. We can look for the good of people being healed, helped, and redeemed by proclamation of the good news. We can look forward to Jesus’ return and not take offense at everything that does not get “fixed” as we pray, praise, believe, and serve. Our advent, frustrating and sometimes doubt-filled, is interrupted by the joy and jubilation of Christmas. We welcome the Messiah—rekindling our hope for the peace, justice, and authority realized in the reign of Christ. Our faith, despite all we know, see, and hear while we are waiting, is a blessing.

– Ms. Danita Nelson Middler student from Austin, Texas

Monday, December 16 Revelation 3:7-13

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e have a new baby in our family. She sleeps so soundly in our arms. We put her gently in her little bed, and then, very shortly, she cries. In her squalls, I hear, “Wake up! Wake up! Have you forgotten me?” Mary will know this experience soon enough. Baby Jesus will disrupt her sleep. Jesus the Christ will keep disrupting sleepers through his whole life, and even thereafter. His friend John means to disrupt the seemingly complacent church in Sardis with his words in Revelation 3:1-6.

The Sardinian church had “the name of being alive,” but their reputation was not enough to keep them alive. A few continued to do Christ’s work—there were those whose “clothes were not soiled” by straying to false gods— but the church was indistinguishable from those seduced by the gods of the culture around them. The life of Christ was drifting away as they kept up appearances. Speaking Christ’s words, John writes to them, “Wake up!

Have you forgotten me?” He urges them to remember what they have heard and received, repent for being lulled into complacency, and hold fast to the revelation they have seen. If they do not, their life will be stolen, and they won’t even know it until it’s too late to save it.

What is it exactly that John says they have forgotten? Dr. Brian K. Blount makes it plain, “Revelation’s rev-elation is that Jesus Christ is Lord. It is that simple and that straightforward. Jesus Christ is the Lord of human history, the director of human destiny, the controller of human fortune. Jesus is Savior, Redeemer, transformer, and Lord.”

We love our family’s new baby beyond reason, yet caring for new life can be hard and inconvenient; it demands attention and diligence. In this Advent season, we prepare ourselves to receive once again the one who will disrupt our comfort forever and bring us salvation, redemption, and transformation.

If you have forgotten, wake up! Remember the gift we have received.

– Ms. Melissa Wiginton Vice President for Education Beyond the Walls and Research Professor in Methodist Studies

Tuesday, December 17 Matthew 24:32-44

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dvent is a paradox: We look back in order to look forward. Paradoxes are often uncomfortable, but we must not resolve this one. Our hope depends on it. If we look back without looking forward, our hope degenerates into nostalgia: our future is equated with recreating our past. If we look forward without looking back, our hope evaporates into fantasy. We pursue our daydreams instead of God’s will.

If our hope is to have a foundation, we must look back: back past the Reformers, back past the first disciples, back past the prophets and the kings and the patriarchs, all the way back to our first parents and their first sin. We must look back to Eve and Adam, caught naked in the garden, hearing their condemnation. Then, in the midst of their shame, they heard God’s words to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

This is known as the “protevangelium”: the first proclamation of the Gospel.

God did not leave our parents without hope. They took this Gospel out into the world. They passed it on to their children. The Israelites carried it into Egypt and back. They kept it alive through prosperity and famine, through peacetime and war, through enslavement and freedom, exile and return.

They saw its fulfillment in the son of Mary, the second Eve and the second Adam, whose words to us remain: “I will return, but the time is unknown.

So be ready.”

“He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” The serpent will not have the last word. The children of Eve and Adam will know more than good and evil. They will know peace and joy. That is the promise. That is the hope in which hope we wait.

– Reverend Dr. David W. Johnson Associate Professor of Church History and Christian Spirituality

Wednesday, December 18 John 3:16 -21

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t has dawned on me recently to wonder about Mary’s first experience of holding the baby Jesus in her arms. How tiny and light, cradled in the crook of her arm with his head nestled against her shoulder; the little one who would grow to bear the weight of the world’s iniquity on his shoulders. How long was it before he opened his eyes and beheld his mother’s face? They say that the eyes are the “windows of the soul,” and I imagine that, as Mary looked deeply into the eyes of this precious little one, she experienced the luminosity of the eyes of God’s son, beaming with pure, divine love into hers. The light of the world, shining through the eyes of a child. I imagine that, in that moment, she knew—she just knew that the hope of the world had entered, this gift of a child that would claim her and redeem all of creation. My answer to the popular song “Mary Did You Know?” is yes. Yes, she did.

