Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
Morning, everybody. I'm Ben Fleming, one of the senior pastors here, and welcome to the first week of Advent. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving first week of Advent. The theme is hope. Hope. Now, this is generally, I would say, a universally loved word, hope. We decorate with words like hope. We think about it in this time of year. I think what we don't often consider, though, is that hope only comes in something, in a package, inside of something that we are all pretty deeply uncomfortable with. And I'll explain more as we go. But let's start in Luke, chapter one, verse five, the beginning of what we know. As the Christmas story says, when Herod was king of Judea, there was a Jewish priest named Zachariah, and he was a member of the priestly order of Abijah. And his wife Elizabeth was also from the priestly line of Aaron.
Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God's eyes, careful to obey all the Lord's commandments and regulations. They had no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and they were both very old.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: And I'm ready for the next one.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Serving God in the temple. For his order was on duty that week, and at the custom of the priest, he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense. And when the incense was being burned, a great crowd stood outside praying.
And while Zechariah was in the sanctuary, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the incense altar. And Zachariah was shaken and overwhelmed with fear when he saw him.
But the angel said, don't be afraid, Zechariah. God has heard your prayer. Your wife Elizabeth will give you a son, and you are to name him John. You'll have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He must never touch wine or other alcoholic drinks. And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before his birth. And he will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God. He'll be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. He will cause those who are rebellious to accept the wisdom of the godly. And Zachariah said to the angel, how can I be sure that this will happen?
I'm an old man now, and my wife is also well along in years What a great way he phrased that his wife must have been nearby.
I am old, and she's been with me for a while now.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: And then the angel said, I am Gabriel. I stand in the very presence of God. It was he who sent me to bring you this good news. But now, since you didn't believe what I said, you will be silent and unable to speak until the child is born. For my words will certainly be fulfilled at the proper time. And meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zachariah to come out of the sanctuary, wondering why he was taking so long. And when he finally did come out, he couldn't speak to them. And then they realized from his gestures and his silence that he must have seen a vision in the sanctuary.
When Zechariah's week of service and the temple was over, he returned home. Soon afterward, his wife, Elizabeth became pregnant and went into seclusion for five months. How kind the Lord is. She exclaimed. He has taken away my disgrace of having no children.
There's some translations that say, he has taken away my shame.
Because at this time, it wasn't just an inconvenience or a little bit of a bummer to not be able to have children at the time. It was an indicator that God saw you and loved you and wanted to bless you. And so, because they did not have kids, that would have been considered shameful.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: I don't think it's any mistake that the very beginning of this Advent, of this Christmas story, that those who have been waiting for such a long time for a miracle from God have their shame removed.
I'm believing that it will be the same for some of us today. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for Advent season.
We thank you for all of the messiness, not just the shopping and the excitement and the fun. And all those things are wonderful and beautiful. But I pray that we would consider the importance of the depth of hope that you are calling us, us into.
I want to pray that we would see this as a greater understanding of our discipleship and training our hearts to be able to wait on you. In Jesus name, Amen.
I love. I love going out to eat. I love going out to eat so much, so much.
And this is a great time of year to be from Bend, Right, because the majority of the tourists are gone and we have all of the restaurants that we had all summer with, like, half the people that want to eat at them.
It's the best.
And I get kind of, like, pumped up when I know that I'm going to a good dinner. And like, I'll fast the day in order for that first bite to taste extra good.
I feel like, based on your faces, I'm the only one, but that's fine.
And so, you know, especially you go to, like, a nicer restaurant or something. My wife and I go with friends or go alone, usually around the holidays to at least one nice dinner. And there's this kind of anticipation of how tasty everything is going to be.
But have you had the experience where maybe you've been excited to eat and you've gone in and they seat you at your table and eventually you're. You're confronted with having to do restaurant math. And so you're sitting down and maybe they've come over and they brought you their water. And then someone at your table after a certain amount of time begins to kind of disengage from the conversation that's happening at the table. And they begin to look around the room looking for a waiter or a waitress.
And eventually what they will say is, we've been waiting a long time.
You know, this person.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: And then they'll look around and they'll be like, okay, well, see, I know they were two groups behind us. And they have apps, we have no app, we don't have drinks.
What is going on? And finally you get that waiter, waitress to come over.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Excuse me.
You know, that person that tries to gather themselves just for a moment.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: We've been waiting a really long time.
Can we please. And then this happened over the last couple years. We had that conversation, difficult conversations with the waiter or waitress. Then we waited again for a long time. And then the language changed from I think we've been waiting for a long time to they forgot about us.
