Advent 2024: Together on the Journey
Keith Eiten
This year’s Advent worship series—Together on the Journey—begins on Sunday, December 1 and continues to Epiphany Sunday on January 5, 2025. As we have done in years past, we are utilizing worship materials from MennoMedia. They are continuing our use of the Narrative Lectionary as the basis for the worship services. The authors of the series write:
“The overarching theme to the responses of the biblical characters in this year’s Advent lectionary scriptures is inviting others to walk ‘together on the journey.’ This theme found in the scripture readings starts with persistently walking with God (Advent 1) and being open to the guidance of God’s Spirit (Advent 2). Then the theme extends to including the marginalized (Advent 3), the support of others (Advent 4), those who help us ‘see’ what God is doing (Sunday after Christmas), and mentors who teach us along the way (Epiphany). Like a threefold cord, we are stronger when we walk with God and others ‘together on the journey.’
“During Advent, we are accustomed to hearing about Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, and about the visits from shepherds and wise ones. You may find it striking that this year’s lectionary scriptures are quite different. They come from Year 3 of the Narrative Lectionary and do not mention these typical Advent stories until the fourth Sunday of Advent. Be ready to listen to what these less conventional Advent stories have to say to us as we prepare to welcome Christ anew into our hearts and our lives.”
We will again have Advent candle lighting with readings, and musical preludes before the services by young people in our congregation. Join us for the journey.
In This Issue
Advent Giving Project: Peacebuilding in Palestine
Jamie Huff
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.—Isaiah 9: 6
How can we strengthen the work and bold witness of people pursuing God’s peace this Advent season? Our Advent Giving Project offers you two ways to support peacebuilding work in Palestine and elsewhere in the world.
The first is to support on-the-ground efforts led by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to facilitate immediate crisis response in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. The aid and relief work that MCC is coordinating with local partners is critical to addressing the immediate needs of families impacted by ongoing violence and displacement. Learn more about MCC’s important crisis response efforts here.
A second way is to invest in the education, training, and networking of leaders who are engaged in the long-term work of building just peace in Palestine. We invite you to join Mennonite Action and other Christian organizations to support Christian leaders from Palestine, South Africa, and Indigenous communities of the Americas to participate in a peacebuilding summit in London, England, in July 2025.
The summit will engage participants in collaborative learning about theologies of resistance and liberation and in the development of practical resources and strategies for peacebuilding in Palestine. Our support will help to cover the travel, registration, and room and board costs for peacebuilding activists invited to attend the summit. Summit costs total approximately $1,950 per participant. Our aim is to send at least one participant; perhaps even two! Learn more about the Peacebuilding Summit here.
Summit costs total approximately $1,950 per participant. Our aim is to send at least one participant; perhaps even two!
How to Give
We’re collecting donations at LMC for both efforts through December 29. Click the GIVE NOW button to give via Church Center and use the dropdown menu to select which initiative to support. If giving via Zelle (to [email protected]), please type “Advent Giving: MCC” or “Advent Giving: Summit” in the memo field. Donations via check—payable to LMC with one of those notes on the memo line—can be placed in Katharine’s mailbox or the offering box. Thank you!
Counting Down to Year End
Eric Nelessen
Hi, friends. I want to start by saying thank you so much! As I mentioned last month, we were in a cash crunch towards the end of October and delayed paying a couple bills. Several people stepped up and made year-end contributions earlier than normal, enabling us to make our most critical payments. Thank you!
We are still quite a bit under our budgeted giving for the year. Expenses currently exceed income by around $26,000. We paid our most urgent bills, but we still have 31% of our 2024 churchwide giving donations to make by year end (Illinois Mennonite Conference, for example). We need to raise an additional $75,500 by December 31 to meet our 2024 budget.
If you have any questions about year-end donations, please feel free to email me or ask me at church. You will also be able to ask questions during the financial update at the December 8 congregational meeting, though if you have a particularly tricky question, I’d appreciate a heads up.
Thank you for your generous giving to date of $308,194. Please keep LMC’s financial needs in your prayers.
Light
Barbara Krehbiel Gehring
Ever get a phrase stuck in your head?
