Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Morning, everybody. I'm Ben Fleming. I'm the other senior pastor and yeah, excited about Christmas week.
[00:00:13] Christmas Eve is such an honor for us to be able to host our community in really such a beautiful and intentional and gospel driven way.
[00:00:22] I just want to make it clear our goal is to never on these nights be like, yeah, and then they'll come back and they, they'll be a part of the Westside community. If that's happens, that's great. We just put so much weight on this evening because there's a lot of people that don't often hear the story of the gospel. And we're hoping to bring forward as true a form of the love of Jesus as possible. And we all come with our own baggage, right? Whether it's religious baggage or just things from our own life.
[00:00:48] And we hope to create a clear understanding of the grace of Jesus and his love that belongs to everybody. Amen.
[00:00:55] So today we're actually talking about love. That's the fourth week of Advent. So the Advent starts with hope and then it goes to peace, joy, and then love.
[00:01:05] One of the greatest things about Christmas is all the family for us. I know that could be complicated for a lot of us. Our whole family, my whole family is going to be over at our house this Christmas. And after we went through a remodel that left us in a trailer for about a year, I said, I will leave my house over my own dead body.
[00:01:23] I'm not going anywhere. If you guys want to come to us, that's great. So my brother's coming over from the Valley. The rest of my family lives in town here. And my brother is nine years older than me.
[00:01:33] And so growing up, I got the tar beat out of me all the time because that was fun for him and I guess it was fun for me.
[00:01:43] But you know, like, I grew up in that professional wrestling era. Some of you guys remember the NWO and the WCW when, when professional wrestling, we still kind of hoped that it was real and my brother would do all those moves on me.
[00:01:55] And some one day somebody came along, they said, hey, you know, this pro wrestling thing, it's not real. And I go, no, I've been through it. It hurts. It really hurts.
[00:02:03] It's very real.
[00:02:05] And one day my brother, who I must have been seven or eight years old because my brother hadn't graduated high school yet, he was like, hey, Ben, it's not going to be long before you get to start playing tackle football.
[00:02:16] And I, being your big brother, out of the kindness of my heart, want to help prepare you for that day. And I, you know, I'm like a golden retriever. I'm like, okay, football, great. And our living room all the time turned into some kind of gymnasium. And so right now, my daughter and my son are into playing football downstairs. And my wife just shakes her head, and she goes like this. She goes. It just. It always ends with somebody hurt and crying. And I'm like, yeah, that's the idea that this is growing up.
[00:02:43] But my brother said, yeah, I want to get you ready. So he and my sister grabbed pillows and. Or couch cushions and sat on either side of this narrow hallway that we had.
[00:02:52] And he said, okay, you got to get through us and into the living room. The living room is the end zone. And I was like, oh, okay.
[00:02:58] And just. I couldn't get through. You guys just whack. And I would fly back and on my back. And then eventually, my brother was like, what you got to do is jump right before you get to us, because then that will generate enough power to get through. Okay. Clearly, my brother wants to help me. And so. And of course, I do it and backflip backwards, land on my back into the hall. Knocks the wind out of me. It wasn't until the very end I finally made it all the way through, but I got to the linoleum, and one of those Fred Meyer ads that's super glossy was on the ground. Went to celebrate, Slipped on it, fell on my back, started crying again and again. My brother, out of the goodness of his heart, comes up and goes, okay, a couple things.
[00:03:37] Don't tell mom and dad about what's happened today.
[00:03:42] And secondly, he was like, you know, I just want you to know I love you. This is like, this is tough love.
[00:03:47] And I was introduced at that moment to the phrase tough love, which I've learned over the course of my life. We all just kind of use that phrase for whatever reason we want, usually in order to justify a certain action that we want to perform. But I want to talk about tough love today in the context of how we can have a more expansive understanding of the love of Jesus. And so I want to give you a new idea of what tough love is. And to do that, we're going to read through some of the Advent stories. So Matthew chapter two is where we're going to be. I'm going to read 18 verses, so try to hold on. I know that it's a lot of reading but we're going to read through a big chunk of this Christmas story together.
[00:04:23] It says, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod. And about that time, some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, where is the newborn king of the Jews?
[00:04:34] We saw his stars that rose, and we've come to worship him.
[00:04:37] And King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, where is the Messiah supposed to be born?
[00:04:48] In Bethlehem and Judea, they said, for this is what the prophet wrote. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah, for a ruler will come from you, who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.
[00:05:02] So then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men. And he learned from them the time when the star first appeared. And he told them, go back to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too.
