sermons
The Way of Jesus
Especially In the Darkness
Ivy Anthony
Nov 30, 2025
Good morning friends of all ages and friends streaming online! It’s so good to be with you – I’m Ivy, a pastor here. I hope your Thanksgivings however you spent them were good and thanks/gratitude found you somewhere in the mix. Before I get going today, I want to take a little poll related to Thanksgiving, related to Thanksgiving food! I’m actually going to ask you three interactive questions about what you love today, sprinkled throughout the sermon — so here’s the first — answer out loud, and type in the chat if you’d like:
First question: “What’s one Thanksgiving dish that you love?”
All that shared goodness is actually a perfect way to enter Advent…
Today begins the season of Advent, a part of the church year that, if you didn’t grow up with it (like me), is all about preparing for and anticipating Jesus’ arrival long ago and still today. This Advent we are inviting you to pay attention to Christ’s love showing up in all people, all creation, and all of life — everywhere.
In 2022, we launched a four year Advent project, to explore four different ways God shows up in the world through Christ. And here we are, in our final year. This Advent our theological focus is what’s called cosmic Christology. Which, simply put, is God’s delight to be in loving relationship with everything and everyone God has made — and God’s invitation for us to participate in this ongoing creation and vision for the world — each and every one of us.
And to that end — we’ve titled this Advent: “All of Us.”
And we are going to explore that more today — by listening to scripture, and a couple of stories, sitting in some wisdom from Father Richard Rohr, and a whole lot of the Spirit of God — that thankfully communicates to us FAR MORE than a sermon could ever outline!
Prayer
God of wonder and hope and light and darkness,
God that lives in all of creation,
Draw us into your deep love today.
Help us to lean toward you with curiosity,
in all people,
all creatures,
all places, even the ones that feel dim or uncertain or hidden.
Stretch us to see you woven among, between and within all of us.
Amen.
Alright, here’s my second question: “What is an animal that you love?”
Unless I missed it, I don’t think anyone said that they love opposums!
A couple of years ago *right around this time of year* my kids found an opossum in our backyard. I remember hearing one of my kids excitedly calling me to come outside to see something, that urgent “Mom, you have to see this!” vibe.. And she was just pointing and screaming at our garbage can outside. And as I peered over the edge of the deep can — there it was, this opossum – just sitting on the bottom — staring up at us with all that “OPPOSUM GLORY”
with its beautiful little beady eyes, sharp teeth, and delicious tail,
And I was like,
“WoW! That is God’s gorgeous creature!”
Of course this opossum held the interest of my kids and despite me saying,
“hey lets leave it alone it will go away at night”
this opossum was still there morning after morning, after morning. I would go take an at-arms-length peek each morning and some mornings And many a morning when it WAS STILL THERE — I’d be convinced it was dead (I mean they are known for that area of specialty)! — not moving, eyes open — one morning its eye was open and there was a fly sitting right on its eyeball and I’m like that’s it — it’s definitely dead. … and then it blinked! I was bewildered that it was still there –
– “Don’t you love the darkness? Don’t you love the night time — go, go, go! PLEASE go!”
Come to find out my kids were feeding this opossum – a little bit of their morning toast, with HONEY and butter on it– some berries — just dropping them right into the can like some sort of animal AirBNB. The possum was like, ‘this is actually awesome.’
And at this time of year, as darkness and coldness close in — as the markers of warmth and light and summer days disappear, and the beautiful fall colors fall to the ground, as the sun itself falls at 4:13pm today — I can feel everything in me brace for the season ahead.
And I actually think, maybe this opossum was on to something…. It is a creature built for night, its rhythms, its instincts, its comfort are in the dark.
I am…not.
I don’t slip into darkness naturally, I don’t warm up to it, I don’t come alive in this season.
But maybe if I could have a cozy little container, where cute kids just say “hi” to me from above — and food just gets dropped on my face — maybe the darkness wouldn’t feel so empty after all. Maybe I could realize that what feels void to me is often a habitat for something else…for life that I don’t have eyes for yet.
And this is really the invitation of Advent, to stretch our night-vision for God, to discover that the dark has things to show us too.
ADVENT
Advent is a disruption of knowing – it is an invitation into darkness.
And an invitation to regard darkness as a new way of knowing.
Advent embraces darkness, and asks us to not just endure it, or to wait it out until it passes – but to mine the dark – to see, to look, to perceive God with NEWNESS. To ACTIVELY engage the dark as the setting by which we (re)discover the expanse of God in Christ.
A darkness that is sacred. A darkness that is freedom. A darkness that has always EXISTED since the beginning of time (maybe before time) … A darkness that is the original language of God and the birthplace of everything and everyone – even before the birth of Jesus.
Kids Church Story
When my kids found that opossum in the trash can — they didn’t find it as a creepy, unwanted creature. They actually saw it as something worthy of love *and … cute! Their impulse was
“oh my gosh, it’s so sweet — let’s care for it, let’s help it…”
Kids tend to assume everything belongs.
That everything, all things have a place in God’s story.
Which, honestly, is cosmic Christology in its simplest form: Christ in all things, and all things held in Christ.
