Sunday Stretch: Vol. 107, Advent IV

Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...

Hi Readers,

We are plodding into the fourth week of Advent over here, as I look outside to a decidedly not White Christmas, and prepare for a funeral service of a beloved 102-year-old woman who I visited at Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church.

Christmas this year in Minnesota is coming in shades of brown and gray, which I guess feels fitting as we face our first Advent season without my husband’s dad, and as we reckon with a world beset by violence and warfare. As I write to you, I read news of a school shooting in neighboring Wisconsin, and I read about ever-increasing warfare across the restive Middle East, where one headline documented the killing of six shepherds.

I remember that the shepherds I saw in my travel to the Holy Land more than a decade ago were often young girls, who carried tools taller than they were, and who stared out on busy, meandering highways with impassive eyes. These are the heirs of the shepherds to whom the angels first appeared in the hills, bringing triumphant good news to this same world, then too tormented by empire, greed, violence, and grift masquerading as religion.

I long to hear that good news this year, this week, as we enter into our final week of Advent, and we try to receive and share the precious gift of LOVE.

Note: This is our last edition of the Sunday Stretch for 2024! We will be back in 2025 on Jan. 5. I hope you all have a blessed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (to all who celebrate) and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I encourage you to find a local place to worship for the holidays. If you don’t have a local church home and you’re in the Twin Cities, please do join us at 5:30 p.m. at Lake Nokomis Lutheran in South Minneapolis on Christmas Eve!

And in case you missed it last year, here’s a special video message from me on Christmas Eve 2023:

I hesitated to use this image initially because Mary looks quite different here than she likely did in reality. But what I loved about this image is the joy it captures between two female family members, supporting one another through their unlikely pregnancies. So often the world wants to squelch women’s joy: we are told to be composed or reserved or humble. Or women are taught to compete with one another for limited resources. But here we see the unrestrained joy that comes in sharing God’s blessings without reservation - the gift of LOVE.

ICYMI, here’s an Advent meditation on LOVE that I wrote a couple of years ago:

Let’s get to the texts!

Bible Stories

Micah 5:2-5

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,

who are one of the little clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

from ancient days.

³ Therefore he shall give them up until the time

when she who is in labor has brought forth;

then the rest of his kindred shall return

to the people of Israel.

⁴ And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD,

in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.

And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth;

⁵ and he shall be the one of peace.

If the Assyrians come into our land

and tread upon our soil,^a

we will raise against them seven shepherds

and eight installed as rulers.

The best-known passage from the prophet Micah is of course the well-known “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God,” which comes from Micah 6:8, just a chapter after this reading. But the prophet sets up that passage with this one, a simple ode to the small town of Bethlehem, an unlikely place from whence a Savior would come.

Today Bethlehem lies in the West Bank, part of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. To get from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and back, you have to cross a militarized wall. To modern travelers, the two cities seem quite close - but separated again by politics and religion. Within the city of Bethlehem itself, different factions of Christianity are assigned different areas. I am grateful for the work and witness of a modern-day prophet of Bethlehem, Mitri Raheb, whose theological works I commend to you today, as we pray for the remaining, embattled Palestinian Christian community in Bethlehem.

Questions to Ponder

Take some time to view the city of Bethlehem as it is today. You can use Google Earth to explore, and you can also Google the Church of the Nativity (built on the historical site of Jesus’ birth) and the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church.

The prophet says that one will come to “rule” in Israel. Does Jesus fit this description? Why or why not?

Why do you think raised against the Assyrians were shepherds and rulers? Why both?

Hebrews 10:5-10

Heb. 10:5 Consequently, when Christ^a came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,

but a body you have prepared for me;

⁶ in burnt offerings and sin offerings

you have taken no pleasure.

⁷ Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’

(in the scroll of the book^a it is written of me).”

⁸ When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), ⁹ then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. ¹⁰ And it is by God’s will^a that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews recalls the prophet Amos here, who laments the ways that the religious leaders repeated traditions and practices without attending to the needs of the people for justice in the land. The letter writer connects this grounded, earthy mission of justice to Jesus’ purpose in the world, a reminder to us that Jesus calls us not to religious escapism, or to only promise heaven in the world to come, but that Jesus has come to do God’s will of bringing love to this world as well.

This letter is written to the Hebrews, signifying it’s intended for people who were part of the Jewish faith. How do you think they felt when the letter suggested Jesus came to abolish their traditions?

What self-prescribed rules or laws in your own life have you abolished or changed over the years?

Do you think that God has helped change your opinions about what rules and laws to follow? Why or why not?

Luke 1:39-45

Luke 1:39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰ where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴² and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³