Creating Space | A Slow Christmas

Pastor Cameron opens Advent with an invitation to slow down and clear room in our hearts for Jesus this Christmas. Through the story of Mary and Martha, we're reminded that in the rush of the season, the better thing is simply being present with Him.

Luke 10:38-42 | additional: John 1:9-14

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Creators and Guests

Host

Cameron Lienhart

Cameron is the Senior Pastor of Conduit Ministries

What is Conduit Ministries?

We are all about helping people get closer to Jesus.
Sundays @ 9 AM & 11 AM - 120 Delaware Ave in Jamestown, NY

This week marks the first week in Advent. The word Advent comes from the Latin word Adventus and means coming. During the Advent season, we look back and celebrate the moment Jesus came into our world. But we also look forward in anticipation of the fact that one Jesus will come again, and when He comes, He will set all things right. Today we light the first candle of the Advent wreath, the candle of hope. We look towards Jesus as our surer and steadfast hope. With Christians around the world, we use this light to help us prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of God's Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. May we receive God's hope as we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 9-2. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has donned. Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, help us turn our eyes up from our current circumstances and look towards You. Prepare in our hearts a place of anticipation for the coming of Your Son. Grant in us the light of hope. May we see the world how You see it.

Help us to see beyond what is and help us to see what is to come. Grant us the courage to be lights of hope in a dark world. Grant us faith to pray confidently for those who are facing trials of various kinds. Help us to carry the hope of Your glory in our hearts. Set us firmly in the hope that You never disappoint, the living hope of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Oh, good morning, Conduit. How are you this morning? Okay. Well, welcome to the Christmas season here at Conduit. We're honored that you choose to spend your Sunday mornings with us. We've been praying for you, asking the Lord to speak in your life and your heart all of this week. And we trust that He will do so tonight or this morning as we open His Word and as we are faithful in hearing it and faithful in obedience. What, you know, Christmas is really probably more than any other time of the year and in any other occasion. It's a really nostalgic time, the time that we look forward to, that we anticipate and that we have a lot of expectations about what is going to happen during the season or at least what we want to happen during the season.

You can just call it out. What are some of the things that you kind of most look forward to or are looking for in the Christmas season? I heard it's two things. New socks, perfect. Yep. Spending time with family, yep, that's a great one. What else? What do you like to do? Pump, pump, oh my God. Who invited that guy? Pumpkin pie, he says, come on. Yes, baking of sugar cookies, eating of the sugar cookies. Thank you, Lorena. I just, where's Lorena at? Thank you. Christmas Eve service, yes, one of my favorite parts of the whole season is our candlelight Christmas Eve service here. What else? What else do you like? What do you do? What do you look forward to? Like, what is like when you think of Christmas, you're like, this is it. The Christmas lights, right? Of course. And it's, it's only white lights, right? If you think I have strong feelings about pumpkin pie and mac and cheese for Thanksgiving, wait till you hear my take on Christmas lights, okay? Snow, yeah, white Christmas, right? There are these things, okay, that even if they're not stated or we don't say them, we have kind of internally this sense of like, this is what would make the season for me.

Maybe sometimes we don't even actually know what that thing is. But we're always kind of looking for it and almost chasing it in a way, like, oh, it's the Christmas season. I hope I feel a certain way. I don't know what that feeling is that I don't even actually know what it is that I'm actually grasping for or going for. But man, it just feels like I should feel a certain way. And maybe it's the lights or maybe it's the snow or maybe it's the Christmas Eve service or the pumpkin pie. I want to propose to you this morning and really in all of the series in the next couple of weeks that the thing that we are looking for in the Christmas season is transcendence and meaning. We kind of attach things to it like the white lights or the snow, the white Christmases or the sugar cookies or the Christmas Eve service. But those are just kind of like the window dressing on what our soul is actually crying out for. This sense of meaning and this sense of otherness, something outside of us, something transcendent, something that exists that is bigger and greater and higher and more important and more significant