Now, this is the worst situation that can happen at your dinner table. And there's always at least one person at the table that is so deeply offended that it ruins the rest of the meal for them. We've been forgotten.
They don't even care. Where are they?
Can I speak with the manager?
[00:07:00] Speaker A: And that little tip over into we've been forgotten, we've been waiting into we have been forgotten is something that often happens in our relationship to faith.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Now we are called to. And the Advent season teaches us this. We are called to being a hopeful people. But here's the trick is that hopeful people can only be discipled and hope can only happen in waiting.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: The author, artist Scott Erickson, says in his book Honest Advent that this season invites us into the honesty of our unfulfilled desires.
Name this ache, this thing that we're waiting for in our lives. Without rushing past, it becomes the task.
And so Advent, this season, actually begins not with some incredible celebration, but instead. It begins with longing.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: It begins not with answers, but with questions. And it begins not with arrival, but instead with waiting.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Now, Elizabeth and Zachariah are representative of the nation of Israel that has not heard for hundreds of years the prophetic voice of God.
Been years of silence.
And that then has created a longing to be connected with God in the way they once believed that they were.
I wonder what you have a longing for today here in this room.
I wonder if there's something you've been waiting on and then thus hoping for.
And I wonder if that hope is as strong as it once was.
Because Advent is full of unresolvable tensions. And we get to bring them then before God.
Waiting is actually a space where we feel the limits of our control and we confront the gap between what is and then what we've been hoping for. And we discover that God is forming us through the very ache and the longing that we have for the thing itself.
And so Advent doesn't pretend everything is fine, right? That's one of the temptations around the holidays, is that everything seems so squeaky clean and everyone's getting their family pictures taken and everyone seems to be having the best day. And then the temptation is to say, well, then I will gloss over all of the aching and the longing and the hurting in my own life. But Advent in its truest form does not encourage us to do that.
It asks us instead to wait honestly to name and be willing to be vulnerable with our disappointments, our unmet prayers, our fears and our hopes.
One of the things that is a great misunderstanding of how the church is supposed to function is somewhere we got along the road of we gotta wear our Sunday best and we gotta approach the room that is the church in a way that presents us, ourselves and our families in the best light.
We like to walk into the worship center believing and feeling like everything is okay and forgetting about the fact that we just screamed at our kids the whole way here.
It's a great Christian tradition.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: We bought into this idea that the church is a place to feel and look and appear complete when the truth of the matter is, and Advent really highlights this, is that it's actually a place that's more intended to be a hospital for the broken and the hurting and the painful to come and to find healing and hope.
That's what this place exists for.
And so, like Israel waiting for the Messiah, you are Allowed to. You have permission today, in the middle of all of your difficulties, to say, how long, oh, Lord, why not yet?
Or where are you in the middle of all of this?
This honesty is not failure.
It's actually Advent spirituality.
The trouble with it and the reason that it often feels so vulnerable in this waiting place is that transformation is slow. God works a lot more like seeds and a lot less like human systems inefficiency.
I once had the idea that after I ate apples, I think I was about six years old, that I could run out into the backyard and just put the apple core on top of the dirt and expect a tree to appear over the next couple of days.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Oh, that's how it works. You eat it, and I see that there's seeds in here, and I'll go ahead and put it down, and then maybe, you know, I'll drizzle some water on it, then I'll run back in, and this is how it's gonna work. I'm gonna have my own orchard in no time.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Without having any idea that there is a process that goes into growing something like this. Now, often we come into church, we have this idea that we want to grow, that we want to go deeper, that we want to be discipleship, that we want to have a greater understanding of the purpose and the plan that God has for us on our lives. And. And in order to do so, we simply grab the simple seeds of faith and we throw them on the ground and drizzle some water on it and walk off and go, that'll do.
That'll be perfect.
I'll become and be a part of a community in a way that I've always wanted to be. When there's a depth that God is asking us to understand, and that has to happen at the speed of seeds and not the speed of our own efficiency.
But the problem is that our culture forms us into people that simply despise waiting.
We hate it so much.
When was the last time you saw a sociopath at a coffee shop not looking at their phone in line?
Those are the crazy people.
When you're in line for coffee, you're supposed to look like this, you know, I like to rest mine on the top of my belly, you know.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Then you look around and there's somebody behind you that's just kind of got one hand in their pocket, and they're looking around, they're smelling the coffee, They're a little bit more present, and you look at them and you go, what is wrong with you?
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Get on Instagram or something. You psycho.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: We hate waiting.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: But Advent forms us into people who can not just wait, but that we can trust while we wait.
