You probably know this about me, but for those that don't, Advent
is my absolute favorite time of the year and it just so happens
this is my favorite Sunday of the year.
This is the the Sunday of love as we covered, and it is a great
opportunity that Cole has given me to preach to you guys this
Sunday. So I just have a maybe one of
the most important questions to ask you.
What is love, baby? Don't hurt me?
Is it a book that's long and boring?
Is it more than a feeling? The truth is, this is one of the
most tired questions that humanity has asked and we've
asked it forever. In all genres of music,
literature, philosophy, just in community.
We all ask what is love? And we keep asking that
question. Just like I listed off a few
Boston, Hadaway, The Beatles, Bee Gees, White Snake, and the
Magnetic Fields all ask some form of this question.
And not just in the last like 50 or 60 years, but so do we, and
so is all of humanity. It isn't.
It is intrinsic in many senses to the human mind.
What is love? And equally important, am I
loved? This question is well trodden
because we all want to know. I want to know you want to know
all of us together, we we want to know this question both
independently but communally. And we all not just want to know
it, but we want to feel it. We all want to be loved
similarly, and sorry guys, we've been down this road as well.
Dante saw fit to explore the same question.
So just to set the stage because it's one of my favorite scenes
in literature ever, Dante is in heaven.
He just got done getting asked by Peter what is faith and by
James what is hope? And now he is being questioned
by John, the beloved apostle. And of course, John is going to
ask Dante of the three cardinal virtues, what is love?
And I'm just going to quote a small portion here.
I don't have it up, so just listen to me.
So this is now John speaking to Dante.
But tell me too, if you feel other chords draw you toward
him, that's God, so that you voice aloud all the teeth by
which this love grips you. And then Dante internalizes the
holy intent of Christ's eagle. I love that he calls John
Christ's eagle the apostle. John Christ's eagle was not
hidden. I indeed was made aware of what
he would most have My words declare.
This is John speaking to Dante, and Dante realizing what John
has been getting at the whole time.
It's a little hard to picture, but at this time, because of
John's radiance in reflecting God's love, Dante literally goes
blind. So he like can't see at this
point and he's freaking out and this guy is speaking to him and
he realizes it's John. And while he's blind, John
questions Dante in more verbose ways than this, but simply, what
is love, Dante? What is love?
Frontier? What is love?
And we are going to answer that question.
However, I would invite you with me to put a pause on that
narrative. The significance of Dante's
answer is earned, and Dante spends a lot of time and two
other books, The Inferno or Hell and Pugatorio or Purgatory,
getting to a place where he can comfortably answer that
question. So we as a church have to do
some legwork and earn it as well.
Because I am not Dante and we are not about 70 cantos into the
Divine Comedy already. For our text today, we're going
to be looking at a text that seemingly is not about love at
all. In fact, it feels emotive.
Lee, if you hear it when I say it, a little mismatched for this
Sunday, and that's good. That's very good.
It's a text laden with shame, with guilt and a series of
actions that affect us, us being Christians, Frontier Church, but
also us corporately in the most vast sense you can imagine, all
of humanity. We are going back to the very
infancy of humanity where it all began.
So if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter
3. And please rise, whether in body
or spirit, for the reading of His word should have it up
behind me as well. And I'm sorry, we are reading
all of it. It's a long 1.
Buckle up. Hi, Florence.
Hi, honey. All right.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the
field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat
of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the
serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is
in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest
you die. But the serpent said to the
woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat
it, eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she
took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her
husband who was with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they
were naked. And they sewed fig leaves
together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden
in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of
the garden. But the Lord called to the man
and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound
of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I
hid myself. He said, Who told you that you
were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of
which I commanded you not to eat?
The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me
the fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the
woman, What is this that you have done?
The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate.
The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done
this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts
of the field. On your belly you shall go, and
dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and I will and
between your offspring and her offspring.
He shall bruise your head and your and you shall bruise his
heel. To the woman.
He said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing and
pain. You shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over
you. And to Adam, he said, Because
you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of
the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat it.
Cursed is the ground because of you in pain.
You shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you
shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you
return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are
dust, and to dust you shall return.
The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother
of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam
and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of
us, and knowing good and evil now, lest he reach out his hand
and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.
Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to
work the ground from which he was taken.
He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden he placed the
cherubim and a flaming sword that turned away or turned every
way to guard the way of the tree of life.
His word is good in Holy Church. You may be seated.
I'm going to pray really quick. Heavenly Father 1st, I want to
thank you for this opportunity. And a pastor remembered a
conversation five years ago of what this Sunday means to me.
