Advent Listening: Jeremiah

Welcome & Announcements:

Welcome … gathering in God’s presence… but without lighting a candle! That will come later!

Since we began meeting back in the building in September, you may have noticed that we consistently begin our worship gatherings by including an acknowledgement of the land on which gather. We name that the places we live and work and worship are on land that has been the traditional territory of the Secwepemc Nation and was never ceded in a treaty - and so we use the word unceded in our land acknowledgement.

For Advent, a season of waiting, I thought we could make our land acknowledgement slightly more tangible… so we will acknowledge that when land is taken, culture and language are often casualties.

So, today. Really quick - we will take just a moment to learn the Secwepemc word for wait - since today we begin the season of Advent - in which we wait for Jesus to come.

tsek̓lém

Announcements:

* No Slide: Decorations look great! * No Slide: December Volunteer Schedule is on the notice board * No Slide: December Snow Shovelling Schedule is on the notice board * Christmas Plans - Christmas Tales pics *Christmas Plans - Chirstmas Dinner * Christmas Plans - Christmas Eve 6pm

Call to Worship

Today marks the beginning of a new year! We begin today the start of a new year in the sacred calendar, in the church calendar. This way of marking time is based around telling the story of Jesus. During Advent, which means “coming” we anticipate Jesus’ coming on two levels - we anticipate and wait expectantly for Jesus to come again to make all things new AND we enter into the story and wait for the Incarnation. We wait in the present moment for what is promised and we wait with the people of God from centuries ago for the arrival of the Messiah.

Hopefully, this year and in the long trajectories of our lives, we let our calendars be shaped more by the gospel story of Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and return than by tax season and Grey Cup and Black Friday shopping.

So, consider yourselves called - called to enter into Advent, into this season of waiting and intentional slowing down - and called now into worship as we consider Jesus, who is our HOPE.

songs: Living Hope &

Advent Candle: HOPE

Gratitude

Advent Listening

During a season which is often full of noise and lists and errands and travelling or connecting long distance, we are going to seek to slow down on Sundays during Advent.

We are going to seek to slow down.

To take time to listen. To hear the Scripture read, as we always do in our Sunday worship gatherings, but then to stop and listen again. And again.

To slow down and pause. To hold space for ourselves and for one another. To ask God to speak to us, and then to have the audacity to practice listening - and to do this together.

We’ll hear the text read three times. And we’ll take a slightly different posture during each of the three readings. The first time, we will just listen. Try to simply hear the text as its read and to hold a posture of attentiveness.

We’ll leave some quiet space just to help us with the whole slowing down thing. Just a minute or two…to just sit. To ask God to speak to you through this text…and to tell God that you’re listening.

Then, we’ll read it a second time - and don’t worry, I’ll remind you of what’s happening. During the second reading, we will pay special attention to whether a word or phrase catches our attention. This time, if something does stick out to you, go ahead and “get stuck” there… write down the word or phrase - and we’ll take a moment after the second reading to share our word or phrase with one another, if you’re comfortable.

Finally, we’ll listen a third time, and during the final reading, we’ll ask God whether there might be an invitation for us in the text. Is there something we sense that God wants us to take with us?

Holy listening, you might call this. It’s one way that we can enter into Advent and intentionally SLOW DOWN, take time, and refuse to add to the noise and sense of busy-ness that often is a reality in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Listening to Jeremiah

Ok. So how can we listen well to the text this morning? To these words from the prophet Jeremiah?

Well, first of all, we need to know who Jeremiah is… and when he’s prophesying. Who is he and who is he talking to?

OT scholar Judy Fentress-Williams helps us with this:

“Jeremiah’s prophecies are attached to a period of time nearly one hundred years after the northern kingdom of Israel had been defeated by the Assyrians. The Assyrian Empire’s power is beginning to wane and smaller nations like Judah are trying to regain power and reassert independence.

Eventually Babylon defeats Assyria…and subdues these smaller nations with deportation and destruction, and Judah did not escape this fate. Babylon deported inhabitants of Judah in 597BCE, finally destroying the city of Jerusalem and the temple in 587BCE. Jeremiah was called to proclaim God’s messages to God’s people before and after the devastation of exile, and while they waited to see if God would, in fact, restore them.” Judy Fentress-Williams

So our text today comes somewhere in that decade between the first deportation and the destruction of the temple.

Jeremiah’s task is to address the first wave of exiles - and to speak HOPE to them. But as you will hear, hope looks like gardening and making a life in Babylon. Which is not what they want to hear.

So the words that we will listen to today (three times!) are words that Jeremiah wrote from Jerusalem to the exiles who have been taken to Babylon.

And he is simultaneously going to call them to settle in and yet to hold onto a vision that Babylon is not their permanent home.

They are to anticipate what lays ahead without abandoning the current moment.

They are to embrace life such as it is even while they keep the big picture in mind.

Seems like an appropriate kind of text for people who are living through, and hopefully emerging from, a global pandemic, doesn’t it?

Seems like an appropriate kind of text for people who are entering into the season of Advent, doesn’t it? People who want our hope to be both firmly rooted in the future, but also tangibly expressed in the present?

So. Let’s listen.

And this first time… there’s no assignment, no quiz afterwards. Just listen. And try to hear the whole text.