Hope is born in the courage to stay where we are and let God actually meet us. Then in those moments of waiting, we're not just trying to escape. We're not just trying to numb. We're not trying to rush to resolution.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Instead, we're trying to operate from this conviction that God is already at work, even when we can't see it.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: When my wife and I.
I'll do what the author of Luke says. When my. My wife and I have disagreements, not fights, because this is church and we are good people.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: One of us likes to take the part of the person that just wants to get this entire discussion over with.
We'll fight for three or four minutes, have a disagreement for three or four minutes, and then one of us will go, you know what? Fine, whatever.
I just want to be done. I just want to be done with this conversation. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to argue. And then the other person is like, oh, no, we're not.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: We've only just begun.
And, you guys, I am the worst. So my wife decides to, like, give me the silent treatment. I am just. She knows that this, like, breaks something in my brain where I'm just like, oh, well, no. So you're just gonna be quiet, huh? I'm gonna be louder and louder until you decide you want to speak to me again.
And then I get exhausted and have to go take a nap, and then we can talk.
Turns out I just needed a nap. That was it.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: There's this temptation to rush to resolution even. Feels righteous in the moment. No, we have to draw the correct conclusion. We need to finish this entire thing. We need to grab ahold of the situation. We need to pull it in our direction. For this is the will of God. And yet God sees his people in silence for hundreds and hundreds of years. And in that process, they are then discipled and molded. And that time is not wasted. It's not wasted time. It's formation time.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: I wonder in what places, big or small. I wonder at what coffee shops while we wait for our opportunity to order. I wonder what big moments while we're waiting for a diagnosis or we're waiting for a child to regain relationship with us. I wonder how in these different waiting places, we can then be formed.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Because ultimately, hope is actually in presence and not in our circumstances.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Hope's not. It'll all work out soon. It's not. Things are bound to get better. It's not just be positive and optimistic. Instead, hope is God has come, God is with us, and God will come again.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Advent reminds us that God enters into this world in great vulnerability, quietly and slowly and unexpectedly. And then hope grows the same way.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: I know many of you have probably seen the Shawshank Redemption, and Morgan Freeman's character famously says, hope is a dangerous thing. Hope will drive a man insane.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: And he's speaking specifically to his imprisonment in this story and how at so many junctures, he's had this idea that he would be able to get out and go and live his life again. And that hope is pushed off and deferred every time.
And eventually, for his character, hope becomes the enemy and not the friend that he once thought it was.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: I wonder if some of you have been waiting for so long for something, some kind of a positive result, some kind of new day, that hope is actually feeling more like the enemy, the thing that sets you up.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: For frustration and anger.
But Isaiah 40 says this, that those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, meaning that strength actually comes from the waiting.
Strength comes from the waiting.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: So on this first week of Advent, we light this hope candle, not because everything is bright, but because we have made the decision to declare that the light is coming.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Again. Scott Erickson writes that Advent starts by recognizing the darkness so that light can be seen for what it truly is.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: So how do we do this? How do we wait?
Well.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: I would encourage you this Advent season to name your longing.
Write it down, pray it, say it, don't hide it. Honest waiting is faithful waiting.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Slow down enough to notice God's presence.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: The author, Rich Velodas, calls this a way to be deeply formed in life. He says this in his book that's called the Deeply Formed Life.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: So that we can choose stillness, so that we can see what God is actually doing around us.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: The second thing is this. I would encourage you to look for small beginnings.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Erickson says that God often works in this seed form. So let's look for tiny sprouts of grace.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: And then finally anchor your hope in God's character and not your circumstances.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Advent Hope says God has been faithful. God is faithful, and God will be faithful.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: So let's not look for a reason to simply escape.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Our waiting, but let's invite today God to come into it.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Bring your aching places and bring your longing and your questions.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: I have so many questions.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: I wonder often about how all this can possibly work out. And to be completely honest with you, there are so many Days.
And you can decide to leave the church after this if you want. Where I wonder if God is real at all.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: There's so much pain and frustration and. And there's wars and.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Greediness and coveting and brokenness. It just seems to be like it's constant.
And here's what I would like to do. I would like to.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Return to this kind of Christmas season that I knew from when I was a child, that now I understand is beautiful and wonderful and it fit the moment. And it's also full of a kind of ignorance.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: You guys, I'm a huge Christmas fan. I'm a big Christmas Day fan. People talk about how important it is to give and that's the greatest thing. I like getting so much.
Getting is so good.
