View this email in your browser ([link removed])
Dear friend, please enjoy this complimentary issue of The Living Word Plus ([link removed]) . TLW+ is a rich weekly resource curated by our editors to help you preach and plan worship.
Below you will find the coming Sunday's readings, along with reflections, exploratory articles, sermons, and classic texts from around the world to inspire you. You will also find an invitation to join other preachers tomorrow to discuss the lectionary texts.
December 12, 2021
Third Sunday in Advent
Year C
** Themes for the Week: joy, reconciliation, victory, anxiety, thanksgiving, peace, John the Baptist, vocation, repentance
------------------------------------------------------------
This Sunday’s Readings: Zeph. 3:14-20 ([link removed]) • Cant. 9 ([link removed]) • Phil. 4:4-7 ([link removed]) • Luke 3:7-18 ([link removed])
Preaching is permission to rejoice and exult, to sing and feel gladness, to feel safe and gathered in love, to rejoice and give thanks for new life in Christ. Preaching is praise. Good preaching is, God being our helper, beautiful, and it makes the world a better place. Read it all. ([link removed])
** Exploring the Texts
------------------------------------------------------------
Judgment and Mercy ([link removed])
“Zephaniah poured out the venom of divine judgment against King Josiah’s multinational idolatries. Everyone was implicated. He thus roared until he, or his devout redactor, grew exhausted with the foul smell of wrath. Joy broke through.”
Judgment and Life ([link removed])
“When John the Baptist comes with carping words and accusations, the people know the pattern and respond to it as a call to new life. Bear fruit that befits repentance! Indeed, judgment and hope were so closely connected that they became signs of God’s final reign. A final judgment would usher in the final victory, God’s king would come.”
Entering Into Joy ([link removed])
“John's words show that anyone may enter into what the other lessons promise by simple acts in ordinary life. He provides the electrifying message that the long-awaited, eagerly sought Messiah is indeed at hand. Thus the prophesied age of deliverance is poised to tum from vision to concrete fulfillment.”
** Preaching Today
------------------------------------------------------------
Jordan Hillebert: Rejoice! ([link removed])
“Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written by someone who was suffering, delivered by someone who was suffering, to be read by a church that was suffering. So how can Paul speak so freely and eloquently about joy? How could anyone in those circumstances be joyful?”
Julia Gatta: What Should We Do? ([link removed])
“John the Baptist takes the excuses we hide behind and flattens them. The real changes we need to make have to come from within. God can only sanctify us in the life we’re actually living — not in some dreamland we imagine would be easier.”
Anna Matthews: Being Real ([link removed])
“And this is where repentance really starts to happen, as we see our lives in the light of the love and goodness and truth and holiness of Jesus Christ, as he draws us ever more deeply into relationship with him. Repentance is about being real.”
** Classic Texts
------------------------------------------------------------
John Chrysostom: Surpasses All Understanding ([link removed])
“The peace of God which he has wrought toward men, surpasses all understanding. For who could have expected, who could have hoped, that such good things would have come?”
Jean Pierre de Caussade: Grasps the Hand of God ([link removed])
“Faith cuts through all these appearances and grasps the hand of God that keeps us alive. A faithful soul should walk on in confidence, where there is no prospect of sin, taking all these things as the various disguises of God, whose intimate presence at once alarms and reassures its faculties.”
John Keble: His Greatest Work of All ([link removed])
“The apostles looked back to the sayings of St. John and said to themselves, ‘Now we know their meaning, now we see how God has been gradually preparing us for his greatest work of all, the setting up of his kingdom by the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell in the souls and bodies of his people.’”
** Articles on Joy
------------------------------------------------------------
Sarah Puryear: Why ‘Joy to the World’ Isn’t a Christmas Carol ([link removed])
“The word of hope during Advent is that we know the end of the story; our King will bring a final and lasting justice and joy to our world. So consider this your priestly dispensation: to sing ‘Joy to the World’ during Advent; and may its words remind you that one day Jesus will rule the world with truth and grace and make known the wonders of his great love for us.”
Charles Browning: The Joy of Salvation — On Bob Ross as Evangelist ([link removed])
“The man loved painting and wanted other people to know the joy that comes with it. He made you believe that you, too, could paint just like him. And he did this by the sheer power of his own enthusiasm. Painting, for him, was good news that he wanted to share.”
Michael Fitzpatrick: Confession Leads to Joy ([link removed])
“Freedom comes when we acknowledge our sins and do not try to hide as Adam and Eve did in the garden. When we confess to the Lord, the psalmist simply says, ‘You forgave the guilt of my sin.’ It is for freedom that Christ came!”
Like what you're seeing? Subscribe to ([link removed]) TLW+ ([link removed]) for only $5 a month.
** Articles on Anxiety
------------------------------------------------------------
Podcast: A Practical Playbook for Anxiety ([link removed])
“In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Monique Reynolds offers practical approaches for dealing with anxiety while continuing to care well for others and yourself.”
G. Jeffrey MacDonald: Stress Compounded for Clergy in Pandemic ([link removed])
“‘I reminded myself,’ Drymon said, ‘what those great ascetical theologians of old, like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, talked about. Just keeping at it, even if you are in a period of spiritual aridity or coming into a dark night. I found that over a period of six weeks, I was able not only to stop the tide of a negative outcome for my own mental and spiritual health, but really come out the other side a bit stronger and more energized.”
Clint Wilson: Anxiety and the Cross ([link removed])
“Our identity is forged in love by the hammer of the Holy Spirit on the anvil of the cross, a cross where ultimately even anxiety itself has been put to death. And within this framework the body is not determined by the individual, but the individual is instead formed by the body of Christ.”
** Articles on John the Baptist
------------------------------------------------------------
Jeremy Bergstrom: Ember Days for All ([link removed])
“It’s no mistake the Church yokes one of these Embertides with John. Though he doesn’t make for polite company, there is no better role model for our clergy to follow than he as they ‘prepare the way of the Lord’ in the midst of the barren deserts of modern society and the human hearts that dwell therein.”
Garwood Anderson: John’s Advent Epiphany ([link removed])
“John was rather telling the story as it should go, though by interposing his offer of amnesty, he tells a more gracious version. But while he prepared the way of the Lord, he was not prepared for the ways of the Lord Jesus.”
David Widdicombe: Whose Authority, Whose Politics? John the Baptist’s Advent Warning ([link removed])
“Perhaps we could say that what the Baptist said does not matter as much as the fact that he said it, how he said it, to whom he said it, in whose name and by what authority he said it, and at what cost he said it.”
** Tuesday Conversation
------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Living Word staff for a group study of the lectionary texts:
Tuesday (12/7) at 2:00 ET / 1:00 CT
Zoom link:
[link removed] ([link removed])
Meeting ID: 822 3586 8176
Passcode: 920690
Want more?
Enjoy this resource through Christmastide for only $5 ([link removed]) !
============================================================
Copyright © 2021 The Living Church, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you have either opted in at our website, or you are a subscriber to The Living Church magazine or its products.
** Manage or cancel your Living Word Plus payment ([link removed])
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
[link removed]
