Sermon: "Let Us Build a House: Invited Home", Christmas Eve Message (December 24, 2021)

(This is the fifth sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The others can be found here, here, and here - the third was given by a guest preacher.)

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December is a month full of invitations. We receive them, of course, but we also extend them. In fact, around Christmas, we sometimes find ourselves inviting people to our home who otherwise wouldn’t “make the cut”. Normally, bringing your work home with you is stressful, but in December, some people find themselves inviting their coworkers to their annual Christmas party. The phenomenon of “Christmas Home Tours” inspires people to open up their homes to hundreds of complete strangers who want to admire their festive decorations. Several colleges have programs where locals can “adopt” a student who isn’t able to travel back to their own home for the holidays. In fact, someone from this very community (who shall remain nameless) admitted to me that his sister used to bring random people home for Christmas when she was in college, which he always hated. But for many people, that’s just what you do at Christmastime.

Sermon: “Let Us Build a House: Seeking Sanctuary”, Exodus 15:1-4, 10-13, 17-21/Luke 1:46-55 (December 19, 2021 -Advent 4)

(This is the fourth sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The others can be found here and here - the third was given by a guest preacher.)

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Throughout Advent, we’ve been examining the process of building a house to help us better understand how we should be working towards God’s kindom: the sense of homesickness that inspires us to start building, the importance of a strong foundation that allows us to build something taller and sturdier than we otherwise could, and the understanding that, at least as far as God is concerned, our house needs to have enough room to include everyone. But in all the dreaming and planning and striving we’ve been doing over the past few weeks, there’s one fact about building that we haven’t yet addressed. The truth is, no matter how hard we work to build it, it doesn’t matter how big or tall or wonderful a house is if it isn’t SAFE.

Sermon: “Let Us Build a House: Laying the Foundation”, Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16/Luke 1:57-66 (December 5, 2021)

(This is the second sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The first can be found here.)

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More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare put pen to paper and asked, “What’s in a name?” His character, Juliet Capulet, was trying to convince herself that names really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things…but unfortunately, she didn’t actually have much support for her hypothesis. Not only did her family hold a dramatically different opinion on the matter, but pretty much everyone else in the world would disagree with her, too. Across time and cultures, names have always been central to human identity, and we’ve always put great care into choosing them. Even surnames, which had been passed along according to the same archaic customs for centuries, have recently been subject to more careful discernment than ever before. Because, contrary to what Juliet would have us believe, the fact is that our names DO matter.