Than what we see and are experiencing in our current life. Authors, Christian writers, theologians for generations pretty much since the beginning of time have been writing about this core human longing that we have in us. This desire and this like pursuit of transcendence and meaning. Some of my favorites that really bring home this point. C.S. Lewis says this. He says, "We remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy." There's this desire in us. We are conscious of it. We feel it. But the more that we grab to the lights or the more that we grab to the Christmas traditions, the more that we grab for it, the more we recognize that thing in here is not being satisfied by anything that we're experiencing now. Tim Keller, a little bit more modern than C.S. Lewis, a pastor in New York City for quite a while, said this. He said, "Human beings cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity and hope. Yet nothing in this world gives us these things in a lasting way." And of course, your favorite theologian and mine, Hans Urs von Balthazar,

Says that the human heart yearns without knowing for whom it yearns. It is drawn by a beauty that it cannot yet behold. If you were to think about this reality and these really deep innate human longings and desires that we cannot naturally behold by anything of this world. It would kind of all be encapsulated. Probably I read some, maybe they're obscure to you theologians here, but almost everyone in any type of like Christian tradition has some familiarity with St. Augustine. And probably with this quote from the Confessions, he said, "You, God, have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." God has made us to truly pursue that which is transcended to have a longing for meaning, to have a longing for something outside of ourselves. And our hearts remain restless in that pursuit until they finally rest in the truth that the thing that we were searching for the whole time was God and God Himself. See, Christmas is a place where this innate search for transcendence for something else comes crashing down into the personal and the intimate.

No longer is our search and our longing for something out there that we can't really put our hands on or we can't really get a sense of what it is. No longer is our search for something transcendent out there, but now our search is for something that is right here in this moment. No longer out there, but right here. We are ultimately looking for Jesus. We are ultimately longing for the place where our heart finds the rest that it's always been searching for. It's easy to miss Him. It's easy to miss Jesus. Ironically, sometimes it's most easy to miss Him in the season meant to celebrate His coming. The Gospel of John chapter 1, John says this in John 1 verses 19 through 14. He was reflecting on the coming of Jesus, the incarnation, referring to Him both as the Word, but also as the light or the true light. And John says this, he says the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him.

He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent nor of a husband's decision or a human decision or a husband's will but born of God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only, who comes from the Father full of grace and full of truth. The light, the true light, the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. The thing in which the transcendent of longing of our souls has always been and always will look for. Stepped out of eternity past into eternity future that we may no longer see Him just as out there, but now we may experience Him right here, right with us. Listen, in Jesus Christ, the transcendent becomes imminent. All of that longing that existed out there now becomes a part of our lived experience here. Where it no longer becomes a longing or a thing that we can't really grasp, we just feel it in here.

Now it becomes a person who stands in front of us, offering us a gift of intimacy in life. And our search for transcendence can only be described as meaningless and fruitless until our hearts rest in and on Him. One of the ways that John describes Jesus is as a light. He says the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world here in 1 John 9. Now what is the implication here? What is the implication of John saying Jesus is the true light that is coming into the world to give light to every man? The implication here is that many a person has pursued a false light. A light that they hoped would maybe provide fulfillment, a light that probably they hoped maybe would provide for them wisdom or meaning or purpose, only to find that light that they were pursuing and looking after was more like a train in a tunnel than it was the thing that would bring them freedom and purpose. The famous scientist Christian Mann Blaise Pascal famously said that there is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator.

Do you feel that? Have you felt that? The struggle here is real. You would think that if you step outside of your own experience to say okay well if Jesus is the true light that brings light to every man as he's coming into the world and I can step out of my meaningless search for purpose in the things of this world and find it in Him, that must be a really easy decision and process to undergo. I think most of us in our lived experience would say yeah it's maybe not as easy in practicality as it is in theory or words on a page. Why would that be? We must be honest with ourselves and honest with the brokenness of creation. The whole of creation is writhing in the brokenness of sin and not only is the whole of creation kind of writhing in its own brokenness, but it's also egged on by the enemy of our souls that seeks to twist every good desire that we have for God into a desire that maybe we can try to fulfill on our own. Maybe in our work or with our family or by building reputation or being successful in whatever arena we want to be in. And so we have a creation that's broken and writhing and like just completely turned upside down.

