Daily Advent Devotional

Week One

November 29, 2021

A Patient God

2 Peter 3

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3: 8-9 (NIV)

This has been a whirlwind of a year. If I were to write this devotion in the beginning of the summer, like I had planned, when COVID seemed to be under control, I would have written about hope in the movement of the Holy. People were getting vaccinated, ICUs stopped being overrun. It would have seemed like a great analogy as the coming of the Lord mostly represents hope to me. I think about being a child sick in school and having the nurse tell me that my mother was coming to get me. I knew that when she came, she would make things better. 

But now, it is the end of the summer. Delta variant is more easily spread affecting many who chose not to get vaccinated to protect themselves and the more vulnerable around them that could not get vaccinated and in my county, the hospitals are more overrun than they have ever been. I am tired of humanity.

Now I feel like the little sister that has been mistreated and threaten my assailant by saying, “My big brother is coming for you! I knew that he would make things better and get ‘em!”

Thankfully, we are not under my control. Peter tells us that we are under the control of a more patient God. 2 Peter tells us that God is not slow, but patient and giving humanity time to get it right. That means that we have the ability to change course and do what is right. Maybe God believes we can get it right and I should too. 

Dr. Annie Lockhart Gilroy

Assistant Professor of Christian Education and Practical Theology

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Week One

November 28, 2021

Hope

Luke 21:25-36

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. Luke 21:28

I am, down to the very bottom of my soul, an optimist. I am the person who, when pushed off the roof of a 20-story building, shouts to the person standing at the 10th-story window, “So far, everything is going great!”

Except this year. This year our communities continue to deal with COVID-19 and the information and misinformation that divide us. This year the women of Afghanistan, not to mention the men and children, are under siege again by a body-destroying, soul-sapping form of sexism. This year rallies in support of white supremacy attract more devotees while chronic frustration ignites arguments and fistfights in airports. This year my friends in New Orleans and California deal with the social and economic turmoil of climate change. This year my beloved partner of almost 35 years passed away.

This year I read the warnings of the Lukan apocalypse without optimism. I fill each word of disaster with the scenes of the year almost gone—bombs exploding at airport gates, wreckage floating, houses burning, hospitals filled with people literally coughing their lungs up. And my optimism turns into a net with a large hole at the bottom of my fall from the 20-story building.

Which means that now I can truly hope. My heart is no longer weighed down by a false optimism that keeps me from feeling the pain of the world or from sensing my own deep wounds. I can look out for signs of the presence of the Messiah among us, both transcendent and immanent, both beyond time and in time. And I can pray with you for the strength and the courage to hope in the face of all that has gone awry. 

Dr. Nancy Claire Pittman

President and

Stephen J. England Associate Professor of the Practice of Ministry

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ADVENT WEEK FOUR

December 24, 2020

Peace: A Way of Life

Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”

Luke 2:14

Peace is such a Christmas theme, isn’t it?

I’ve heard sermons on how you can have peace in your heart

• when you’re doing Christmas shopping,
• when you’re cooking Christmas dinner,
• when you have a houseful of relatives you don’t like.

Peace in your heart—no doubt there are apps and breathing exercises for that.

But it’s not what the angels proclaim in this first Christmas cantata.

“Peace on earth.” (Luke 2:14)

They’re not talking about cardiac peace but peace on earth.

First Isaiah proclaims a child who is to be Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6). The Christian tradition has often read this passage in relation to Jesus (reinforced by Handel’s Messiah). But Isaiah was not talking about Jesus—perhaps King Hezekiah (ruled 715-687 BCE).

Judea was threatened by Assyrian imperial oppression. The prophet anticipates a time when that menace would end. “The rod of the oppressor” will be broken; there will be “endless peace” (Isa 9:4, 7). The vision is not just of the end of military threat. It’s a vision of “justice and righteousness” (Isa 9:7).

Peace in the biblical tradition is not the absence of stress, anxiety, war. It’s not based on domination, military conquest, quests for greatness.

Biblical peace concerns a society marked by just interaction among all people. It embraces the dignity of all people made in the image of God regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, social status. It works for equal access for all people to the resources and opportunities necessary for good and satisfying life.

Peace is a fine Christmas, angelic vision but biblical—Christmas—peace requires a year-long way of life.

Dr. Warren Carter PhD

LaDonna Kramer Meinders Professor of New Testament

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ADVENT WEEK FOUR

December 23, 2020

A Triumphant Love

Mark 11:1-11

Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Mark 11:9

Love is a word that is used in our homes, workplace, and with our friends. And yet love is the one thing that we long to have in our lives. Most of the time it is utilized to identify with someone how we feel concerning them. However, love should be used by showing action of how one feels and not merely the talk of it. God exhibits this type of love toward us all. You do not have to be in a certain social or economic class for God to love you. God gives an Agape love to everyone. It is unconditional no matter your thoughts, deeds, or actions. God sent Jesus in this world because God loves us and to redeem our souls.

