Less is More | Introduction

Opening

I want to read something to you. (Read page 6-7.5 in the church calendar).

Transition

While I was preparing for the advent series here this year, God was laying on my heart two things

The importance of the rhythms and patterns of not just my daily life, but to expand out and see that the whole year has its own rhythms and patterns.

The need for a rootedness within our church.

Let me unpack both of those for a second.

I believe finding spiritual rhythms and patterns for our days, weeks, months, and years this is something that we as a congregation could greatly benefit from. It seems to me that due to our western modern culture and sensibilities we hold certain expectations on our spiritual life that isn’t really true.

When we think of our spiritual lives, and our walk with God we expect growth to happen up and to the right, the good search life should be getting 12% return on the investment. Always progressing, always moving to bigger and better things. This isn’t the world around us works, and it also isn’t how the spiritual life works.

Look around outside right now. Here in Illinois in December, January, February, and even into the beginning of March outside looks desolate. The fields lay empty exposed dirt, tilled with the remnants of last season whispered here and there. The trees have no leaves, the grass is brown. Ice, Sleet, Snow and frigid cold spells are the common concern.

This is the winter. While it looks like nothing is happening, and that there is no growth, and that there is no movement this is how the seasons must take place. The fields have no crop in them at the moment, but they are replenishing, they are preparing for the next seed to be planted.

It is the same for our souls, for our spirits. This is why the Christian life doesn’t always grow louder or faster. Sometimes it grows quieter, deeper, and slower.

Bottom Line

We grow by letting go — wintering well so Christ can rise.

There are seasons like the ones that come in July and August where it feels like the plant of our soul has grown 3 feet in a month. There are also seasons of our spiritual lives where the fruit of our lives is coming into harvest, God is bringing forth the fruits of the labor.

There are also winters. Soul winters. Moments where things feel spiritual dormant, this is a place many choose not to tread. This is the spiritual place that is often shrugged off or sought to escape.

Some of you know something of that which has been called “the dark night of the soul.” Some of you have spiritual desire and deep longing for victory but it seems to you that your efforts to go on with God have only brought you more bumps and more testings and more discouragement. You are tempted to ask, “How long can this go on?”… Yes, there is a dark night of the soul. There are few Christians willing to go into this dark night and that is why there are so few who enter into the light. It is impossible for them ever to know the morning because they will not endure the night. Psalm 13:1–2; Habakkuk 1:2; Revelation 6:9–10 I Talk Back to the Devil, 80, 81.

A. W. Tozer

How can we who are entering into a physical winter, utilize this season as a fulcrum to foster faith in the midst of the dark night so that we me enter into the light?

The first sermon series of the year, leading into lent, we are going to let the ancient Church Calendar guide our preparation for lent. So that we may learn from the spiritual ancestors who wintered before us. Let them guide us into how best navigate this season. This season that forces certain things to happen in our lives, which for some is a great friction, and for others who may enjoy winter there are still lessons to be learned from an environment that winter creates.

Rootedness

I am also praying that this will also give us the byproduct of rootedness. Real depth and security. One of the things that is hard for a non denominational church that has its origin in the middle to late 1800’s is that we are young. There is a great cloud of witnesses, there is a long line of history that is easy for us to forget, let alone we also live in a nation that is not even 250 years old.

I think in a culture that we find ourselves in that has sacrificed basically everything on the alter of progress, technology, and advancement we are left as a people of shallow roots.

My hope is to graft into ancient roots that will show us how we can be a place of home in this world. A place of continuity. A place not tossed about here and there like a house planted on the sand, but to be built up and become a place of rootedness. So to grow those roots the aim is to dig deep, and look at the great cloud of witnesses that came before us. So that what God told Jeremiah all those years ago would be true.

Jeremiah 6:16 NIV

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

The reason so many respond to this kind of thing and say we will not walk in. It is because the ancient path zigs well the modern path of Zags. See the ancient path is rarely the path of accumulation. It is the path of surrender. Which is why:

Bottom Line

We grow by letting go—wintering well so Christ can rise.

So using the church calendar to show us our lineage, history and past, while also engaging with scripture in a season of preparing for Easter, seems a good place to turn. This is a tool to return to ancient paths.

During this series called Less is More: The Road to Lent, the focus is going to be on the stories of in the New Testament in the season called Epiphany, the Light of the world has come. In this season we focus on the second half of

John 1:14 “we have observed his glory, the glory as the one and only son from the father, full of grace and truth.”

The purpose of the season of Epiphany in one phrase is: In light of Jesus’ glory we relinquish our own glory unto him.

This season in the church calendar is a season of lessening, of shrinking, leads to a core verse for us this season.

John 3:30 NIV

He must become greater; I must become less.”

That is the heartbeat of this season. That is the prayer beneath the winter/epiphany season.

Bottom Line

We grow by letting go—wintering well so Christ can rise.

These words from John the Baptist will hopefully echo through this season, and become a prayer for us as a church. If we can become a people who winter well. If we can become a people who in the midst of our own spiritual winters, our own lessening, can continue to bring Glory to God in the midst of the dark nights we will be on the right path.

I have heard people say that they love how WGCC is a place where people not only love each other, but like each other. That the people here care for one another. I think if we can bolster our foundations and our rootedness in the midst of dark nights of the soul, the midst of winter Walnut Grove can become a place of home, a place of belonging, a beacon to others who are also walking through their own dark nights, their own winters.