But it's a challenging it's a challenging Sunday.
It's a challenging season for many of us, not just this year.
Advent in general. So God work in US stubborn
gladness, joy, peace and love in lives, worlds and experiences
that seem tumultuous and many reasons to not be joyous, to not
be glad in this season create in US such a a a frustratingly
stubborn persistence to sing your praise.
Lord, I pray for everyone here in the many known and unknown
problems that despite our sentiments and the truth of
those difficulties, that we would joyously sing your name
this week, that we would be stubborn because of your Spirit
to worship You when we don't feel like it.
That's your son's name. I pray.
Amen. This Advent season, the theme we
have been working on, and I just said is stubborn gladness and
how Advent answers the pangs, pains and worries of mental
health or mental frustrations. And for our final Sunday before
Christmas, I want to show you Frontier Church, how Advent
combats shame. If you are a note taker, let me
reopen this. Sorry guys.
If you are a note taker, you can make note that there are two
types of shame that humanity experiences, and they're both
present here. The first one is ontological
shame, and that's a really big theological or philosophical
term, so please everyone say it with me.
Ontological one more time, ontological, one more time,
ontological. That is a big philosophical term
that just means being the inner self, the most philosophical
core of yourself. That is ontological shame or
shame of being that is linked to the shame of humanity, and we
all experience it equally. Regardless of creed, regardless
of how awesome you are at being a parent or a kid or being
single, you can't escape this shame.
And it's present here in Genesis.
It's present from the immediacy and it is generated when we see
Adam and Eve defied God from the instruction he gave them not to
eat this fruit in the prior chapter in Genesis 2 because of
this. This is the shame of sin and it
all started here in this text in them defying God.
When Adam and Eve defied God and consume the fruit, humanity,
that's all of us were marred by the that choice.
And we have all been marked by this one action.
And it is a mark that altered our being ontologically.
We can't escape it. So we think it is a shame of
Adam defying God and it is our shame too.
And the cost of this shame, the choice that was made here
initially in Genesis, is eternal, the first sin against
God. It is an eternal shame from
which we seemingly cannot escape, and because of this we
see the other two type or the other type of shame and its
consequences present. We see the initial ontological
shame, the first turning from God that affects all of us, and
then we see the consequential or active shames, the shame of the
choice and making choices in shame, realizing they are naked,
clothing themselves a response to a perceived wrong or concern.
And that is the second type of shame.
It's shame of sinful action and consequence.
Firstly, as a consequence of that first sin, all of these,
these shames of action come from that first shame and that we as
a species know this as sin and unfortunately we function in it.
Our daily actions mimic the first action of defiance against
God. We lash out, we disobey, we
curse, we kill, we harm, and we are aware, like they were of
those actions. Just like Adam and Eve who sin
and become aware of their state, so much so that they try to
cover it up and hide it from God.
We too experience the daily consequences of our flight from
God, both in being, but then in the choices that we make.
That first and secondary sense of shame.
Look at the text God, as God is dictating these punishments of
Adam and Eve and of the serpent for turning against them, for
turning against the good to Eve. There's pain in childbirth and a
desire for the husband. I don't want to spend too much
time on this, but the the, the Hebrew word is teshuka.
It's actually a really complicated word.
It would be nice to flatten it and just say look at Genesis 3
and Genesis 4 with Cain. This word is used.
This desire is negatively implicated.
Can't really do that. It's not that simple.
But to say in Song of Solomon where it is used positively, the
Hebrew word seems to be dictated by context.
And here one of the consequences of Eve, because it's in negative
connotation, is that this desire is is more than like a a a
normal or a non sinful desire. It isn't good.
And the context dictates that not just the word like we do
here. Sometimes it's a preferred
imbalance or denial of unity. And to the man, this consequence
of this shame, this action, this ontological state, this change.
Now he must labor in the very earth fights against him,
thistles and thorns. He will fight to survive, and
the very things that nourish him will strike against him until he
returns to the ground that's fighting him.
So you know, dust to dust you will return from whence you
came, but the whole time you must wrestle with it to live.
And then he has to be taken by the thing that he had to wrestle
with. It's a losing battle, that shame
and consequence of that sin that we all equally experience.
So to put this chapter and I, you know, it's really difficult
because it is such a well well known and enriched chapter.
But just to put it in scope here with the shame of this, what we
see, beloved, is a waterfall, a cascade of first cause and
effect for man, the the shame of original sin that Mars us all,
Adam and Eve eating of the fruit, changing the autological
being of man to that of sinful, A sinful state.
