Advent Is for Outcasts
Apologies for my absence, a new newsletter format, and a liturgical recommendation
Welp…it’s been a minute. Life and work got busy and my brain was only able to hold so many things in it at a time. It happens. But I’m back and ready to rock. In my absence, it’s been encouraging to hear from some of you who kept asking for when my next newsletter would arrive.
In the interest of actually keeping this thing going, my plan is to create a more manageable workflow for this newsletter. The goal is to still post twice a month, but I’m going to adjust the format a little bit. One post will include a longer article (about the length of my A.I. article) along with a mention of what I’m reading/watching/listening to that week. The second monthly post will be more of a grab-bag with a short thought, a thing of beauty, another thing I’m reading/watching/listening to, and links to pieces I’ve found notable.
I feel pretty good about this new plan heading into December and the new year. I’ve got some fun ideas cooking for 2024 and will hopefully be able to share about them soon once they begin to take more shape.
There’s a million different things you could be doing with your time, so I’m truly thankful for anyone who chooses to take a break from scrolling TikTok to read something I’ve written.
A couple of Sundays ago, I got to preach at my church. It’s something I do once or twice a year and I have a lot of fun doing it. I start my sermon prep by gleaning way too much information, then writing way too many words, and finally cutting down the text like crazy so the congregants don’t have to sit through an hour and a half long sermon. It’s not the most efficient process in the world, but it works for me.1
After all my edits, I end up with large chunks of random text in what I call a “dustbin” file. Those files end up being thousands of words long and often just sit on my computer for years, unused and forgotten. It’s kind of sad to think about. I was whining about this depressing reality to a small group of friends and colleagues the other day when Emily Jensen suggested that I turn those clippings into posts on my Substack; I had been neglecting it, after all. It was a pretty smart idea.
So, while I’m not planning to make this newsletter just about Bible teachings, if I have something sitting in my junk drawer of discarded paragraphs that feels like a good fit, I may adapt it for the newsletter…like right now.
The Season of Advent
This last sermon I taught marked the beginning of the Advent season. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of Advent except as an excuse to drink twenty-five different varieties of wine in December2, Advent means, “arrival.” It’s historically about taking the four weeks before Christmas to remember how the Israelites in the Old Testament waited for the promised Messiah and how Christians also are in a time of waiting for the second Advent of the Prince of Peace.
The ancient Israelites were supposed to be a light to the nations, a vehicle through which the knowledge of God would eventually fill the earth, but they instead acted just like the other nations. And so, God exiled them from the Promised Land and placed them in foreign, pagan lands. It seemed like God had forgotten His people and abandoned His covenant promises to them. But the prophets point out that in spite of his rebellious people, there is going to be an even bigger and better covenant than the older covenants.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. (Jeremiah 31:31)
It would be the perfect fulfillment of the previous covenants and through it God would bring a total heart transformation of His people.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (31:33)
There are so many amazing facets to this new covenant that I wish had time to go into fully, but one of the most amazing aspects about it is that its scope of salvation widens to include more than just the nation of Israel. It expands to include all people. And this is what the older covenants were pointing at from the beginning. In God’s covenant to Abraham, he said that through His covenant with Abraham and through the offspring who will come from him, all the nations of the world would be blessed (Genesis 22:18). God has always been about redeeming all of mankind and bringing them to Himself.
The Servant of the Lord
This brings me to the prophet Isaiah. In chapters 40-55 in Isaiah, he writes to future exiled Israelites about what it will look like when the Messiah comes, usually referred to as the “Servant of the Lord” in those passages. This Messiah will come in and rule the nations like a king (bringing to mind powerful emperors of that era like Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus), but this king would rule differently than those who conquered by the sword. The kingdom of this king would be wholly different from anything that a human would create on their own. Humans are naturally drawn toward building up their own power and security and empires thrive precisely because they prey off of the weak. But this Messianic King—the Servant of the Lord—would be gentle to the lowly and bring justice for the oppressed.
Isaiah 42:1-8:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his law.
You can see the Lord’s heart here. “Justice to the nations…justice in the earth.” He’s not content merely with just saving those who are from one specific nation. He has His sights set on bringing His redemption to the whole earth.
And then in chapter 56, Isaiah transitions to build to what feels like to me one of the most profound passages of the entire Old Testament. It shows God’s gracious heart and desire to bring all men unto Himself.
Isaiah 56:1-2:
Thus says the Lord:
“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my righteousness be revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this,
and the son of man who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it,
and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”
This is what it looks like to be His covenant people. It’s about keeping justice, doing righteousness, keeping the Sabbath, and keeping your hand from evil. It’s not about where you’re from or what family you grew up in; it’s about a heart of faith that overflows into a lifestyle that reflects that heart of faith. To follow the Lord’s standard of justice or to keep the Sabbath, it required a level of trust in God’s Word that said, “He knows best and I do not. I will follow His ways.”
For All Peoples
After establishing this idea—that God’s covenant community is not about your ethnicity, culture, or family line, but your devotion to God—the Lord says something that would have truly been radical for that day. He highlights two very peculiar groups of people who were outcasts and includes them in the covenant community: Eunuchs and foreigners.
Isaiah 56:3-8
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
and let not the eunuch say,
“Behold, I am a dry tree.”
For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.