[00:05:16] Liar, liar, pants on fire.
[00:05:19] And after this interview, the wise men went their way, and the star that had been in the east guided them to Bethlehem. It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were filled with joy. And they entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
[00:05:40] And when it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route. For God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.
[00:05:46] And after the wise men were gone, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up. Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother, the angel said, and stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.
[00:05:59] That night, Joseph left for Egypt with the child to marry his mother. And they stayed there until Herod's death. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet. I called my son out of Egypt. Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were 2 years old and under. Based on the wise men's report of the star's first appearance, Herod's brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah. A cry was heard in Rama, weeping in great mourning. Rachel weeps for her children refusing to be comforted for they are dead. Let's pray.
[00:06:34] Father God, we. We thank you for this morning. We pray that we would have a greater depth of understanding of your love for us. And Lord, that during this Advent season we would find some quiet and pause and time to truly understand and take in what you are speaking to us in this season. In Jesus name name, Amen.
[00:06:53] Now, Advent, as we've really talked about over the last several weeks, all these different themes of peace and hope and love and joy, they can feel kind of trite and they can feel a little bit empty if we allow them to. But the good news is, is that Advent isn't a season purely for sentiment or nostalgia or tradition. All those things are great. I actually like nostalgia. I like a lot of the emotions that are brought up in some of the traditions and rituals that we have as a family or as individuals.
[00:07:21] But ultimately, Advent isn't a season about all of these things. It's about love in the form of arrival.
[00:07:28] And of course, in true Jesus fashion, this love isn't loud and it's not polished and it's not as triumphant as maybe we would have envisioned.
[00:07:38] It comes more humbly, and love shows up in a body, in great vulnerability, in a manger.
[00:07:46] And we're reminded that Advent is about God moving into the neighborhood, as Eugene Peterson says in the message translation of the Bible, not hovering above it and fixing it from a distance or shouting instructions to humanity.
[00:07:59] Instead, God steps into this mess of ours and chooses to stay.
[00:08:05] And so Advent love doesn't rush. Instead, it waits and it listens and it draws near and comes close again. John, chapter one, the more direct translation, says this. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And so we talk about love as a principle, a value, or a virtue. But Scripture insists on something far more disruptive than that. Again, love as a body. Love has hands and feet. Love has scars and walks among us. Love went through puberty, for goodness sake.
[00:08:35] Now that's love.
[00:08:38] The love revealed in Jesus is an abstract, it's cruciform. It's willing to depart the perfection of heaven and begin this long, difficult pilgrimage of walking towards suffering. The Advent love doesn't bypass pain, it said, it enters right into it. And in a culture where we're so obsessed with avoiding pain, we want to avoid aging, we want to avoid all the difficulties of this life, God chooses to enter in love right into the middle of all of these things.
[00:09:05] It's important because many of us are tired of ideas that don't quite heal these trite kind of Christmas stories, right? They don't provide enough depth to really help us understand who we are to love and how we are supposed to love. Now, as much as I love Hallmark movies, as much as anybody. Somebody else out there? Anybody else. Hallmark movies? Look, that formula works, you guys.
[00:09:26] Rich guy comes to a small town, finds a small town girl.
[00:09:32] They fall in love. That's all I got.
[00:09:35] I can respect Hallmark because everyone was like, look, we see your formula. And they were like, yeah, but what if we do it 12 times a year?
[00:09:42] What do you think then? And we're all like, well, actually, we can do this.
[00:09:45] The repetition of it. There's something comfortable about it. But of course, in this real life, we can embrace the little stories, but we're looking for something with real depth. We don't just need love explained or performed on a show for us instead of. We need to understand what the embodiment of love means and does for us. And so it's cool. Through scientific breakthroughs, especially over the last decade, we begin to understand the brain far more than we ever have before.
[00:10:12] And through that, we actually are beginning to know the impact of a loving environment on our brain. So here's a few things that happens to us when we are in a loving environment. Okay? The brain's threat system calms down.
[00:10:26] Loving treatment reduces negative chemicals, and they lower fear, defensiveness, and fight or flight responses. Oxytocin is released. The prefrontal cortex comes online.
[00:10:37] When we feel loved, we gain clearer thinking, better emotional regulation, and greater empathy. Hello. Maybe we could use a little bit greater empathy in our world today. I don't know if you've noticed or seen or experienced the lack of empathy.
[00:10:50] The nervous system shifts into rest and connecting, and the brain is actually rewired if it spends time enough in a loving environment. Over an extended period of time, there's this shifting that happens in our actual physiology when we experience love.