And then we have an active enemy that is seeking to twist our desires into idolatrous desires. And then we maybe we have a little bit better understanding of why if the true light has come into the world to bring freedom to all men, it becomes difficult to see it or be seen by it. John goes on to say here in his gospel, "He, Jesus, was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." That's the picture of the struggle, right? He came, he was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world didn't recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. We run much of our lives not seeing, not knowing, not believing, not receiving the very thing, the very one that is our purpose, that is our fulfillment, that is our home. Yet John goes on to say in his gospel, "Yet to all who have received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children not born of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will but born of God."

The Christmas season certainly is representative of this internal desire to reach for, search for, look for what is transcended, that deep longing within our hearts. Our opportunity this morning and over the next few weeks is to make Christmas, is to intentionally make some decisions to say that Christmas will be for us the setting of our hearts to look and long for Jesus. To look and long for the one that brings light, to look and long for the one in whom our heart desires and was created for, to make space for and to receive Jesus. Remember John said, "To all those who receive him, he gave the right to become children of God." So the Christmas season becomes an opportunity for us intentionally to search for and seek out Jesus to make space in our lives that we may receive him as the gift that he was made to be. Part of making space to look for and long for Jesus is to clear out the old to make room for the new. One of the things that we're doing this these next few weeks as we've talked about in the last few weeks here is the Christmas toy drive downstairs, bringing in old slightly used toys and stuffed animals and books and puzzles and stuff like that.

We can be a blessing to the community here. And one of the ways that we communicate this to parents and every parent, almost every parent will come to appreciate this. We say things like this. It's like, "Okay, Christmas is coming. Your kids are likely to get a lot of toys. Wouldn't it be great if you could kind of purge the old stuff a little bit and get it out of your house and get rid of it so that you had room for when all the new stuff came?" Because we recognize internally that just piling new stuff on top of old stuff makes everything just more chaotic. And this is no different in a season of setting your heart to long and look for Jesus, that as we make space in our lives to look for him and to long for him, that we must be intentional about clearing out the old so that the new can come. Our hearts must become little Sabbath factories, clearing out breaths, clearing out moments, clearing out days of space for the transcendent that has become imminent to take up residence in us.

To show us that his way is easy and that his burden is light. Unfortunately, it is often our practice or it is often the case that we fill our Christmas seasons with so much that we don't often leave any room for the kind of rest that connects us to Jesus, who is our source of rest and meaning. Anyone else kind of make a habit out of celebrating the coming of Jesus with this breakneck pace that leaves you sliding into New Year's more worn out and weary than filled with the presence and joy of the one that has come to save? Any of you need a vacation from Christmas at the end of Christmas because you're like, I just can't do this pace any more. Listen, the irony of that should be shocking and should be corrective. The very season in which we are to make room for the coming of the one that brings ultimate rest is the very season that we pack so stinking full that we just can't wait for it to be over. So this is not this is not a new phenomena where we where we create so much busyness in our lives as a way to like bring meaning or search for longing, thinking that the activity will bring fulfillment.

This is not a new problem. In fact, this is a an old problem. This is a happened in the life and ministry of Jesus type of problem. Many of you will be familiar with this story from Luke chapter 10 story of Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha says this as Jesus and his disciples were on their way. He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at Jesus feet, listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me. Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken from her. Did you know that you can be so busy serving Jesus that you miss him altogether? You can be so busy doing good things, doing great things even that don't keep Jesus as the focal point of your life that actually become bad things.

Good things and even great things in the name of Jesus that take your focus off of Jesus actually become idolatrous things that pull you away from Jesus. The reality here is that it's not that Martha didn't love Jesus. She was seeking to serve him because she loved him. It's not that she didn't love, it's that she was distracted in his presence. I just wonder what might she have missed in her distractedness? What might Jesus have invited her to experience if she stopped and sat in his presence? What might Jesus be inviting you, us, to experience in his presence that we are too distracted in this season to notice? Notice what happens next in the story. It's actually something that happens in the heart and soul of Martha. When she is so distracted by the busyness of serving Jesus or serving in Jesus name that she misses the person of Jesus altogether, something interesting happens in her own soul. It's subtle and it's easy to miss. She says this, she came up to him and this is verse 40. She came up to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care? Can you hear the tone in this? Can you hear Martha's tone? Don't you care?