You got. And I know we're all like grown ups and we're all cool, you know, like getting things is nice, you know.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: And I remember, I remember having this.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: I wanted a Sega Dreamcast for Christmas, which was a very unsuccessful competitor to the original PlayStation or the PlayStation 2 video games.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: And.
And I opened all these presents and I thought it was under the tree, right?
And it turned out that my mom had hid it in the laundry room. And so I spent a good hour after opening all the presents just kind of softly crying in my room that I hadn't gotten the gift that I wanted. And then they sent me out with the laundry and I saw the gift and there was a sweet perfection to it. My Christmases always worked out just right.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: And I compare and contrast that to a story that my dad tells. And I.
I think he wouldn't mind me telling this, that all he wanted one time when he was growing up, and I think he was in junior high, he's one of 12 kids in Anaconda, Montana. He said, All I wanted was a basketball, a good basketball.
And he said, I saw the box under the tree. It was the one gift that I got. And it was a basketball, but it was probably closer to a beach ball in its construction than it was a leather basketball. And he said, so I walked down to the playground and my basketball blew away and I gently cried.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: And that was Christmas.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: And if I'm going to be honest with you, like so many things in life don't work out like the Sega Dreamcast on top of the washer and dryer after you've been a little sad for a little while, oftentimes there's so many things that look a lot more like a dysfunctional basketball. On a windy day in Anaconda, Montana, I had the high hopes. And I thought it was going to be this, and now I'm left with this.
What are you talking about?
25 years old wasn't supposed to feel like this. 40 wasn't supposed to feel like this. 70 wasn't supposed to. We had plans and thoughts and expectations, and this is what God was going to do. And by the way, I feel like I've remained faithful. I've often done the right things. I've cared for people, and how could it possibly work out this way? And then what we see is that hope turns from a difficult waiting into hopelessness, and it often dies in the darkness. And what I want to encourage us in today is even for those of us who feel like we've been waiting an eternity for something, you've been hoping an eternity for something. Don't lose that hope. Because the perspective I want us to see, that's an eternal one. And not just a day by day one is that that waiting, that place that we are formed and developed and discipled with the presence of God is the thing that we've always wanted.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: In the waiting, we experience the presence of God.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: And even with all of our doubt and frustration and wondering about what could become of ourselves or the world around us, we have to have faith. We're encouraged to have faith that God is with us and not just us, but the greater us.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: So again, bring your aching places to the table this season.
Bring your longing and bring all your questions.
And remember the Advent prayer that says, God, meet me here, God in the waiting and form hope within me.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Let's experience this tension of waiting and hoping together.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: So I want to do this as we close. And we're going to go ahead and prepare to take communion. If you like the elements brought to you, you can go ahead and raise your hand and somebody's going to come around and bring those to you.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: In a moment, we'll stand together and go to the tables and receive communion together.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Amen. Why don't you bow your head and close your eyes with me? As we close, I want to pray specifically for a couple groups of people and I'll. If you're part of one of these groups, maybe you're not, and that's okay. I'm going to ask you to raise your hand and I'm not going to call you out.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: I just want a visual representation of what we're praying for today.
The first group is this group you've just entered into what you believe may be a long period of waiting.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: You're beginning to ask a lot of these questions or enter into a very unknown, maybe even unstable time of life.
If that's you, you believe that you're just starting this journey. I want you to raise your hand in three.
Go ahead and raise it up.
Good. I see you guys all across. You can put it up. Put it down.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Amen. Now the second group is this.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: You've been waiting for so long.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: And you're exhausted.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: Maybe you're the kind of person that would hear a teaching on waiting and hope and go, I just.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Want to be told.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: To be strong and courageous in this waiting anymore.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: If that's you, I want to encourage you to go ahead and raise your hand in three, two, one, go.
Yeah, good going up. All over you. Put them up, put them down.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Amen. Father God, we just thank you for this group that is on the edge or has begun this process of waiting. Lord, we pray.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: For an understanding, a perspective of what they're entering into. They're entering into a beautiful waiting and hoping season with you.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: I pray that they would know that come what may, that they are blessed and that they would see and experience the presence of God with them.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Lord Jesus, we lift up the second group. We pray for those who have been waiting for so long.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Proverbs 13 says hope deferred makes the heart sick. That's that hope has become the enemy of the faithful. Or we pray for a return to again, that perspective of you are with them. And Lord, we pray that they would know and have confidence in that.
We don't have all the answers for what's around every single corner. But Jesus, we pray for those who have been waiting so long.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: That they would see and feel and experience you today.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Knowing that you're with them.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