[00:11:07] Now, one of the least Jesus things about me is that I love watching bullies get their comeuppance in any context.
[00:11:20] Recently, my daughter had a parent teacher conference that we went to, and the teacher spent a good 10 minutes just glowing about Jovi and her willingness to learn and her teachability and how she's such good friends with her classmates. And just, you know, 10 minutes, I'm going, yes, tell me more about my beautiful offspring and how wonderful she is. And then at the very end, she goes, there was a physical altercation the other day in the playground, and I. I was like, huh?
[00:11:49] And Jovi went from To.
[00:11:53] And she kind of looked around, and as we got this funky, vague version of this story. And so Jovi and I were walking home after that, and we got about halfway home, and I said, so you have something you'd like to tell me about this altercation?
[00:12:07] And immediately, she didn't really hold back. She said, look, he's a bully. He's always been a bully. And he beat Raviva in Tetherball, and he wouldn't shut up about it, and he got in her face, and he wouldn't stop, and he kept doing it. So I kicked him in the shins, and I was like, look, I want to make it clear I'm actually cool with this. Okay?
[00:12:31] Like, how do you explain the story? Let's maybe explore a couple other options first. But I would encourage you to leave kicking someone in the shins on the table.
[00:12:41] Like, I'm actually kind of good with that. My favorite expression of this dynamic is actually in A Christmas Story. Have you guys watched A Christmas Story? Maybe the greatest Christmas movie ever. And the older I get, the better it seems to get. But if you don't know the main character, Ralphie, in the middle of it, he's been picked on by this bully. Sid Farkas, or Scott Farkas, you guys. Scott Farkas, the greatest bully name in the entire world. You can see him. You can smell him. When you say Scott Farkas, right?
[00:13:08] And at some point in this movie, Ralphie snaps and he gets on the kid and starts to beat the living daylights out of him. And still I watch it, and I'm like, oh, yes, Go, Ralphie.
[00:13:21] And then he's just. He's wailing on him. He's going for it. And then what happens in the scene is that his mom shows up.
[00:13:27] And his mom. And I can't remember who the actress is, but, my gosh, her voice is something else. Ralphie.
[00:13:34] You know, earlier, there are starving people in China. You know, she's got this funny voice. And she comes in and Ralphie stops.
[00:13:42] And then he looks at her, and then he cries, and then she hugs him.
[00:13:49] And it's this beautiful picture. To me, if the mom represents love in the story and in the scene, it's often what happens to us when we allow ourselves to be embraced by the love of Jesus.
[00:14:02] This world where we're so encouraged to fight back and to climb the corporate ladder and to get what's ours and to be insecure is often what we're encouraged to do, because that seems to translate to some kind of Work ethic or something. And then love enters into the picture, and it's like we can stop punching and fighting and the insecurity. And that thing calms us down. It changes everything.
[00:14:28] Our brains are rewired over time. When love enters into the picture, and this is what the arrival of Jesus, the intention for his people is, is that we would see the world differently because of the love that we've experienced, this advent, love that arrives for us.
[00:14:44] In Mary's song the Magnificent, she says this. He's brought down rulers from their thrones and has lifted up the humble.
[00:14:51] And so again, love comes from above and comes down to us without the intention that we have to ascend to a certain place to achieve it.
[00:15:02] We're so shaped by narratives of ascent and increase, Right? You got to be more, you got to climb higher. You can fix yourself, you can do it.
[00:15:11] All these things sound great on the surface, but Advent and the love that we find in it actually tells and provides a different story that love comes down.
[00:15:20] Love comes into poverty, into obscurity, into powerlessness, into a family that actually has to migrate in order to find safety. And so God chooses the small and hidden and overlooked places and provides us the perspective that love doesn't climb ladders, but it descends into our wounds.
[00:15:40] That's the direction that love moves in.
[00:15:43] This is great news for those of us who feel like we're barely holding it together. A few of us around here today don't raise your hands.
[00:15:51] We're barely holding on.
[00:15:54] You don't have to rise to meet love in this season with all of the stress and the hustle and bustle, but love has already come looking for you.
[00:16:03] First, John says, God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.
[00:16:09] Which then allows me to beg the question, what if I'm too much?
[00:16:16] Or what if I'm not enough?
[00:16:18] I think these are the questions that the human species ask ourselves all the time.
