Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome & Announcements

Welcome - candle of hope is already lit...

Land Acknowledgment - during Advent, we wait

Announcements:

Christmas Events:

Christmas Tales

Christmas Dinner

Christmas Eve

Two options:

Outdoor Children’s Service

Indoor Christmas Eve Service

Hampers

Benevolence

Call to Worship - a prayer of Howard Thurman, Baptist minister and African American educator and civil rights leader.

May the sounds of Advent stir a longing in Your people, O God.

Come again to set us free from the dullness of routine and the poverty of our imaginations.

Break the patterns which bind us to small commitments and to the stale answers we have given to questions of no importance.

Let the Advent trumpet blow, let the walls of our defenses crumble, and make a place in our lives for the freshness of Your love, well-lived in the Spirit, and still given to all who know their need and dare receive it.

SONGS: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

Glory (Let There Be Peace)

Advent Candle: PEACE

Gratitude - giving - hamper update??

Last week to fill our pantry!

Want to help fill the hampers?

Get details from Libby!

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 Ezekiel

Jeremiah and Ezekiel are both writing at the beginning of the exile.

J from Jerusalem to those in Babylon and E from Babylon to those who are still in Jerusalem and Judah.

Both prophets are wrestling with questions and with the implications of exile.

But Ezekiel in particular is wrestling with the question…

Why did god let the temple be destroyed.

And how could God’s presence LEAVE the temple.

That was going to be the dwelling place of God.

The whole book of Ezekiel wrestles with the questions of why isn’t God where we expect God to be.

And why is God showing up where we don’t expect.

God’s presence and absence are the main themes of the book.

The idea of Ezekiel seeing God is controversial because everyone knows you can’t see God.

But even more controversial is that Ezekiel sees God in Babylon.

Why is God showing up in the place of exile?

And why isn’t Gd present anymore in the Temple.

Ezekiel challenges the assumptions that God’s people have about God’s presence - and God’s absence.

Now, Ezekiel’s visions are strange and complex.

He does a lot of what biblical scholars call ‘sign acts’ but what sound a lot more like messed up performance art.

The book, a total of 39 chapters can be broken down into three sections… oracles against Judah & Jerusalem, oracles against the nations and then in a turn towards hope, the final section is about restoration for Israel and judgement for the nations.

Our reading today comes from chapter 37.

The Valley of Dry Bones.

This is a passage that is read by different church traditions at various points in the year.

Sometimes it’s a Lenten passage, sometimes an Easter passage and yet other times, it’s considered a text for Pentecost.

Why?

Because it captures the dead-ness dry-ness of our souls that we examine during a season like Lent.

Because it is a text about resurrection.

Dead things comes to life.

A community of people who are no more are being raised to new life.

And because all of this comes to pass when the SPIRIT, the breath of God is breathed into the bones that have been placed back together, covered with the sinews and muscles and skin… but those bodies that are put back together don’t LIVE until the breath comes, until the Spirit breathes into them.

Which should then remind us of one more part of our “big story” - we can see how this text connects to Lent, to Easter and to Pentecost.

But it also mirrors the creation story… for when God makes humans, do you remember what Genesis 2 says?

Genesis 2:7

So, before we hear this text… a couple of things to keep in mind.

A couple of warnings, really.

This is first and foremost an experience that Ezekiel has for the benefit of those who are in exile, and for those left behind in Jerusalem, but all of those to whom Ezekiel speaks have this in common.

Their hope is dead.

Dry as dust.

God has not done what they expected.

And instead of things getting better, they only appear to be getting worse.

Where is hope now?

What would peace even look like?

2. The dry bones aren’t what’s left of one life… they represent the dried up hope of God’s people.

Their collective dashed hope.

3. Hope and Peace.

Nice things to think about during Advent, right?

Well, they’re pretty revolutionary things to contemplate, actually.

Hope enables us to envision the wholeness of true peace.

It’s more than optimism.

It’s crazier than optimism.

Craig T. Barnes in an article called Resurrected Hopes

How foolish this must have looked.

The Lords prophet, standing in the middle of a pile of dead bones, is telling them not to give up hope.