Advent Study 2024

All Sunday School classes are to join this study together!

During Sunday School @ 9 AM

Phone & Video Conference

by Kate Bowler

An Introduction to Advent

Participants Guide

THE WEARY WORLD REJOICES

Kate Bowler

Have you been looking at the jaw-dropping new images that are coming in from the James Webb Space Telescope? These photos of deep space are wild and surreal. Pillars of gas and dust. Clouds of yellows, oranges and blues that capture the mystery and dazzling beauty of the universe. You are immediately struck by the sense that there is so much out there, but it’s not here. Not yet anyway.

The days leading up to Christmas (we call this season Advent) is kind of like that. It’s a promise that is coming, as surely and steadily as light traveling from a distant star. It is the promise of a return—a restoration of all things to heir true being, a goodness which was conceived from the beginning of time, a realized hope we’ve been longing for.

For the “days are coming,” say the prophets of old. “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfill the good promise.” The promise of truth, compassion, restoration, and justice. These four promises are how we will orient this group discussion guide. They will serve as our guiding themes—pulling us toward a future that we can only glimpse. But it is a future that will turn everything upside-down (or maybe right-side up). Everything wrong will be made right; everything bad will be made good; everything empty and devoid of love will be filled.

This discussion guide is designed to be used by small groups, Sunday schools, book clubs, or informally among friends, neighbors, and family. Each week includes scripture to read, suggested discussion questions, and a prayer to close your time together. Consider this your invitation to join others in the community to look for God’s promises already being fulfilled and waiting for the day when the whole world will be made right. That is, after all, what we practice during the season of Advent.

Advent marks the beginning of the Christian calendar. It’s about 22 to 28 days (depending on the year). And one of my favorite things about this time of preparation for Christmas is the tone. We don’t cruise into Christmas with triumph and a rah-rah certainty that all is well. We begin by waiting—tired waiting. A feeling I know you know too well. Waiting for the test results. Waiting for the phone call. Waiting for your kid to come back or the job offer to come through. Waiting for your parents to get better or finally apologize. Waiting for the family you longed for or that financial relief you desperately need. Waiting for prayers to be answered or community to be found. We are very familiar with waiting. 

But, this Advent, we don’t wait in vain. Christmas brings us right to the moment of the birth of Jesus— our joy realized, first in a tiny baby born and laid down in a hay stall in a backwater town. A Savior who will someday make all things right. This Advent, may we squint at the light that is afar and say, “Come, Lord Jesus! We’re tired of waiting.” 

Have you been looking at the jaw-dropping new images that are coming in from the James Webb Space Telescope? These photos of deep space are wild and surreal. Pillars of gas and dust. Clouds of yellows, oranges and blues that capture the mystery and dazzling beauty of the universe. You are immediately struck by the sense that there is so much out there, but it’s not here. Not yet anyway.

December 1 • First Sunday • The Promise of Truth

Jeremiah 33: 14-16

Opening Questions (You may write your thoughts on this paper before class.)

1. What are your favorite Christmas traditions? How do they help you reflect on the significance of what Christmas means to you or your family?

2. Hope is tricky. Too much and we can feel disappointed. Too little and we feel despair. Sometimes it helps us to remain open to hope if we think of a time we have been surprised before.

What is one moment of beauty or joy that surprised you in the last year?

Now open your Bible to Jeremiah 33:14-16. Read and prepare to discuss the following questions from this passage.

1. What word of phrase stood out to you from this passage?

2. The people of Jerusalem lived in the aftermath of war and fire. Imagine listening to Jeremiah as you stand in the ashes and rubble of all you hold dear. How would you react to his words of hope and promise?

3. We live in the already-but-not-yet. This means we have hope for a future of peace, safety, joy, and restoration, but may not experience it currently. Does this feel true in your own life? How so?

4. Living between the already-but-not-yet means we need to make space to lament. Lament is a biblical practice that invites you to express your sorrow, pain, or confusion. It is the act of grieving with God.

What is there to lament in your life, your community, or your world today?

5. How can you make space to lament this week?

6. If you were to pick one big hope for the world, what would it be? For your community? For your family?

Our Prayer:

A Blessing for Beginning Again in Advent

God, could this be the year when we see it?

The goodness that is coming, like starlight from a distant time?

Could this be the Advent when we sense it?

That the springtime of the soul will one day last forever?

Could this be the Advent when we notice the inbreaking of your coming promises?

Promises full of blessing: of truth so clear, so bright that every shadowy lie must flee away. Of compassion so deep, so strong that everyone is encircled in its embrace.

Of restoration so complete, so beautiful that there is gladness everywhere.

And of justice so satisfying and so right, that all will be well.

May this Advent be the new beginning, as we learn to live by the light of your coming promises. Glimpsing the world through tears, while also seeing something sacred shining through too.

Our Truth. Our Light. Our Promise incarnate.

Amen.

December 8 • 2nd Sunday • The Promise of Compassion

Luke 1: 68-79

Opening Questions (You may write your thoughts on this paper before class.)