[00:16:24] Now I ask myself, what if I'm too much? Often, because especially in social situations, if when I leave the social situation, it's a dinner with friends, it's a party or whatever, I will get in the car. And I have an immediate social hangover of, did I just talk the whole time?
[00:16:40] And I'll look at my wife and she'll be like, Yeah, you're still talking, actually, you know, amazing.
[00:16:52] And I have this, you guys. I do this to let you all the way behind the curtain. I do this after I teach on Sundays. People are so nice. They're like, What a great job. And I get in my truck and I go, what did I just say?
[00:17:03] I hope it was okay.
[00:17:06] I constantly live in this idea. What, am I too much? In social situations, I love to ask the provocative questions and keep the party going.
[00:17:13] I showed up today wearing this shirt, and half the staff said I looked like too much.
[00:17:18] Somebody between services last time said, you look so nice. And I said, that's great. She said, you look like a Pendleton blanket.
[00:17:28] Oh, boy, I'm not going to wear that ever again.
[00:17:34] No, I will, because I have enough in my nature. That's like, oh, you don't like this? I'm going to wear it some more.
[00:17:40] And then I wonder if I'm too much. It's a vicious cycle to live inside of my head.
[00:17:44] What if I'm too much? What if I've done too much? What if I failed too much? What if I've made too many mistakes? What if I've ruined so many things? And how can I possibly embrace or understand this love that I can see is maybe for other people, but not for me? Or what if I'm not enough? What if I haven't been faithful enough or cared enough or showed up enough? What if I haven't done enough of the religious rituals enough?
[00:18:05] What if I haven't belonged long enough?
[00:18:08] Advent love actually answers both of these questions, because God doesn't recoil from our brokenness, or else he would have left us alone. And God doesn't grow tired of our need, otherwise he wouldn't have stayed with us.
[00:18:21] And so love stays.
[00:18:23] God's love is near and faithful in ordinary time, present in unremarkable places, and patient with unfinished people, says Eugene Peterson.
[00:18:34] Advent love does not fix everything instantly, but it promises presence.
[00:18:39] And this is exemplified in the very characters of the story of Christmas. You have Zachariah and Elizabeth who appear, who are known for their faithfulness of being in the temple. And then John the Baptist is birthed from that family. You have Mary and Joseph, who even in their own fear and embrace the birth of Jesus, coming in through their family. And so it makes sense that these two would be so loved. But then you have other characters in this story. The innkeeper, who's terribly ignorant to what is happening right underneath his nose.
[00:19:13] The birth of Jesus is about to happen, and he comes to the door and kind of looks out and is like, I don't know, we're kind of booked up.
[00:19:23] Can you imagine the poor innkeeper, like 30 years down the road going, oh, my gosh, I think I served them or didn't.
[00:19:32] Showed them to the cave on the back part of the property. What was I doing?
[00:19:37] You've got the magi who are seeking something. They're religious philosophers, but they're not Jewish, they're gentiles. They're not on the in crowd of the religious people.
[00:19:48] They would have been considered outsiders, and even more so would have been the shepherds whom the angels came to and offered the invitation to go and see Jesus. See the shepherds, we have this kind of beautiful pastoral understanding of them. But the closest comparison that you can make to shepherds back then would be to homeless people in our current context, where people liked them best removed from the rest of society.
[00:20:11] It's fine as long as they're quiet and they're out there and they don't invade our space.
[00:20:17] They were considered ceremonially unclean by priests. They were considered just generally unclean by everyone else. They were social pariahs. They didn't belong and they weren't welcome. And yet the angels invite them into the presence of God on earth.
[00:20:34] And this is where the love gets tough.
[00:20:37] So it can push us a little bit that the Advent love comes for Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and Joseph and the magi, the innkeeper, the shepherds, all these people have a place in this Advent and arriving love of God. But so does one other character, and that's King Herod.
[00:20:53] King Herod, the deeply insecure, childish, fearful, narcissistic leader who uses all of these deficiencies in his personalities as justification to murder children after the birth of Jesus.
[00:21:08] The love of Advent and Jesus Christ comes even to that man, Herod.
[00:21:15] This is where love is tough because I can stomach so many of these other characters and stories and they're imperfect, but ultimately there's this element of faithfulness. But the idea that love would even come for Herod is insane to me, not him.
[00:21:32] He doesn't deserve any kind of belonging in this invitation that God provides us. But the same could be said for you and me. There have been deep moments of my life where I regret my craziest insecurities and narcissist.
[00:21:45] I've made mistakes and had problems and God comes for me with deep love. Even in those seasons and moments.