The next cascade, the deluge, continues, Adam and Eve's shame
in awareness for their wrongdoing, the shame of
actions, and then finally, because of the shame of
wrongdoing and our new state, their new state, there are
consequences, individual consequences for those first two
shames, and we also experience consequence for that shame and
those shames. We experience them to this day
on top of our own consequences. In that secondary category, when
you sin, there are consequences to your shame that are in real
life. If you, you know, yell at your
spouse, there are consequences to wrongly handling how you
communicate with the person you love.
If you steal, there are supposed sometimes they are not, but
there are consequences for theft.
There are consequences for everything that we do against
God that is wrong. And we all carry these shames
and these consequences in response to what happened here
in Genesis in the garden, that same cascade.
We experience it in real time, even though it is across time
from us. I'm sorry, that's really dense
for for Advent. So I promise, and I ask you guys
to hold on because if you are wondering like I was Casey,
what's love got to do with it? Another song quote.
Hold on because I think when we enter Advent church, a lot of
us, and that's myself, bring shame.
Hi Julian into the celebration, see you buddy.
It is important that we reconcile the garden because for
many of us today, see you buddy. Today our voices are soft, my
voice was soft, our thoughts church are clouded and our self
loathing is at an all time high this season.
Why, you may think to yourself, I don't deserve to celebrate.
I was a monster. I berated my spouse or maybe
even struck them. I was a glutton or I acted in
lust and cheated. I acted in hate.
I struck my brother or sister. I hate myself.
My life does not warrant the warmth and volume of the Advent
season. God, I can't feel the warmth.
You may be thinking, Casey, you don't have to talk about the
gardener shame. I know the shame.
Well, I'm in the shame. I barely want to be here.
I don't think I deserve it this season.
I wish it were quiet and I wasn't expected to sing.
And beloved, my response to you is that I think and have thought
those same words this morning all week.
All season and it is my favorite season and I I wrestle with that
year after year. I wrestle with the irony of this
being my favorite season. I love Advent more than any
other time and sometimes I don't think I should celebrate.
I am ashamed. I am naked and realizing it like
Adam and Eve did in the garden. I have sinned against God.
What do we do? Frontier Church.
I don't want to sing. I'm embarrassed for all the
wrong that I do. So what do we do?
Well, tis the season. And I would contend that that is
precisely the point of Advent. Advent is God's final and
perfect contention against our myriad shames, both ontological
and active shames. Advent is God's final and
perfect contention against everything that went wrong in
the garden that affects us all today, and it answers not only
the problem of the garden, but the continued problems that we
experience. It combats those sentiments that
would prevent us from worshipping today.
To change pace a little bit, you'll remember in the opening I
talked about John the Apostle asking Dante what is love baby,
don't hurt me. We are going to let Dante answer
that question because I believe it is very important for
reconciling our shame. So to go back, Don or John asked
Dante who's blind by the brilliance of of John's
faithfulness in heaven, what is love?
And there's a little preamble response, but I want to read a
few lines of John's response here because I think I think it
is really beautiful and I think it is where our hearts posture
should be an advent. Because John, remember he had
gone through hell, he had seen people working through
purgatory. And I'm not saying his scope of
what those look like is real, but the sentiment of knowing
hell exists, of working and failing.
He's seen all of that. He's seen the effect and
experiences and acted in the effects of the garden like we
have. And when John asked him what is
love, Dante finally responds. My love results from all those
things whose bite can bring the heart to turn to God, the
world's existence and mine, the death that he sustained, that I
might live, and that which is the hope of all believers, as it
is my hope together. Sorry, that's one of my favorite
things ever written in any language.
Do you see that church? Do you see Dante's definition of
love is generated and based on Jesus Christ?
It's based the whole conception of what love is to Dante is
based on the life of Jesus Christ.
I know he says the death, but we include the incarnation.
It's assumed in the text God made flesh for us to save us.
The answer to what is love church is what Russell said.
God is love and he came to save us.
That is the genesis of love. If the genesis of our shame is
found in Genesis 3, the genesis of love and ultimate conqueror
of that shame would be the birth of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.
It would be the word of God become flesh to save us.
To Athanasius, a church father who was kicked out of the church
a few times, his nickname is Contra Mundum.
In Latin that means against the world.
Because when the church was straying away from the truth, he
kept fighting for the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Famously his book on the Incarnation.
In the beginning, he says that the incarnation is the central
and most pivotal act of love in time.
In all of time, the incarnation is the most pivotal and singular
act of love by which all other love is defined.
