What seems to resonate throughout these times is God’s transformative action for us and Creation, ever-present in our longing and our listening, in anticipation of the return of Christ who will come as our Savior and liberator to make all things new. It is during these times that we hold fast to our traditions, carrying them forward with us, embracing and honoring them as reminders of how God’s unfailing love has accompanied us throughout our life stories.
We pray that our journey together this Advent season will serve as a sacred reminder of the hope, peace, love, and joy that awaits us always.
If you would like to receive the devotional via email, please click here.
For Download:
ZOOM Background (right click to download)
Facebook Banner (right click to download)
In this time of Covid-19, waiting seems like an eternity. Waiting for a time when we need not be afraid. But, in this time of Advent, we wait for the coming of Jesus – the Day of the Lord – when “(s)teadfast love and faithfulness will meet; (and) righteousness and peace will kiss each other (Psalm 85:10)”. What does God’s love, faithfulness, righteousness and peace look like today in this time of Black Lives Matter?
Let’s focus on righteousness. Righteousness is an active state of seeing injustice, recognizing who we are in relationship to injustice, and doing what is right, or doing justice. This means taking the blinders off, examining our beliefs in our own “goodness”, our fears and greed, and our complicity in perpetuating the ways, systems, and structures that oppress others, particularly Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). It means giving up those beliefs, acknowledging our own unearned privilege, and actively working toward justice, by dismantling the systems of oppression, so that those who are unrightfully hurt or wronged are restored and given back what was taken from them.
Waiting means preparing, being ready. Isaiah calls us to “(p)repare the way of the Lord” by lifting up those in the depths, bringing down the high places, and leveling the unevenness or the inequity that exists. Don’t look for God’s love in the high places and the temples of money, power, religion; instead, look in the wilderness, outside of your comfort zone, where those who are oppressed live.
God is patient, so that all will be made whole, and there will be “new heavens and a new earth (2 Peter 3:13)”. As we wait for God, let us strive for true peace, which is “not the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)”.
Lori Yamauchi
Old First Presbyterian Church, Ruling Elder
Japanese American, Member of Old First for 39 years. Retired from a land use and master planning career. Raised in Hawaii. On a lifelong journey to be an Antiracist. Married with an adult daughter.
Throughout the forty months of this year, I’ve experienced the anti-racist teaching of Ibram Kendi as a prophetic word that has plucked-up and pulled down, built and planted new things within me and my church community. At CAPC Oakland, a small group has been meeting Monday nights to work on learning to better see how we’ve learned to envision each other (and ourselves) through the dominant cultural lens of whiteness. We wrestle together with becoming more deeply anti-racist in choosing, enacting, and building equality in all the ways in which we are different – not merely settling for the “normal” that we were taught or inherited. I often leave the confessions, tears, and discoveries of our Zoom conversations with the sense of having been on holy ground as we trust each other with our intimate thoughts, of seeing deeper and wider, of having tasted the transformative action of God’s saving love.
We live in a time in which our body is divided over elections results, politics, the reality of a pandemic, racial reckoning and what equality actually means. At a first glance, our division can seem as if we just need to forgive and move on. Yet looking deeper, under the surface we can glimpse that we are divided about the notion and nature of truth, and also about trust: who is and isn’t worthy of it. We are a people struggling under the weight of change and the realization of what has always been. The bodies in which we move and have our being are suffering from an endemic of division whether civic, faith, familial, or physical.
Advent is the active waiting for the Messiah’s triumphal coming to reconcile all peoples to God and to each other: to make all things new. Today’s scriptures all speak to this dynamic of transformation, deliverance, and newness. They are punctuated with language about the body (hands, mouths, feet) and the physical world (land, the womb, Antioch). Here is a God that enters into our life, our realm, our bodies. Here is a God who acts and speaks and calls us to agency. What was first called God’s land becomes the land of the people. Paralyzed by fear of his vocation, Jeremiah is sent to the nations with authority to call others to God. The ancient city of Antioch, first described as a place of Jews and Gentiles, becomes the paragon of Church where disparate people are unified as one body. They are set apart by their work of recognizing the marginalized and hungry, and there called “Christians” by those that witness the truth of their unity. It’s as if they are little Christs living in a holy way wholly set apart from what seems normal.
The poet, prophet and evangelist all tell the story of salvation – which is more a process than an act, a transforming deliverance, setting us free from the old ways of assimilation and segregation for a new normal of equality and agency, from division to unity, from fear to trust. This saving process is what we’ve been experiencing in our Race Matters small group. Each Monday we discover the depth of the truth and how it both sets us free and makes all things new: conforming our lives more and more to that of Jesus the Christ, as little Christs. Our waiting for Jesus is also tied up in our becoming more and more like him, together, in our community, action and bodies. That’s the spiritual truth of Advent.
