Introduction and Ice Breaker
Poll: favorite holiday movies?
Elf
Miracle on 34th street
Home alone
It’s a wonderful life
Nightmare before Christmas
Themes to Consider
Advent - examining the space in between, time between our bruised heels and the serpents crushed head.
Isaiah
THE KING (1-39)
THE SERVANT (40-55)
THE ANOINTED CONQUEROR (55-66)
Ministry of Jesus:
DELIGHTED IN
GIVEN THE SPIRIT
GENTLE
ENDURING
INCLUSIVE
COMPASSIONATE - to open the eyes of the blind
- to free the captives
- to release the prisoners
THIS SHOULD SOUND LIKE JESUS MINISTRY
but it is ISRAEL’s ministry and it has become OUR MINISTRY
Advent is a time to let us be in the place with those longing for something they do not yet see
Discussion Questions
How do you do with the in between, celebrating and longing for peace that may not yet be fully here?
Caleb mentIons Ephesians 2 - “he himself is our peace” as he has brought barriers down and joined together again. Where have you seen evidence of reconciliation coming because Christ is formed in you?
Where are there still areas of division and hostility in your life in which you are longing for him to be your peace?
Guided Prayer
Father, I want to live a life of obedience to You. Make me an instrument of Your peace. Teach me to love even my enemies. Give me the strength to wage peace when what I really want to do is wage war. Today, I choose to surrender my stubborn will to You. I lay down my emotional weapons and choose peace. Be glorified in my relationships, Father. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Supplemental Content
Peace is not the state of being we return to like water running downhill wherever’s there’s nothing external to perturb us. Peace between people is an achievement, a state of affairs we put together effortfully in the face of competing interests, and primate dominance, and our evolved tendency to cease our sympathy at the boundaries of our tribe. Peace within is made difficult to say the least by the way that we tend to have actual, emotional life going on… Peace is not the norm, Peace is rare. And where we do manage to institutionalize it in a human society, its because we have been intelligently pessimistic about human proclivities and found a way to work with the grain of them in a system of intense mutual suspicion like the US constitution, a document which assumes that absolutely everybody will be corrupt and power-hungry given half a chance. As for the inner version, I’m not at peace all that often, and I doubt you are either. —Francis Spufford
MATTHEW 12:
Jesus takes up these very words… He is our longing and our hope - He has become our peace. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.