And God did that for us. He said it was God's focal point
of perfect love that conquered death and corruption.
It conquered our shame, both shames, that being shame,
ontological shame, and the day-to-day shame.
To continue in the same thought, Carl Bart famously described the
incarnation in the beginning of his commentary on Romans, which
is a mammoth but very worth your time, he said.
Liz, hang on, you'll like this one because it's math related.
He said. In geometrical terms, imagine
all of creation as a fixed and perfect circle.
So there is a start and an end. As much as we can infinitely
imagine through all of time creation, it is fixed in time.
That is a circle. And God being an infinite line
of perfection, truly in the sense of a line, goes on in both
directions forever. That is Infinity beyond your
imagination, and the incarnation is where on like one pixel the
Infinity of perfection and goodness intersects time, and in
that one drop corrects and perfects the entire circle, Carl
Bart said. That is the incarnation of
Christ in time. It is the thing that makes the
circle of time good and loved. God saw the shame and
consequences of the garden and said I will save you.
Why I am ashamed, I feel horrible.
God, don't you, don't you understand?
You can't save me. I have sinned.
I am naked in the garden. Cast me out and God said, I know
and I will love you, Church. Think of John 316 For God so
loved the world that he sent His one and only begotten Son to
save him. That is the love of the
incarnation. It has conquered the shame of
the garden and all of your shames, That initial ontological
shame that changed all of humanity, the trajectory from
that one point. All of us changed through all of
time, and then all of the myriad of shames of daily sinning
against God. The incarnation obliterated
that. God's faithfulness and love
obliterated that. Of course, church, the angels
would sing in Luke 2. Of course they would sing.
God looked at a world full of shame and said, I will love you
more than the shame that damns you.
That is why we sing so loud at Advent.
That's why when you are feeling like you don't want to sing at
Advent, I don't want to sing. I don't have the voice, the
capacity. I'm tired.
Lord, I'm upset with myself. It doesn't mean we ignore that.
That doesn't go away. Advent is not about ignoring
things. Advent is about a course,
perfect course correction and the opportunity to Despite that
experience, sing anyway by the grace of God to say that we are
complex creatures in that despite I am still struggling,
God, you have enabled me through your incarnation to sing in
spite of that complexity, that struggle.
That is why we sing so loud, because God came knowing the
shame and the sin of humanity. And he said I love you to all of
humanity. He said I love you to every
church. He said I love you to us
frontier. He said I love you to me Casey.
He said I love you despite your shame.
So Church, do not let shame rule you in this season.
It's not easy. You're going to struggle.
But the incarnation, his coming empowers you.
There is hope, there is joy and there is peace ultimately
because of his love in the incarnation at Advent.
So Church claw fight tooth and nail dragging across concrete to
worship with your full and present heart this week.
Not saying it's going to be easy, I'm saying He is worthy
and He empowers you to do this. Despite the myriad shames that
we experience because of Advent. The very shame that you
experienced that marred your very soul has been conquered.
It was course corrected and God becoming flesh.
Jesus Christ has come and loved you so perfectly in his life and
death that you can be free of those shames.
That doesn't mean that we are free of repentance,
reconciliation, that we don't make mistakes.
Of course, when you mess up, confess, ask for forgiveness,
but it means that we are no longer drags in that sin.
It no longer owns and conquers us because of the incarnation in
this season. And really, to be honest, every
other season of life, my charge to you, Frontier Church, is to
live a life that is abstract of the permeating, festering shame
of sinful existence. Repent, forgive humbly when
somebody sins against you and is in shame, and also forgive
joyfully. Love well even to death as
Christ did, Dante says at the end of this answer.
A little while later when reflecting on Jesus, Dante's
response is really practical. He says I love according to the
good he gave to them. Dante and reflecting on Jesus
life and death says that his response as a believer is to
love like Jesus did in the incarnation, living and dying
according to how Jesus did to love others.
And I think about that in Advent as we love and die and fight not
only to worship but to serve others despite our attire.
Dante is ultimately saying church I will love according to
the work God laid out to love them.
And remember in Genesis 3, if it all cascaded to a mess that
seemed improbable, unfixable, goodness sake, life altering in
the most literal sense to where we were all dead before sin, God
laid out a plan in the incarnation that we celebrate an
advent to fix that shame. So Dante's response and our
response should be, I will love because God loves and has loved
me. That is the love that conquered
shame church. That's why this is my favorite
Sunday of the whole year, the incarnation God coming down and
saying, I will love you so perfectly that I will conquer
your shame. I will save you from that first
sin that we all experience, and I will empower you and save you
from the multitude of pains that you have committed against me.