Though we cannot cradle the baby Jesus in our arms, we can behold the light of Christ shining in the world through the wonders of God’s saving grace; as demonstrated through the integrity of our relationships with one another, rooted in love; through the inner light that beams within our hearts and moves us to acts of compassion, righteousness, and lovingkindness.

Through the incarnation—the “world made flesh to dwell among us”— Jesus as gift embodies the invitation extended to all of creation to bask in authentic relationship with God. What comes to the light when we “come to the light” is the assurance that God sees us, God holds us, God compels us, and—in perhaps the simplest yet most profound spiritual truth—God loves us!

– Reverend Nancy Benson-Nicol Development Officer

Thursday, December 19 Zephaniah 3:14-20

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song that always seems to raise my spirits in a time of serious waiting is “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke. These words in particular at the end of each stanza still bring me chills: “It’s been a long, a long time coming. But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”

In the biblical text, a change is prophesied to come to Daughter Zion, which is the name for personified Jerusalem. Like the song, these prophetic words of faith cast an image of a better tomorrow for Jerusalem and her devastated people. Rather than succumb to emotions of despair and thoughts of future doom, the prophet commands Daughter Zion, to sing aloud (v 14), rejoice (v 14) and not to fear (v 16). This is the power of prophet speech, for its source is faith.

Disappointments and setbacks are often a major cause of our feelings of despair. As in Sam Cooke’s song, we linger longer than we would like in the first half of the line, “It’s been a long, a long time coming…” For some of us, our spiritual energies are so wasted that we hardly have any hope left for imaging the prophetic “but” further on in this line. If there is anything that the current season should inspire in us is the prophetic “but.” Like Cooke, Zephaniah knew a change was going to come, because as he states in verse 17, “the Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory.” Life has us waiting a long time for change—a long, long time. But we have to believe that a change is going to come to our world, society, communities, churches, and yes even ourselves. This is the prophetic “but” of our advent season, a time when we know God is in our midst.

– Reverend Dr. Gregor y L. Cuéllar Associate Professor of Old Testament

Friday, December 20 Luke 1:26 -38

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or over a century, Rome had ravished the house of Jacob with its tyranny: economic violence against the poor, cruelty through political oppression, manipulations of Jerusalem’s priestly politics, and mockery of the God of Israel. In every way, the people cried, “How long until you save us, Lord?!” Through Gabriel, Mary, and Jesus, God answered, “Now!” Gabriel comes to Mary, announcing the good news that the Kingdom of God is coming though her in a son to be named Jesus. Mary is the conduit through which the heavenly promise is fulfilled. Reclaiming David’s throne, Jesus is the antithesis of current earthly rulers. Freeing the captives, redistributing wealth to end poverty and unfairness, and humbling the powerful who neglect and steal from others, Jesus precipitates the good news. With him, a new hope is born and great expectations are delivered.

Everyone will receive and participate in God’s justice. They will have dignity and access to abundance in this life.

Today, we bring the hopes and expectations of the gospel. Living in a drastically different political and economic reality as the poor in Galilee, we are the body of Christ called to answer the cry “how long?” with “now!” By the grace of Mary’s baby, love of God, and power of the Holy Spirit, we are chosen as the products and agents of God’s justice and righteousness. Freed, we liberate captives incarcerated in prisons of injustice. Safe, we welcome the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses looking for safe shores. Fed, we fight for policies to have nutritious foods afforded by everyone. Privileged, we amplify the voices of the ignored. Blessed, we distribute our bounty among communities in need. Gifted with the hopes and expectations of the good news, we are the Kingdom through whom Jesus reigns.

– Reverend Bridgett A. Green Instructor in New Testament

Dec Saturday, December 21-21 Luke 1:39 -56

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ary may have had mixed feelings about her pregnancy as she hurried over to visit her older relative Elizabeth. Perhaps she wanted confirmation or support. It seems like Elizabeth didn’t know about Mary’s pregnancy until she walked in the door. The baby inside of her jumped to life, inadvertently sharing the secret.

