“Advent, this ‘getting ready’ season, can so easily become a season that is all about doing. Mostly, we get ready by working really hard,” begins Amy Starr Redwine pastor of Richmond’s First Presbyterian Church. She continues, “So what a relief to come to worship on the second Sunday of Advent and hear the promise of peace…” However, in today’s passage from Luke 3:1-6 (Amy suggests that you also read 7-14), the words of the “fiery preacher” John the Baptist don’t sound peaceful at all. So why this passage and these words on this Sunday? Redwine explains that John the Baptist’s words remind us that the “true work of Christmas” is not in doing, but in not doing, in letting go and making “room in our minds and hearts and souls to encounter God in a whole new way.”
Manuscript available: click HERE