[00:21:52] God doesn't just love the curated and the perfect me that exists right now in this present time. And my wife just shook her head saying, the perfect you isn't here right now.
[00:22:04] It's not just this moment, it's not just this day. But God comes for redemption for every single season. That we have endured and experienced in life.
[00:22:13] So I want to encourage you today that God's love, the Advent love, the arrival, love that Jesus brings is here for the estranged from your children you.
[00:22:25] He's here for the recently divorced you, he's here for the recently promoted you, here for the rich you and the poor you, here for the you that somehow gained 15 pounds over the last couple months. And you're not sure how it happened, that love is here for every single one of these versions of you. Because if the love can come for King Herod, which is such a massive and unbelievable miracle that I don't want to underestimate, then God is here for you in every single one of the versions and seasons of who you are.
[00:22:54] So don't believe the lie that we can believe this Advent, and that is that maybe someday I'll be worthy of this love.
[00:23:01] Maybe someday the church people will accept me, and maybe someday I'll fit in and I'll work hard and I'll cross my T's and dot my I's, and then I'll have the conference contract worthy of the love of Jesus. But it's not after the habits are broken or after the marriage is healed or the doubt is resolved or the anger is managed. God comes now for you. The Apostle Paul says, while we were sinners, Christ died for us. While we are in this season, the love of Jesus comes for us.
[00:23:29] And so Advent doesn't just cover this lie, but instead interrupts it.
[00:23:37] The truth is probably a little too simple to say that we're broken. We're actually dysfunctional, reactive, defensive, and inconsistent. We don't just struggle, but we actually contribute to the struggle that keeps us in this loop of dysfunction in our lives. And still love comes.
[00:23:54] It's really important that we remember this Advent season that love isn't this reward for spiritual health.
[00:24:07] Love is the source of our spiritual help.
[00:24:11] As Rich Velodas says, we're not healed into love, but instead we're loved into healing.
[00:24:17] This is what makes the incarnation kind of unsettling.
[00:24:22] God's not waiting for you to be impressive or stable.
[00:24:27] He doesn't wait for you to be worthy, but instead he finds us and says, this is where I will be in your dysfunction.
[00:24:36] So Advent love declares something that's almost impossible to believe. Not that we're. That we're worthy, not because we're functional, but because we're loved. And God says we are.
[00:24:50] We're gonna go ahead and take communion together here in just a few moments, if you'd like Those elements brought to you. You can go ahead and raise your hand right now and somebody will come around.
[00:25:04] This piece of the message makes me think of just time, like seasons of my life that I'm embarrassed about.
[00:25:13] I remember when I was early in ministry, I got a few people because we were, you know, a really cool band that was playing worship music.
[00:25:22] Really cool. And I got us to record a worship album.
[00:25:28] And I found one of these albums the other day and I had like a physical reaction to it, not even by listening to it. I saw the album cover and I was like.
[00:25:39] And I could see myself in an Orange Hurley T shirt that was too tight.
[00:25:44] And I could hear the flat vocals on this recording that somehow I passed out to like hundreds of of people.
[00:25:51] And I was so embarrassed.
[00:25:54] And I threw the entire backpack in the fire, actually. Just kidding. I didn't do that.
[00:26:01] And I think about, like that version of me, and if that version of me walked into the room right now, I would put my head down and have to leave.
[00:26:13] There's something so cringy about it and so weird and funky about it.
[00:26:18] And what I want to do this Advent season is actually invite orange Hurley Shirt Ben into the room.
[00:26:27] And I want to invite other versions of me being deeply insecure and frustrated and angry, scared.
[00:26:35] I want to invite them all into the room and understand that this Advent love has come for them too.
[00:26:44] There's no season or time or version of myself that God hasn't deeply loved right there in that moment.
[00:26:51] And I think maybe this is a time for many of us in this Advent time where you regret what you are right now, you might regret. Regret. I'm sure I will. What we are at times in the future and certainly in the past, and all of these versions of us are welcome at the table with the great incredible love of Jesus.
[00:27:08] There's nowhere that love won't go.
[00:27:11] And so I want you to do a couple things over the next couple days. If you find the time, I want you to make room, maybe even physically sit in a darker room, candle lit or whatever you find comfortable, and make room for those versions of yourself.
[00:27:25] And then slow down when they're in there and then allow yourself to be found by the love of God.
[00:27:31] This deep forgiveness of others that is part of the season as well as this deep forgiveness for ourselves is so important and part of the story, because love has already come looking for us and Jesus is still living in the neighborhood.