Don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me." Listen, the lack of affirmation that Martha received for her busy hustling and bustling created bitterness and resentment in her heart when it wasn't affirmed for what she hoped it would be. See, we think that all of our serving will do something internally in us that only his real presence can do. So when we don't experience what we think we should internally by serving him with our whole heart, bitterness and accusation comes out. Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all of this alone? Tell her to help me. See, Martha was judging her faithfulness on the intensity of her busyness. And she desperately wanted Jesus to affirm that her busyness equaled her faithfulness. But all Jesus was able to say is that her busyness was exactly the thing that was keeping her from experiencing the better thing that was available. His actual presence. Verse 41, "But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but only one thing is necessary.'"

I wonder how many of us would describe the current landscape of our minds, of our hearts, and our lives in general as anxious and troubled. Jesus continues, "Mary has chosen the good portion and it will not be taken from her." What was Jesus' implicit point here? Jesus was not going to be. He refused to be co-opted into blessing the decision of Martha to be distracted, anxious and troubled in service of doing good things. Presence with him was always the better way. But listen, since I'm so busy, I really just focus on quality moments and quality time with Jesus. The moments that I do have in between the breakneck pace of my life and calendar and schedule, I make sure those moments are like gold. Listen, this is a farce. Do not get it twisted. Quality time is the fruit of quantity of time, not the other way around. Quality time is not somehow a substitute for quantity of time. Do we want quality time with the ones that we love in intimacy with Jesus? Absolutely. We want quality of time. But listen, quality of time does not happen on accident. Quality of time comes through intimacy built in quantity of time. There is no shortcut to quality.

What if this Christmas season we took, you took, we all took intentional steps to clear our schedules of unnecessary busyness so that we have the space, the literal space to sit just with, not to just sit with the story of Christmas, but to sit with the God of Christmas. To sit with the person of Christmas. What would it look for you right now? It's not, listen, it's not even December yet. What would it look for you right now to look forward to the Christmas Eve service here? What would it look for you to look forward to the Christmas Eve service having in mind the heart, the spirit, and the demeanor that you want to carry into it and then order your weeks and days towards that goal? How do you want to show up to the Christmas Eve service here? War down, anxious, tired of the season already, just about over it, arguing with the family in the car, trying to get out of the house in time. Rather than letting Christmas just happen to us, what if we approached it with a sense of intentionality?

Here's two questions. This is what we're going to end with. We're going to invite the worship team back up. Here's two questions that I'm going to be asking myself the next few days, talking with my wife about and then making some intentional decisions about our schedule and our calendar so that I can, with integrity and faithfulness, answer this question. Who do I want to be on Christmas Eve? Do I want to be wore out, grumpy, stressed out, anxious, tired, ready for the night to be over, ready for the season to be ended? Just hoping for some time off? Who do I want to be on Christmas or do I want to be filled with a sense of awe and wonder and hope and joy and love and peace that tonight we get to go celebrate the coming of the one who brings all of those things to us? Who do I want to be? Because it starts here, right? It starts in your own heart, right? And then equally, who do we want to be as a family on Christmas Eve? Who do we want to be? Not just how I want to show up, how do we want to show up?

How am I not just preparing my heart? How am I helping to prepare this person's heart and this person's heart and this person's heart? How am I arranging and being intentional about the trajectory of my life this next month that I show up on Christmas Eve and my family shows up on Christmas Eve, looking and longing for the one that brings rest? This is our prayer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful for your word. We are grateful for the ways in which your word speaks truth to us. Father, what we're asking now is that the truth of the word spoken over us tonight or this morning would lead us into places of intentionality and obedience. That we would not be people who just let the season of Christmas happen to us, but that in an intentional way, we would set our hearts towards longing and transcendence found in Jesus and Jesus alone. Heavenly Father, would you come and meet with us this season? Point our hearts to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you that your love for us in Jesus Christ was greater than the depth of our shame, that your grace was higher, that your arms were wider.

Lord, settle our hearts this morning and this season to be still, to sit at your feet and to behold you, Lord. That we would put off the way of the world that equates busyness with faithfulness. And we would put on the way of Mary, who sat with you and received you. We thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. Condo, I want to remind you that in the foyer out there on the rack, there are these devotionals that Pastor Luke has written to go along with our Christmas season. Please grab one for yourself. There's also a kid's version with coloring pages out there. Please make sure you grab one for your kids as well. You are loved. Have a great week. We'll see you next time.

Thank you.