Advent
December 16, 2015

Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10:5-10

Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
   but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings
   you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”
   (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).’ –Hebrews 10:5-7

Since their beginning people have sensed the presence of the supernatural. It started as a need to appease nature in the hope that nature would be kind. It continued as a need to establish order in society identifying acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and somehow tying the rightness and wrongness of actions to a relatedness with the supernatural. It grew into the age dubbed modernity and peoples’ having skills at self-determination and knowledge sometimes thought to be beyond the need for the supernatural. Now we struggle with what we call postmodernity and the how’s and if’s of the supernatural.

Our scripture today outlines one such shift in thinking about the supernatural that we who follow Jesus Christ have acknowledged. It is the transition from the need to offer burnt offerings to appease the Gods to the coming of a Savior who established a different way to relate to God fully acknowledging the overriding importance of love in relationship to God and in relationship with other people. While we acknowledge it, we struggle to live it. If we learn to live it, I think we would find that we have been called as co-participants in Christ’s service of love. Actually God’s people were trying to figure out how to love one another thousands of years ago when burnt offerings were common. Called to do the uncommon act of love seems to demand an interdependence with God even in times like these.

Prayer: God, as civilization changes, we your people have a greater and greater need for your presence in our lives. You are indeed the vine and we are the branches (John 15:5) nurture us in your love and prepare us for our role in furtherance of your Kingdom in the midst of postmodernity. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.