Pregnancy can be a stressful time. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, in addition to the late-night runs for shrimp and cocktail sauce, we also had to get a baby monitor for a while to listen to the heartbeat, to be accompanied by that steady, precious gallop. We needed peace.

Elizabeth, who in her old age was miraculously six-months-along with John the Baptist, went into a trance and spoke a prophecy. “Mary bore a baby who would fulfill God’s purposes.” Ancient readers would have heard echoes of God’s blessing in pregnancy, and yet childless women—whether intentionally or because of infertility—are equally bearers of God’s blessing and truth.

What kinds of heavy doubts might Mary have been carrying? She was a young girl, uncertain about the parentage of her child, and she came to her older relative seeking reassurance. What she found was a safe space and more. An older relative saw through her secrets and confirmed that God was present with her.

Can your life, with all of its false starts and failures, give glory to God? Many of you might be in a difficult season, where you feel like God’s purposes are not being lived in your family’s life. Sometimes we need the reassuring words of an older relative to make it seem true. In this case, the relative spoke more than she knew consciously, reassuring Mary that God was present in the midst of her secrets and shame.

– Reverend Dr. Philip Browning Helsel Associate Professor of Pastoral Care

Sunday, December 2221 Matthew 1:1-17

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or what do you hope at the beginning of this church year? Matthew’s audience had little reason to hope nor any expectation of good news.

They lived under brutal Roman occupation, with no evidence that God could visit or redeem God’s people.

In response, Matthew begins his gospel with the words “the book of the genesis of Jesus.” These words intended to spark hope, reminding his hearers of God’s work in creation (Gen 2:4) and of the beginnings of the human family (Gen 5:1). Matthew, also, marks this beginning with God’s covenant with Abraham and God’s promises to David. This is a testimony to God’s faithfulness.

Matthew’s genealogy rehearses a story of hope, a story of God’s great plan.

Even after the catastrophe of the Babylonian exile, God’s people survive, generation to generation. God is faithful.

Matthew’s genealogy also relates shocking stories that challenge our expectations. In Matthew, the Messiah’s ancestors include five women, women with stories of births that defied society’s expectations. Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, conceives of Perez after pretending to be a sex worker and seducing her father-in-law (Gen 38). Rahab, also a sex-worker, harbors spies against her own people out of her fear of Israel’s God (Josh 2). Ruth, an impoverished, widowed, immigrant farm-worker seduces her employer, and thus becomes the great-grandmother of a king (Ruth). And Bathsheba, forced into sexual relations with King David, becomes the mother of wise King Solomon (2 Sam 11). The stories of these four women preview Jesus’s own birth to Mary. Imagine! The one called the Christ is not the biological offspring of Joseph.

In telling these stories, Matthew does not endorse the traumas facing the women of Jesus’ lineage. Instead, he challenges us to reconsider where, and within whom, we expect God to work. God is faithful, at work even among those whom society denigrates. Matthew reminds us that even in the face of impossible odds, we should never relinquish our hope in the God of history. He challenges us to expect God to be at work, in the most improbable situations. For God, indeed, is faithful.

– Reverend Dr. Margaret Aymer The First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, D. Thomason Professor of New Testament Studies

Monday, December 23 Matthew 1:18-25 “Now the bir th of Jesus took place in this way….”

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uch a pedestrian beginning. Don’t we know the way births take place? Isn’t every one of us born according to pattern, with the same soaring joys at sexual union, the same hooded flame of hope and expectation, the same strain of growing belly and arched back, the worried nights through false contractions, the screams of pain and rending, the sweat-soaked exhaustion after mother and child, so long one, are now and forever two? Does the birth of Jesus not take place “in this way,” too?

There are, of course, angelic voices reassuring Joseph against the shame of premature pregnancy. There are biblical precedents, harking back into the prophecy of Isaiah, to hopes of a God-with-us, and suggesting that, like that young woman of distant memory, Mary bears the sacred future in her womb. There are affirmations of obedience and assertions of abstinence, and the beginnings of controversial doctrines that believers will argue about for centuries.

