The Home. December 1, 2024, 10AM. The First Sunday of Advent.

This week, our journey with the Good Shepherd brings us home as we start the season of Advent.
Contrary to popular cultural and Christian practice, Advent is not a countdown to Christmas. Instead, it is an entirely separate, four-week season that actually begins our Christian liturgical year. Our English word Advent derives from the Latin Adventus, which means “coming” or “arrival.” Advent returns us to the truth that God is a God who has come to us, who continues to come to us, and who will come to us again in glory.
In the already-but-not-yet chapter in which we find ourselves in God’s good story, Advent intentionally grounds us in the tension of experiencing reality with an eternal perspective. We are invited to wait with expectant hope and joy for the coming of our King. As we learn to wait, we learn to live. Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister, writes:
“It is waiting that attunes us to the invisible in a highly material world. In contemporary society, what counts is what we can get and what we have…
The function of Advent is to remind us what we’re waiting for as we go through life too busy with things that do not matter to remember the things that do…
Advent relieves us of our commitment to the frenetic in a fast-paced world.
It slows us down. It makes us think.”
Our series this Advent is called “The Home.” Each Sunday, we’ll slow down to explore the traditional themes of Advent (hope, peace, joy, and love), in light of the truth of how we are invited into an ever-deepening sense of living at home with our Good Shepherd, Emmanuel, God-with-us.
On the path together,
The Platt Park Church Teaching Team (Charlie, Ally, Cari, & Stephen)