Advent - What is God Like?

A stunning sermon for Advent 3 by Lawrence Moore of The Windermere Centre.

If you like this:

Advent brings the question of what God is like into sharp focus. Advent is about waiting for God. The underlying supposition is that we will be waiting eagerly and anxiously - that God’s advent will be a good thing; that it’s something we’d obviously want. Yet if we could persuade people that God was genuinely just in the wings, about to appear, most people would regard that as thoroughly Bad News. In fact, it would absolutely ruin their Christmas! And why? Because the God they anticipate arriving is to be feared or disliked or appeased or grovelled to. Nobody wants to see the person who dislikes them the most appear - especially when that person has absolute power over them! If God doesn’t like you, and God has the power to consign you to hell, or do whatever other sorts of things God might do to express disapproval, disappointment and dislike of you, you will not be anxious to see God!

And for goodness’ sake, let’s not shake our heads regretfully, or tut at people’s capacity to get things so wrong: the reason they think like that about God is because that’s the message they’ve got from the Church! And if not actively, they’ve at least heard nothing to act as any strong counter or corrective.

You'll like this

And for all of you who are reading this thinking: 'But people need to know that God is angry with them' - No, they don't.

Catching Up on Sermon Blog

I've been catching up on posting my sermons. Links to the last three are given below:

Advent 4: When We Cannot Save Ourselves

Covenant Prayer Sunday: Covenant. New School

Epiphany: Epiphany Story

Preaching about Sin and Repentance

A cyber-pal of somewhat long-standing (I think I can claim that, Steve?), Steven Manskar has written the first post I've ever read on the subject of The Church Needs to Hear about Sin and Repentance that I think I've ever agreed with.

In Christian cyberspace, my impression is that the people who talk about the subject of 'preaching about sin' are generally talking about individual sins that someone else commits that (allegedly) a good bit of willpower and moral fibre could solve. Let's face it, sex, drugs or - no, not rock'n'roll - drink.

Steve's talking about one of the sins that our society commits where the blame lies squarely on Western society's values rather than on someone else's alleged lack of willpower. Good post. Go read it.

Sermon - Waiting and Hoping

I have posted today's sermon on my sermon blog: Waiting and Hoping.