Tonight, fifty percent of our offering will be split between the Boys and Girls Club of Eagle River and the Chugiak-Eagle River Food Pantry. Your donation will benefit these wonderful organizations and our neighbors!
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Making an impact in our community, city, nation and the world.
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Advent is a season of endings and beginnings. As the calendar year comes to a close, a new church year rushes in. Christ’s birth ushers us into new ways of living and loving—and yet, we feel the weight of many things coming to an end. The world as we know it spins madly on. This year, Advent begins as another election season in the US comes to a close. What are the reminders we will need in order to move faithfully through this threshold?
This Advent series is filled with the words we need to hear again and again as we begin a new season. Imagine what words Mary would speak to her newborn son. What scriptures and stories would she impart to him? What lessons would she teach him as he grew? And so, our weekly themes may feel like the lessons we teach to children, but in reality, these are lessons we continue to learn and relearn as adults. They may sound like the messages or homilies we impart to loved ones during special ceremonies or sacred rituals. You are invited to enter this Advent season as if you are entering a sacred new chapter, holding fast to the reminders that will bolster you for the journey ahead.
In many ways, pregnant Mary was surrounded by endings—large and small, personal and political. And yet, Mary proclaimed hope in a God who was and is making all things new. As we also move through new personal and political chapters, may these words for the beginning renew us and remind us of the ways we are called to live out our faith. No matter what you are facing, no matter what this new day brings, let love be your beginning.
Theme materials produced by A Sanctified Art, Copyright 2024, All rights reserved. Purchased and used by permission.
Mary is described as “blessed among women” (Luke 1:28). She is neither wealthy nor powerful, and yet she is chosen to bear God’s child. Her story begins with blessedness, and so does ours, for the prophet Isaiah declares that we are claimed by a God who calls our name. We are a blessing because we belong to God. When blessedness is our beginning, we begin to see the world—and others—through the eyes of a God who says: “You are precious in my sight” (Isaiah 43:4).
One of life’s most essential lessons is that we are never meant to go alone. And yet, modern culture pushes us more and more into lonely silos. If Ruth had followed her culture’s norms, she would have gone home to her family of origin after her husband died, but instead, she commits herself to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Together they form a new family and covenant. Ruth and Naomi travel together to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, foreshadowing the journey Mary and Joseph will one day take to be counted in the census. Both Ruth and Naomi, as well as Mary and Joseph, are unconventional pairs, but if God can bring unlikely people together, God can form us into a covenant community too.
As John the Baptist is teaching about bearing good fruit, the crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers ask him, “What, then, should we do?” His answer to each group is slightly different, but ultimately the same: “Do the good that is yours to do.” We can each bear good fruit through acts of justice and righteousness. We can all be what Isaiah calls “repairers of the breach” by satisfying the needs of the afflicted.
Hope is vulnerable and can feel like a tremendous risk, especially if you’ve experienced loss or trauma. But Mary shows us a resilient hope that takes risks—she risks her body to bear a son who will become the hope of her people. Similarly, Joseph makes a risky choice to stay with Mary; dismissing her quietly would have kept him safe. But instead, he chooses hope. He chooses to trust the angel, and it makes all the difference. It can feel safer and easier to be a cynic, but the world doesn’t need more cynics. It needs people who say, “It can be better” and make it so.
Christ’s birth makes the vastness of God personal. The God who made the seas and the stars is also the God who made your beautiful hair and striking eyes. The God of creation takes on flesh, which means you are fully known. When the angels visit the shepherds in the fields, their message is global but also personal: “To you . . . a savior is born.” This birth is good news for everyone, especially those who are ignored or disenfranchised. On this night, God is born, and this God of love knows your name.