But isn’t this the real story, contained in this first line? The birth of Jesus took place. God enters the warp and weft of human life in the most ordinary way. God does not overwhelm us with heavenly floodlights and the angelic choruses while all the kings of the world doff their crowns in obeisance.

God does not split the skies—to say nothing of the eardrums—with pronouncements of transformational glory. Some of that may come in due time, but not yet. Here at the beginning there is a birth. Just a birth. Like any other birth. And it took place in this way. Our way. The human way.

Advent is the time for hoping, and perhaps also for secretly dreading that those hopes are too grand, too enormous for accomplishment. Behind the angel’s announcement there lurks the worry that this world is so besmirched by sin and sorrow that even God cannot scrub it clean. We spend these days expecting the spectacle, even as we fear a flop. But what comes is a child.

The birth of Jesus took place in this way.

– Reverend Dr. Paul Hooker Associate Dean for Ministerial Formation and Advanced Studies

Christmas Eve Luke 2:1-20

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he second half of this narrative typically gets the most attention on Christmas Eve: shepherds in the fields; a chorus of angels proclaiming good news; a pastoral scene of the holy family; Mary pondering everything in her heart. The first half, by comparison, seems uneventful and preoccupied with minor historical details and characters, such as Augustus and Quirinius. The first half seems a mere preamble. But is it? The details it presents are significant: the birth of Jesus occurs amid royal decrees that place countless people on the move. The emperor’s census means that Joseph and Mary must leave their home and journey elsewhere. The story of Jesus, in other words, begins with migration.

If we celebrate on this day a newborn King, we need to remember that his birth was not akin to royalty, but more like births that happen during the arduous journeys of immigration that unfold all over the world. Estimates of people forced to migrate now number over 65 million, a staggering sum.

Mary makes her forced journey while pregnant and has to give birth in a stable because there is no room anywhere else. Jesus birth, which heralds a reign of peace, is met from the beginning with power that has consequences for the powerless. This child, like countless others throughout history, begins life as an immigrant searching for a safe place to live.

But God is with this child, not only in protecting him and his family, but in showing the world that true power is revealed not in decrees that invariably benefit some at the expense of many. Instead, the power of God is the power of radical hospitality, which makes room for a birth when there is no room in the inn; which welcomes an immigrant family when rulers would rather send them “back where they came from;” which shows us the true character of kingship in humility. Augustus and Quirinius never appear again in the story; but the immigrant child grows in wisdom and stature, bringing hope and peace to a broken world.

– Dr. David H. Jensen Academic Dean and Professor in the Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology

Christmas Day 1 John 4:7-21

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s you read this text, you may be feeling the love that this holy season just generates. Feeling the fresh memory of last night’s Christmas Eve service, or the joy of opening presents, or the delight of that traditional Christmas breakfast which you and loved ones enjoy annually.

So this text, with its frequent use of the word “love,” may be a particular delight for you today. “Let us love one another” “…God is love,” “…since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” The ring of a Christmas card: “love, love, love.”

Which is why we should read them more carefully. We don’t know a lot about the internal life of the community to which the first Epistle of John was written, but we get the impression that something had gone bad wrong there.

Maybe some people in that community had gotten too preoccupied with the vertical dimension of faith—had gotten so wrapped up in their own religious experience, so immersed in some higher-plane awareness of God’s majesty and sacramental mystery that, somehow, they had stopped seeing the hurts and needs of people. Or maybe they had gone too horizontal—had interpreted their faith in terms of service and activism and concern for issues that they had forgotten about loving God. So someone in that community—we call that person “the elder”—wrote this epistle which obliterates any neat distinction between vertical and horizontal and instead just begins and ends in this remarkable statement: “God is love.”

We may assume that that statement is common throughout the pages of scripture, but, no—it’s only here. “God is love,” says the elder.

Why did the elder write that? I think it was because of the coming into our world of Jesus Christ—God’s evidence not of our love for God but of God’s love for us. And here’s the clincher: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

“There is no life that is not in community,” wrote T.S. Eliot, “and no community not lived in praise of God.” Is that kind of life more vertical or more horizontal? I believe that the author of this epistle would answer, “Yes.” Merry Christmas!

– Reverend Dr. Theodore J. Wardlaw President and Professor of Homiletics

For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the PresbyterianReformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God’s people.

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