Jesus made a triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. Jesus was not a part of the elite or wealthy but was walking and talking as if he had authority. The actions of Jesus caused the leaders at that time to make plans to punish him. One example of this is when Jesus sent his disciples out to retrieve the donkey. Not just any donkey but a specific one and to tell anyone who asked that the Lord needed it. It was God’s infinite love for people that Jesus was granted such power and authority to give hope. As Jesus entered Jerusalem the people were crying out to God to be saved through praises.

It was God’s victorious demonstration of love that gave Jesus the mandate to be a sacrifice for you and me. As we continue during this Advent, let us remember God is love and gives love to all. Let us continue to live obediently and know that it will lead us to victory every time.

Claudette President

Student Senate Member and Master of Divinity Student

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ADVENT WEEK FOUR

December 22, 2020

America’s Wanting Love: Mercy as Covenant

Luke 1:46b – 55

What we need today in the onward march of humanity is a public sentiment in favor of common justice and simple mercy … [T]wo things are wanting in American civilization—a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice [and] a sense of humanity… — Frances E. W. Harper, 1875

Today’s devotional text presents Mary as theologian and lyricist. Drawing from Jewish scripture she asserts that, “G*d’s mercy (exists) in generation after generation on behalf of those who respectfully revere him.” The divine mercy depicted in Mary’s song, however, reverses neither her moral nor religious state but alienation caused by societal strictures that denied her full humanity: poverty, Jewishness, femaleness, premarital pregnancy.

Mercy, traditionally, offers lenient judgment to admittedly guilty and blameworthy petitioners. Such mercy judges Mary’s class, ethnicity/race, religion, gender, and circumstance as undesirable, of her own making, and requiring transcendence. Judicial mercy demands full submission to institutions in hopes that those controlling said institutions use their privilege to protect petitioners from the very same systems. This toxic mercy buttresses unjust systems and beats the downtrodden into a posture where relief requires submission and pardons become propaganda.

Mary’s song, with its psalter allusions, invokes an alternative covenant-oriented mercy as love or hesed (steadfast love, loyalty). Here, mercy symbolizes that unbreakable, steadfast love and loyalty that is the essence of G*d’s covenantal devotion toward humanity. Despite society’s judgment, Mary’s soul rejoices because G*d’s hesed recognizes her value and worth.

Some 145 years ago, Frances Harper poignantly described America at social, moral, and religious crossroads. Her calls for common justice and simple mercy tragically fell before a hard-hearted nation. In this 2020, marred by COVID-19 and routine evidence of police brutality against unarmed Black folk, Mary’s song and Harper’s call exhort Christian America to commemorate and model Christ’s advent as more than judicial relief but as covenantal love and simple mercy.

Dr. Arthur F. Carter, Jr.

Assistant Professor of New Testament

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ADVENT WEEK FOUR

December 21, 2020

Pour Out Your Heart

1 Samuel 1:1-19

“Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” 1 Samuel 1:16

The season of Advent lifts up this story of answered prayer from the beginning of First Samuel, because the birth of Samuel is seen in Christian tradition as a precursor to the birth of Jesus. And the text from I Samuel is read not only as a precursor in the historical sense of coming before, but also in the Christian allegorical sense of speaking about a longing that would be fulfilled only with the birth of Jesus.

Instead of focusing on this traditionalist, and supercessionist logic of precursor/fulfillment, I would like us to stay close to the story’s depiction of Hannah’s tears. She has been tormented for years by Peninah for being barren, and she pleads with God to lift the stigma of barrenness from her. Eli takes her to be drunk as she moves her lips while “pouring out her soul before the Lord,” “speaking out of great anxiety and vexation.”

There is desperation in Hannah’s anxiety, just as there is in so many of our prayers in these days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prayers and tears over loss of jobs, eviction from homes; tears of profound grief across the world for those who have already been ill and died. And in Hannah’s vexation we can hear as well the outrage of a nation and world over the injustice of George Floyd’s death—a death representing so many countless others—voicing a prophetic call for the courage to turn our hearts around and stand for justice with those who are suffering.

With Hannah, let us pour out our hearts this Advent, longing for newness of life and for the mystery of God to draw near to us.

Dr. Joe Bessler

Robert Travis Peake Professor of Theology

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ADVENT WEEK FOUR

December 20, 2020

God of Love

Luke 1:26-38

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Luke 1:38

“Gods don’t love humans.” If there was one common understanding among most of the peoples of the ancient Hellenistic world, it is this. To love was to be attached to someone beyond oneself, to be vulnerable to pain or rejection inflicted by that someone, to be open to change brought by that someone. Such qualities implied weakness and would inevitably lead to dishonor and shame. And since the gods were not weak and would not tolerate dishonor, they did not love humans. The most humans could do to get them to act on their petitions was to appeal to their vanity, their honor, or their power.

But the Jewish people of the first century had a different claim about their God. Their God loved them. Loved them corporately and loved them individually. In fact, many were coming to believe, not only did God love them, God loved everyone. Which left God open to pain, to change and to caring about what happens to people. Which left God weak.

