Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Intentional Interim Pastor, Steve Sylvester.

A few months ago, I received a card in the mail from Tami, a longtime friend.  It was an invitation to attend her wedding to her 20+ year partner, Michelle.  After graduating from college, and before moving from Missouri to Minnesota to enroll in seminary, my friend Scott and I “babysat” Tami, her older sister and younger brother when their mother was out of town.  Scott, who got to seminary even later than I did, is also a Lutheran pastor and lives in Saint Anthony Village.  I had every intention of going to Tami’s wedding, and Scott and I planned to travel and room together, but I sat on the invitation and didn’t actually RSVP till the day before the cutoff. 

“You’re Invited!”  That’s the overarching theme for our year that started in worship yesterday.  More specifically, the theme is, “You’re invited… to live in God’s community.”  Through September 21, we get even more specific with our theme of, “You’re invited… into Relationship.”  The first chapter of Genesis presents three arenas for relationship, as it clarifies that we are invited into a relationship with God, with each other and with God’s good creation.

As the mode of speech in Genesis 1 switches from third person singular—God said, God saw…—to first person plural—“Let US create humankind in OUR image”—we are given to understand that to be created in the image of God means to be created for relationship.  Later on in the Bible, we will learn that our relationship with God is that of created co-creators, which is a fancy way of saying that we are God’s partners in ministry as God pursues shalom—peace, wholeness, completion—for all that God brings into existence.  But in this first chapter of the first book of the Bible, we learn that at our core, we are creatures of a loving creator who declares us to be “good,” and along with everything God brings into being, “VERY good.”

We are also created to be in relationship with each other and with God’s good creation.  This means we are to cling to and love one another, to delight in the God-created variety of people, to lift each other up when we fall, to delight in our differences.  And as part of God’s good creation (remember, the two “characters” in Scripture are God and not God), we are to love and care for the non-human world as God does.

Concerning my invitation to Tami’s wedding, the welcome, the inclusion, was never in question.  The only question was whether I would choose to participate.  I dragged my feet to the very end before signing on and jumping on a plane to Denver.  The same is true of our invitation to live in God’s community, to be in relationship with God, with each other and with God’s good creation.  Absent or present, we are included, and God will always be inviting us to join in.  So, it would be well to think about what might be keeping you from sending in the RSVP and fully joining in.