1. Share a time when someone showed you compassion, or you witnessed radical compassion toward someone else. What made it stick in our memory?

2. Pain or grief can make us feel like we live on another planet. How have you experienced compassion to bridge that distance?

3. It is often said that in order to understand someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. Jesus came to walk in our shoes feeling the same feelings and living with the same beauty, suffering, and loss as us. How does thinking about Jesus as God-with-us resonate with you today?

Now open your Bible to Luke 1: 68-79. Read and prepare to discuss the following questions from this passage.

1. What word or phrase stood out to you in this scripture? What surprised you about this passage?

2. In Luke 1:68-79, Zechariah speaks of all the great things God will do and has done. He recognizes the full story of God’s work in the world. On a scale of 1-10, how easy or difficult is it for you to keep the full story of God in mind? (1----“I have a hard time seeing God’s work in the world.” 10---“I fully trust God is working to make all things right.”)

3. What reason does Zechariah give that God will fulfill God’s promises (hint: reread verse 78)?

4. How have you experienced or witnessed the tenderness of God in your life (it could be bit or small)?

5. How can you join in the work of God by sharing tenderness or compassion with someone else this week?

Our Prayer:

A Blessing for Open Arms

Blessed are you with open arms to welcome God this Advent, willing to invite its promises into the center of your longing.

Blessed are you, even now in the waiting. Open to receiving what is beautiful though clothed in such precarity.

Blessed are you, agreeing to stand still long enough to let your eyes adjust to the darkness until the starlight begins to appear, the dawning of God’s promises.

In that gentle light, find a corner of your heart where hope can stay protected. A place from which we can nurture a little gratitude, a little compassion, enough to go around.

Some for God and some for yourself. And some for the next unsuspecting soul that wanders into your light.

Amen.

December 15 • 3rd Sunday • The Promise of Restoration

Zephaniah 3: 14-20

Opening Questions (You may write your thoughts on this paper before class.)

1. What does restoration mean to you?

2. Share your hope for restoration in your life or in your family. How about your community or the world? (World peace is a great answer—it is okay to dream bit here!)

Now open your Bible to Zephaniah 3:14-20. Read and prepare to discuss the following questions from this passage.

1. What word or phrase stood out to you in this passage? What brings you hope? What is hard to believe?

2. What stands out to you about God’s character and intention from Zephaniah’s words? Does this feel true in your own experience? Why or why not?

3. What gets in the way of God’s restoration of the world? What about the restoration God offers for your own life?

4. The scripture says, “He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in his love; He will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it” (Zephaniah 3:17b). How do you imagine it will feel when God restores you and throws a party with rejoicing and singing? How will it feel to be renewed in God’s love?

5. God’s promised restoration has begun, is happening, and will one day be complete. But perhaps this is not an entirely passive project. We can participate with the work God is doing in the world, bringing God’s kingdom to earth. This week, how can you join God in the work of restoration in your life? In your community? In the world?

Our Prayer:

A Blessing for Our Part in the Bigger Story

Blessed are we, gathered already into the plot, part of the epic story you have been writing from long before we were ever born.

Thank you that we are not separated into lives of loneliness but joined together as those who were loved into being. We are made for meaning and a purpose that only our days can breathe into action.

Pull us closer to the bigger story that reminds us that our ordinary lives are the stuff of eternity. You fitted each of our days for small efforts and endless attempts to pick ourselves up again.

In our triumphs and embarrassments, we need to be told again (sigh) that we are not just everyday problems. We are a story of extraordinary love.

Amen.

December 22 • 4th Sunday • The Promise of Justice

Luke 1: 46-55

Opening Questions (You may write your thoughts on this paper before class.)

1. Do you like surprises? When was the last time you were surprised by something?

2.Many people were surprised that Jesus chose to enter the world as a baby—especially through these surprising circumstances. If Jesus were to be born today, where do you think he might appear?

Now open your Bible to Luke 1:46-55. Read and prepare to discuss the following questions from this passage.

1. What surprises you or brings you hope from this text?

2. The word “justice” can mean different things to different people. How would you define justice? What is your understanding of Jesus’ definition of justice?

3. How does Jesus show strength and power to the world? How does this compare to how today’s leaders show strength and power? Which do you prefer and why?

4. May sings of justice and mercy in the present tense. Where do you see glimpses of God’s justice (the one rooted in mercy and grace) already happening in the world?

5. This is a gentle revolution. Perhaps it means paying closer attention to those at the margins, as Jesus did. How can you join in this week?

Our Prayer:

A Blessing for the Coming of Justice

Blessed are we, starting to see the height and depth and breadth of God’s love that includes all of us, even the not-so-perfect.

Blessed are you, Mary, for saying yes to the big risk of being God’s dwelling place.

Blessed are we, like Mary, starting to sing our own songs of joy at the thought that maybe this Advent we too can start to trust it, to risk it, to live it out, the love that decides to love first, before it is earned or deserved, the love that your incarnation embodies to the full.

Blessed are we, breathing in the truth that we belong, and so does everybody else.

Amen.