Which is why Grief Share that Marilyn and Kenny are leading is so important, it is a way to travel through the winters together. When we can do that well, when the church can do that well we are able to offer something of great benefit to our friends, family, enemies. We can become a people who walk not in Darkness, but in the Marvelous light. Saint John of the Cross, who coined the term, “dark night of the soul.” reflected on it this way.

The dark night of the soul through which the soul passes on its way to the Divine Light.

Saint John of the Cross (Carmelites)

That is winter the winter of our souls. The dark night of our souls leads to Spring leads to morning .

So as we talk about Less is More, I want to lean on those who have gone through the dark night of the soul and can share the Divine Light with us so we can reflect that same Divine Light onto others, and even onto ourselves.

Those spiritual Ancestors do some very interesting and wise things to help guide us. They did things that helped put meat on the bones to questions and concepts. They may be hard to grasp.

A question that you may be asking now is.

Transition to Stephen

So what does a life look like that truly believes, “He must increase, I must decrease”? The Church did not leave us to imagine the answer. Instead, just days after celebrating the birth of Christ, our spiritual ancestors point us to a man who lived—and died—by that truth.

Traditionally Christmas is on December 25th. A day of such great celebration, and delight. Then December 26th in the Catholic tradition, and the 27th in the eastern orthodox tradition, is the feast of Stephen.

Saint Stephen’s day is held either 1 or 2 days after Christmas. A day celebrating the first Christian Martyr.

That is something I have found insightful, challenging, and interesting about the church calendar, is how it brings into seasons or into moments things that my mind wouldn’t normally associate together.

This is a perfect example. If winter teaches us what it means to become less, Saint Stephen shows us what it looks like when that lesson takes flesh. This is not a history lesson, this is a lived theology

Feast of Stephen is a feast to celebrate a man we meet in the book of Acts chapter 6. If you could go ahead and open your Bible to Chapter 6 of Acts we will be reading from there in a moment.

Jesus has ascended into heaven, the Holy spirit has been poured out, and the church has begun. The church has grown in numbers, so much so that there are Hellenistic widows, that are part of the gathering, who aren’t being tended to.

The 12 Apostles make a decision for there to be men elevated to a role within the church where they would see to the care of those who are finding themselves on the margins of the gathering.

One of those men that was called up is Stephen.

Stephen is a servant first and foremost. His servants heart is an embodiment of think of others as more important than yourself, I must decrease. Stephen’s office in the church and his role then sees him grow and mature, so much so that this is how Luke describes him in Acts

Acts 6:8–10 NIV

Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people. Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called)—Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia—who began to argue with Stephen. But they could not stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke.

Youths nowadays talk about how people have “that Dawg in them” Stephen had that dawg in him. That Dawg was the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was doing mighty things through Stephen. Which is why the Sanhedrin seize Stephen for his teaching about how Jesus’ Kingdom was coming to Earth, and the works he has been doing were testifying that his claims were true, in spite of their best efforts.

They conspire to kill Stephen. He then gives a historical survey of the Old Testament scriptures (which is an amazing passage of scripture that you should read again if you haven’t before), eventually ending with him looking the Jewish leaders in the eye and saying this in Acts 7 48:

Acts 7:51–53 NIV

“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him—you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.”

The story continues

Acts 7:54–59 NIV

When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

This is the story that the ancient church has decided to celebrate mere days after Christmas. This may seem like emotional whiplash kind of approach, but to me I find great beauty.

We have just celebrated the king who came as a baby in a manger. Now our ancient ancestors hold a feast to celebrate the man whose fervor and zeal for the message that king proclaimed led to him to die for that cause.

Not only did he die, not only was Stephen Martyred, but that king who had died and rose from the dead, now recognizes this sacrifice of love by Jesus standing in the throne room of God. This is flesh put onto the words of He must increase and I must decrease, as well as the last shall be first and the first shall be last. The heart behind the Epiphany season as well as the heart behind the real meaning of Christmas.

Stephen lost everything the world could measure, and gained everything heaven could recognize. This is the paradox of the Kingdom:

Bottom Line

We grow by letting go—wintering well so Christ can rise.

This story being celebrated mere hours after the celebration of the baby Jesus tells us this: if you have received the gift that this Child brought into the world, your call is to live out the life he told you to live, the life he offers you no matter the cost, and if you do so, Jesus will recognize.

This happening in context reveals to us the heart the early church had when it came to Christmas in general. Their focus wasn’t on the little baby Jesus, or at least it didn’t linger there, it moves right to the impact his life has and had on the early church.

Conclusion

See what the church fathers knew, what the ancient Christians knew was that we humans need help grasping concepts. So how better for us to synthesize the nativity story and what it means for us that to look at one of the earliest people to respond to that story, Stephen?

Stephen is one of the best examples of living out Less is More. Stephen saw how important the good news of Christ was that he saw the absolute need for it to be shared, even if sharing that message, and proclaiming the truths that Jesus taught meant giving up the life here on earth, for their behalf.

And for that he is honored by Jesus himself. That is the true gift we have to offer people. The gift that the dark night of the soul isn’t all that there is.

Without Christ life is as the twilight with dark night ahead; with Christ, it is the dawn of morning with the light and warmth of a full day ahead.

Philip Schaff

In Christ we offer the dawn of morning that is openly available In Christ, and we hold tight to the promise in the midst of our spiritual and physical winters.

As we begin this road to Lent, may we not rush past the winter or fear the dark night. May we learn from those who walked before us. And may this become our prayer: Lord, teach us to grow by letting go—wintering well so Christ can rise.