For about the last month I’ve had a Bible verse stuck in my head. It is John 1: 5—The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. All the killing in Gaza and Ukraine; all the starving and the cruelty in word and deed; all the gun violence quite close to home. The darkness has not overcome the light.
Then I remember that our verse of the year is about light and also from the book of John. Jesus spoke to the people again, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8: 12) I could name other scriptures about light that flow out from these thoughts. How appropriate for this time of year when the sun sets before many of us leave work, and the days are getting shorter.
How appropriate, too, for this time of year when the season of Advent is upon us. As we remember the prophets struggling under oppression, and the Jewish community into which Jesus was born living under occupation, we remember so many communities throughout history and geography who have felt the weight of dark days or years. We are connected to others who inspire and console us and who teach us how to live through these periods. And as we gather to worship and learn this Advent, let us take courage that the light still shines in the darkness and that Jesus is our light.
One Is the Loneliest Number
Kristen Burk
Mark 14: Jesus prays in anguish at Gethsemane. Christ asks his disciples to “stay here and keep watch.” When Jesus comes back, he finds the disciples asleep…not once, twice, but three times.
Have there been moments in life where your intimate supporters “fall asleep” and deep loneliness settles in? Times when desire burns within for just one person to understand and fully meet you in your grief? Perhaps we can feel grateful for how our village shows up and also recognize that the village has its own limitations—even when their desire is there.
Anabaptists are strong in creating intentional community; can we also be humble to the fact that our imperfect human nature allows us to be Christ’s hands, feet, and heart only in part? We are the disciples who abandon our lives to Jesus…and still we sometimes fall asleep.
This sinful world is not our forever home. We live in an “already but not yet,” where Christ has revealed himself to us in flesh and we now wait for the fullness of the kingdom to come to fruition. Our Declaration of Independence shouts “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” yet, Jesus does not command us to seek these things, rather to love God and neighbor. Love does not always mean the happiness we sometimes vainly seek. Sometimes love of God and neighbor is exhausting…vulnerable…hard.
Therefore, let us hold on lightly to the idea that life must be happy and content or else something is wrong— an understanding that lures us to store up fleeting emotional treasures on earth. Rather, let’s strive toward Kingdom Living, storing up treasures of faith, shalom, and perseverance. Perhaps then we can embrace the imperfection and humanity of loneliness and grief, thanking God that Christ has met us there, and will be our Comfort and Healer in fullness when we see him face to face.
“Lord, help me to feel the presence and comfort that only you can provide in this time of waiting for your Kingdom. Please help me to love my neighbor…those who live a world away, and those I see every day. Give me the courage and persistence to be your imperfect hands and feet, acknowledging my limitations, yet embracing the idea that I can do your kingdom work, in part. Show me the ways your will is already at work in the world and teach me to embrace the loneliness I sometimes feel as an agent of spiritual transformation inside of me.”
Remembering Bob
Caroline Steelberg
Ed. Note: Our brother Robert (Bob) Erck died on October 25 after a six-week illness.
The idea of remembering Bob is difficult for me because when I think about Bob, he is very much alive. His memory jumps out at me as our conversations pop into relief. There’s no single conversation I recall, rather it’s the bolas of them, their style, their intensity. I’d wonder to myself during each one, “Gosh Bob, why are you making me think so hard about a topic it never occurred to me to challenge!”
Bob fully participated in life. He volunteered for many organizations including forest preserve restoration and the Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association, and received an award as an outstanding mentor at Argonne where he worked for almost 50 years. Many of us knew him as a photographer. In this way, he observed but also engaged in a moment by capturing it on film. I still have color prints of a series of photos he took at Cameron and Graham’s LMC baby shower.
I learned at Bob’s memorial that he didn’t find value in certain types of entertainment and arts. Yet, in a recent worship service at LMC while Karin was playing In The Rifted Rock I’m Resting, I felt Bob’s presence in the sanctuary. It seemed to me that he would have appreciated the repetition and flow of the melody, and perhaps the science of the composition. Whatever Bob’s perspective, we would know. He would have shared it through conversation, captured it in his countless photos, or translated it into his unbinding service to others.