Still, church, encourage each other.
Seek out somebody struggling. Say, I know the pain doesn't go
away, but I'm going to sing next to you.
It's still messy because of those secondary shames.
Even if you know we're saved from that ontological shame that
was experienced in the garden as believers because of Jesus
Christ, it doesn't mean all the problems just immediately go
away. We still sin.
Do not let your brother or sister hide in shame.
Encourage them to repent and invite them to be joyous this
season. For God loves us.
He loves you and it's called them out of shame.
He's called us all out of death and sin through his birth, this
Advent season that we celebrate, and his death and his perfect
life. So this week, Church, as we
March towards Christmas, do not hide in the dark for fear of the
wickedness or shame of yourself that we all inherited because of
the story of Genesis 3. God has come for you and He's
called you out of the shadows into the warmth of his love and
light. Sing loud despite yourself.
Like I said, we are complex creatures.
I know well how feelings can manipulate how you act.
Church act in spite of negative feelings because of God's love
in the incarnation. When your soul is weary and
burdened with shame, call out to God with a loud voice in joy and
He will answer. God's love has defeated the
shame of the Garden Church, and it has saved you.
That is this Sunday when we celebrate the love of Advent.
It is God's perfected love in the Incarnation at the very end
of the Divine Comedy. Forgive me, I've already spoiled
some of it. I'm going to actually spoil the
end of it. Many of you won't be able to see
this, but I actually have a phone case.
That's Gustav Dorres, the Empyrion Dante looking at a
cloud of angels and circling the Trinity as he's about to look at
it's very famous wood etch, burned wood etch painting by the
French artist Gustav Dore for the Divine Comedy a few 100
years ago. But Dante is permitted after
some more testing to look at the Trinity and it's at the very end
of the Divine Comedy and it's, I love this section so much and
Will is here and he's heard me talk about it.
So I'm sorry, Will. I think it is one of the best
expressions of pushing language to it's very mechanical limit
and creative limit to, and this is an imperfection.
But for a human to try and describe the experience in human
form, what it's like to look at God in perfection, not the human
perfection, but God in perfection and human trying to
imagine it. And he does this through what
are called descending elevated similes.
That's a poetical term that is for Dante, where every time he's
going to try to describe God, he's going to use a simile to
liken himself to smaller and smaller things.
So every time he looks at God, God gets bigger and bigger.
The picture gets more perfect, but he can't understand it
because he's human. So it's like God is so big, but
I am like an infant, an infant suckling at night.
Like he just keeps lowering himself every time he talks
about God. I am an Ant who cannot fathom.
And it's really beautiful mechanically because it
describes the awesomeness of God's perfection and love.
And he gets to glimpse it. And at the very end, I always
think about this in Advent, the famous line, the last thing
Dante records before he's like, my mind is unraveling.
I can't handle this. I'm not going to remember it
all, but it's so beautiful and I feel God's love.
His last reflection is that in seeing the Trinity loving and
loving him and everything, he feels his will aligning to God's
and the love that comes from God all the way through time.
And reflecting on God's love, he says the same love that moves
the sun and the other stars. And I think about that, that God
in his power and in his might, looked at us shameful, sinning
creatures and became like us, humbled himself, incarnated into
the form of a baby, the very Maker and mover of the cosmos of
things much greater in scope than us, became the form of a
child, absconded that power because he loves you.
Church. That is the Advent season.
Go in peace this season, worshiping loudly, dealing with
complex emotions, and choosing to the best of your ability to
love, to be loved, and to receive the warmth of the Advent
season. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I petition you today because it is difficult to
celebrate this season. I can think of many, many
reasons, Namely, one of our our congregants who's in Iowa City
just texted a couple of friends with appendicitis this morning.
He's now in the hospital. So we pray for Josh Benton as he
had to go into the hospital this morning.
They're already dealing with so much.
God preserve him. I pray for Lauren, for strength,
for Lauren to worship and to experience love this season.
They are fighting for joy Church.
May we fight well alongside them.
I pray for all the unknown pains and pangs this season, all the
shames that would prevent us from loving and worshipping you.
There's so many I can think of, so many personal excuses why I
shouldn't sing one. God crush that in me.
Make me and a light of your love, make me stubborn with
gladness that is not conquered by all the pains that would pull
me away from you, the evil choices that I have made.
You are worthy of worship. God, thank you for the
opportunity to worship and to love you and for sending your
Son to save us. It's your son's name, I pray.
Amen.