Almost as weak as a young woman with little status and no power. Yet, in contrast to similar stories of gods impregnating young women, Luke’s telling of Mary’s encounter with Gabriel gives space for her to say no. But she said yes. Just like that. And though the word “love” appears nowhere in this passage, it permeates it. The love between God and a young woman. The love between the young woman and her people as she joined with her body their hopes for a more loving future. The love among God, a woman, a people and a world.

Dr. Nancy Claire Pittman

President and

Stephen J. England Associate Professor of the Practice of Ministry

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ADVENT WEEK THREE

December 19, 2020

Unbridled Joy

Judges 13:2-24

Then the Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, “O Lord, I pray, let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we are to do concerning the boy who will be born.” God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” Judges 13:8-10

As the third week of Advent ends with its theme of Joy, I reflect on the joy in Judges 13:2-24. The joy of the woman was unrestrained as she “ran quickly” to tell her husband that the prayer for the guidance of the child they were expecting was here.

It is not that there was a time limit, and that is why she needed to run. She was running for excitement to share in the answered prayer with her husband. Unbridled joy is that feeling of so much joy a person cannot help but react. Smiling, laughing, as a physical reaction to release the amount of joy as you feel you might burst.

Although it can be difficult to pinpoint moments of joy in the day-to-day, like: 1:02 p.m. August 9, 2020, joyous moment for 108 seconds, my cat purred in my lap, reassuring me of its love. It is much easier to recall unbridled joyful moments as this is the “best day ever” feeling. Frequently, these are in walking across graduation stages, the words “I do,” a baby’s first cry, and other major life moments.

It might be challenging for a person to attempt to capture an unbridled joyous moment they had just this past week. However, I am sure it is possible. It might be something seemingly insignificant, like the joy in seeing someone who makes you happy when it has been a rough week. It could also just be the joy of knowing that you are a beloved child of God. Any moment of joy is one for celebration, no matter how bridled.

Lukus Ebert

Student Senate Member and Master of Divinity Student

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ADVENT WEEK THREE

December 18, 2020

Dance with Joy

2 Samuel 6:12-19

David, dressed in a linen priestly vest, danced with all his strength before the Lord. This is how David and the entire house of Israel brought up the Lord’s chest with shouts and trumpet blasts. 2 Samuel 6:14-15 (Common English Bible)

On a brisk, sunny morning last January, our assembly of jet-lagged seminary students passed underneath the Dung Gate of Jerusalem, emerging in awestruck joy within the walls of Old Jerusalem. The sacred geography pressed me with its weight of time and managed to give me a strange kiss of responsibility and challenge whispering: What will you do with this place?

Thousands of years before our moment of awe, David, fresh from victory against the Jebusites, makes his ingenious political move to denominate ‘Ir David, Jerusalem, as a neutral seat of his government.

Unlike our entrance, his entrance is made with tremendous fanfare, dancing, music, and holy sacrifices. David is dressed in priestly garb, representing his role as king-priest, leading the seat of Yahweh, the mobile God, into this place selected for what will be its unifying role for the people of God. Yahweh seems to have had to consider being ready for domestication, having killed an attendant in a twitchy moment a few months beforehand. But the partnership now becomes settled, and the people are celebrating this new relationship’s beginning as expressively as possible. God is here among the people, kindling joy within them and their new experiment in kingship.

Jerusalem is still resplendent with sacred celebration. Christian bells, Muslim calls to prayer, and Jewish chants intermingle in constant calls for respite and unity with God. Dance and be joyful as the holy story continues.

Sandy Shapoval

Dean of the Library and Research Services

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ADVENT WEEK THREE

December 17, 2020

Faithful to all Generations

Psalm 89:1-4

I will sing of your steadfast love, Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 89:1

Few things have stretched my understanding of God’s faithfulness to all generations than the past year. A wonderful Advent celebration followed by a Lenten season that found us wondering if the world would ever be the same again. Our solemn gatherings grew silent as we gathered online and, for the first time in my life, Easter was celebrated without every seat in the sanctuary filled and “Christ The Lord Is Risen Today” being sung as loud as my small congregation could manage. We had entered a new day.

We find ourselves in the middle of Advent again and a new normal has taken hold. We have had to adapt to a new way of living together and protecting one another, a new awareness of how to share our love, and in the midst of this beginning to the Christian year we are once again reminded that God’s faithfulness is to all generations.

Even in the darkest hours light shines through and God is faithful to us as we gather and as we worship and we hope and find Joy in new beginnings, in the God made flesh, in the Christ Child. As our time of Advent begins to draw to an end and Christmas is upon us, as the miracle of birth brings Joy and wonder to us all, let us remember that even the darkness of the past year will not overcome the light that has been brought into the world and that we can proclaim God’s faithfulness to all generations.

Rev. Jeremy Skaggs

Alumni Board Member (2002) and

Senior Minister, The Welcome Table Christian Church, Arlington, Texas

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