“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.”
The Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares,
“I will gather yet others to him
besides those already gathered.”
Eunuchs were men who were castrated—usually against their will—and served as officials for a king. Castrating the men was thought to make those officials more loyal. They were often very influential people, but they also had no possibility to pass that influence on to the next generation because they couldn’t have kids. It’s why a eunuch might call himself a “dry tree”—something that had grown on its own but couldn’t bear fruit.
And the even sadder thing is that eunuchs were not allowed into the assembly of God. They were excluded from worship (Deuteronomy 23:1). But in Isaiah 56, God is essentially saying that what He cares about more is the state of someone’s heart than external factors. Keeping the Sabbaths and holding fast to the covenant showed great faith in God. Eunuchs were people who were excluded from the full life of the covenant community, and yet, these faithful men still chose to dedicate their life to God because they knew this was the true path of life.
God tells the eunuch:
I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.
He will give the eunuch a place of dignity and honor in the house of the Lord. He will get to serve a far greater king. And the faithful eunuch won’t need children to carry on his name because the Lord will give him a name that will carry on forever.
It’s a beautiful picture of God elevating the dignity of those whom society has cast off.
And then God turns His eyes to the foreigners who had immigrated to Israel. As a Gentile, they were barred from participating in temple worship. Even if they converted to Judaism, they couldn’t enter in and offer sacrifices on behalf of their sins. They were only allowed into the outer courtyard to pray. And this would be the case for their children too. Only their grandchildren could enter into the temple.
But after the Messiah comes, God says He won’t bar foreigners from entering His temple. Far from it, He will go and get them Himself.
These I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar.
Because of the Messiah’s arrival, anyone who calls upon His name is a part of the covenant community, regardless of their bloodline or ethnic heritage. He wants to welcome the foreigner into His presence.
For my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
And this verse, about the temple being a house of prayer for all peoples (i.e. nations), is what Jesus quotes when he drives out the money lenders in Mark 11:17. They had set up shop in the court of the Gentiles, the one place where the Gentiles could pray, and they had turned it into a market. Infuriated, Jesus cleanses the temple showing that He would drive out anything that kept people from coming to Him. This is the heart that Jesus has for the outsiders.
Welcomed into the Family of God
God has always desired to draw in those who are far from him. So, one cold night He sent the promised King, the Servant of the Lord. This gentle King would be born amongst a poor family, in a small town. He would be descended from powerful men, like King David and King Solomon, but also from outcasts and foreigners like Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth.
He was greeted by smelly shepherds and then later by three wisemen from distant lands. They most likely came from Persia or Babylon, two empires that had conquered Israel and overseen the exile. But now, great men from those empires had come to worship the true king, showing that a new kingdom is beginning, a kingdom where he would rule over the nations and bring peace, a kingdom where the last shall be first in the first shall be last, where you get in by having the faith of a child.
This king would grow up and throughout his ministry he continually gathered outcasts. He touched those who had leprosy, spoke to a Samaritan woman at a well, welcomed children, ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, and commended the faith of Gentiles. He drew near when others would push them away. And after his resurrection from the dead, Mary Magdalene—a woman who had been demon possessed—was one of the first witnesses of the risen Christ.
And then, after the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and the church was born, the Apostle Philip was guided by an angel to a desert road (Acts 8). There he found an Ethiopian eunuch who was treasurer to the queen of Ethiopia. The eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship, which means he had come all the way from Africa, only to be kept from entering the temple. Being both a foreigner and a eunuch probably did him no favors.
But the faith of the eunuch endured and he sat in his chariot reading, of course, Isaiah. Specifically, he was reading from Isaiah 53, about the Servant of the Lord, one who was rejected but then takes the transgressions of His people upon himself. While the passage had been originally written to the people of Israel, Phillip shows that because of Jesus, the eunuch can now be included into the family of God. No longer shunned, he is baptized, symbolizing his placement into the covenant community. And church tradition sees this eunuch as one of the earliest evangelists to bring Christianity to Ethiopia and his story is forever immortalized in Scripture. He was given a legacy that far outreached having any sort of biological offspring.
This long article is just a small sampling of how God subverts our expectations, choosing “what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). Jesus came, “to proclaim good news to the poor…to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19). We don’t need to be strong or skilled to be accepted into the family of God. We just have to see our weakness and trust His gracious heart.
So this Christmas season, remember that Advent is for the outcasts.
What I’m reading
Sacred Seasons by Danielle Hitchen
This incredible book is a guide for Protestant families to anchor their entire year around Jesus through the liturgical calendar. (Full disclosure: this is a book I acquired and edited for my employer, but it’s a book that I 100% believe in. It’s exactly the kind of resource I had been wanting for my family.)
Sacred Seasons only just came out this fall, but my family is actually starting its second year using this resource. I may have been so excited about the book that I printed out the galleys last year to try it out. It was a huge hit with our kids (it’s amazing how much children actually love routine, ritual, and traditions), and they were so excited to start the Advent season all over again this year.
It’s a beautiful book with color photography, recipes, and jaw-dropping art by Stephen Crotts.
It’s not too late to get it now and use it for the rest of the Advent season. And the best part is that in the liturgical calendar, Christmas lasts for 12 days!
I am an editor by trade, after all, so callously deleting words is something I do best.