Monte McClain is an ordained PC(USA) Minister of the Word & Sacrament who has served as pastor alongside College Avenue Presbyterian Church in Oakland for the past ten years.
“Then we your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise” (Psalm 79:13)
On A Pile of Rocks
A fourth-grade girl had her clothes, books and shoes in the bag. Her parents dropped her off to a quiet street, then convinced her to sit on a pile of rocks in front of an empty property. Afterwards, they watched her from a distance. She was uneasily waiting for what was to come.
Waiting throughout the church history has been a big deal. Micah speaks to a world bewildered by violence and problematic authorities. Jesus and the disciples encounter a manipulative emperor and arrogant religious leaders. The people of Israel and the early church wait for a liberation.
Waiting may create an anxiety as we feel uncertain. It’s harder due to the ongoing pandemic. I have lost some friends. Many friends and relatives lost their beloved ones without getting a chance to say goodbye, too. We have a strange Advent. A weird Epiphany.
Nevertheless, today’s readings are a reminder. God hears the cry of people of Judah. God sees the ruin of temple of Jerusalem.
(1) Expecting the unexpected. Advent brings us the good news. God visits us in the unpredictable way. The new ruler will rise from a small Bethlehem. He reigns with righteousness. He brings justice and peace. God empowers us to be the instruments.
(2) God lives with us. I am that 4th grader. A couple of minutes felt like days, although it was just a simple transition from my parents’ home to my mother’s big sister’s home, whom I have known since I was very little. It was not Advent season nor a holiday but practicing my family’s tradition to improve my health condition. God was there with me on a pile of rocks. He leads me to where I am today. He comforts my parents especially my mother when she grieves for her first two children. God protects the indigenous people and black communities who have been overwhelmed by the abusive authorities. God counts the vote. God reigns on every corner in this country.
Evangeline Pua, Pastor of Gereja Kristen Indonesian (GKI) in San Francisco. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1977. Graduated from the oldest ecumenical seminary in Indonesia. She is a full-time pastor in GKI. Being involved in raising awareness of ecological justice internationally since 2009. Her parents come from North and Central Sulawesi. Her husband comes from West Borneo. They and their two teenage children enjoy light travel. They have moved 7 times in Indonesia and Australia before. One day they hope to get their own house where they have their own chooks, pet a dog, have a fish pond (again) and a vegetable garden with compost bins and a wooden dining table where you might be their guest too one day.
Our Own Grapevines and Fig Trees
Sometime last fall, I noticed for the first time since moving into my apartment seven years ago that there was an apple tree in the back of the complex. I was so excited to see this. Growing up a city girl didn’t give me many opportunities to sample such fruit – just there, out in the open, available to anyone. Eating one of those apples was a spiritual experience. Somehow, my soul spoke, “God is providing for us even in the midst of this seemingly simple gesture.” This spiritual-apple-experience helped me to fathom a message about sustenance without bias, about hope for more abundance and the anticipation of living into future days knowing down deep that God already had a plan.
Fast forward to a year like no other filled with fright and unknown challenges, grief and anticipated grief, fighting for what you thought was already yours, and questioning loyalties, while trying to stay healthy and safe. The prophet’s words reverberate like the chiming of a bell.
When I move past the words so often heard in sermons or Bible studies – “beating swords into plowshares” and “studying war no more,” I get stuck on the part about everyone sitting under their own grapevine and fig tree and not being afraid. I am reminded of the divine provision of God’s bounty. The prophet’s words are transformed into an anthem waiting to be belted out today. It becomes a hopeful tune that affirms God’s intention; a nod of permission for me to look beyond the nations and their complicity in our everyday struggles for equality and equity; beyond selfishness and the broken promises of an economic master that doesn’t love us toward the promise of abundance that God has for each of us – with our own grapevine and fig tree.
And we yearn for a time in our society when it is recognized that we equally deserve to be seen, to be heard, to delight in liberation while we reach up to heaven, available and willing to fulfill the destiny of personhood breathed into us by the very breath of God. Until then, we must be hopefully vigilant, anticipating the perfection that God has for us upon Christ’s return.
With thanksgiving we pray for resilience. During this Advent time, we hold fast to your promise of provision and peace. Please undergird our faith with your steadfast love and unmerited grace as we venture forth together with humility and resolve. Amen
Ruth T. West is an ordained PC(USA) Minister of the Word & Sacrament. In addition to a Masters of Divinity (MDiv), Ruth holds an MBA, Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction and a Certificate in Trauma & Spiritual Care. She is currently Associate Director of Advanced Pastoral Studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary (University of Redlands) which facilitates the Doctor of Ministry program. As a Spiritual Director and Chaplain she has developed, prepared and presented spiritual, devotional and meditational practices mostly for groups. Ruth is continuing her ministry to people in transition by helping students, clergypersons and the greater community discern possible next steps in their ministry journey.