If you ever want to listen to a phenomenal sermon you should volunteer in kids church. The stories of God told and the responses kids have ….Never-Ever-disappoints.
For years I volunteered in the Zebras room, which is the three-year old room. Each class involved free time, and snack time – story-telling time. And the story telling rests on a curriculum called Godly Play. It highlights wondering questions – as a way to know God – versus “teaching a set of “known beliefs” about God (who God is).
So at the end of each story-telling session – involving simple, tangible wooden and felt components – I would ask one or two of these wondering questions:
“I wonder where you noticed God in this story?”
“I wonder where you are in this story?”
And often there’d be a great pause – and there would be an array of responses….like this:
– some that relayed details of the story told, like
“God is in the desert”
or
“God was with Mary.”
And other responses like —
“God smells like my mom’s perfume.”
Or
“I miss my cat who died.”
Or a classic response in one particular class was,
“It’s my birthday!”
– immediately followed by every other kid chiming in and saying,
“It’s my birthday too!”
…and naturally we end our story time by singing “happy birthday”… to everyone (and kind of to no one) :).
These Zebras responded as if all of life already belongs and lives in God’s presence and relationship.
One of the reasons I stayed volunteering long after my kid moved out of that class was because I took those responses of these 3 year olds seriously. I mean I laughed and sometimes thought,
“really? wow that’s wild!”
But I took their responses in as scripture. I sat with these verses and chapters of the Bible – that were spoken out of the mouth of babes… and I let it stretch my preconceived knowing & awareness of God.
Kids know how to engage the expanse of God (beyond form, name, or words) – when to us it looks like they have nothing to work with…
“Wait – you haven’t memorized scripture. You haven’t understood yet the historical context of this story of Jesus, or studied kenotic or cosmic Christology.”
Kids are like hold on, let me just reach into my real life here…
“Here you go, my mom’s perfume (love it, and love her), my cat died (that was sad, and I loved her), and my birthday (love that!) & cake!”
And somehow in these exquisite responses they perceive and name the pattern of life and God…. which involves ALL OF Life and love, death & love, and life and love again. Such great, great love – and such suffering. Seems like even a thoughtful, generous question of
“I wonder where God is in this story?”
is too small a question for the Christ that these kids point us to.
Because they seem to intuit what many mystics have spent centuries trying to teach, that Christ isn’t just Jesus’ last name,
but the name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love.
Writers [like Teilhard de Chardin] and early mystics like Meister Eckhart say it this way,
Christ is “the blueprint of creation,” the “Love at the heart of everything.”
And kids… somehow… already know that.
God in Christ
God in Christ is the indwelling presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time as we know it. That’s big. . . like cosmic big.
And Christ competes with and excludes no one *not even opossums*, *excludes no response – no description or name for God* – but includes everyone and everything.
In fact the only thing that Christ excludes is exclusion itself.
In Colossians 1:15-17 we read:
Christ is the image of the invisible God
And the firstborn of all creation
For in God all things were created
All things in heaven and all things on earth
All things visible and all things invisible,
Whether thrones, or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created through Christ and for Christ.
Before all things were created, Christ existed,
and all things are held together in Christ.
The refrain here,…all things, all things, all things, all things in heaven and on earth – all things are held together in Christ – before anything was created.
It’s so beautiful and poetic.. but..really all things? I used to get nerve-y around this idea of God being so limitless. The faith context that I grew up in talked about God as love – but it was digestible …. a fairly definable God, and a fairly controlling LOVE – and THAT God and THAT love were for an (un)fairly limited amount of people. Not one of mystery and discovery and ongoing becoming.
But back at the beginning in Genesis where it says,
“And God said, “let there be light” and there was light… (Genesis 1:3)…it seems that here, God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything (Rohr)…
And this is helpful because Christ is the light that allows ALL OF US to see things in their fullness – to perceive Christ everywhere and in everyone – and as Father Richard Rohr puts it,
“when we consider the world around us as both the hiding place and the revelation of God, we can no longer make a distinction between the natural and the supernatural, between the holy and the profane.”
There are no lines.
And we can look at the arc of history – and see how the mystery of God was engaged.
It’s how the Jewish people historically experienced God’s nature through light. They saw the glory of God known as the Shechinah, which means “dwelling of God.” Moses saw God’s light in the bush; the Jewish people were led by light in a pillar of fire that guided them in the desert. The Light also appeared in the tabernacle and the temple.
It is the light that shone round about the angels as they said to the shepherds,
“Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you, wonderful, joyous news for ALL PEOPLE. Your savior is born today in David’s city. He is Christ the Lord.”
Christ is the light of God’s glory and the imprint of God’s being – one that existed at the beginning – sustains the universe and is good NEWS FOR ALL PEOPLE NOW, today.
It is the universal light – steady throughout time.
Now Jesus brings the message home in a personal way over thirteen billion years later! In Jesus, God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. The formless took on form in someone we could
“hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love. (Rohr)
And so as we put together Jesus and Christ it gives us a God who is both personal and universal. A healthy expression… Because if we only had
“a “personal God,” our faith could easily become tribal or sentimental—shaped and limited by our own culture, nationalism, or even Christianity’s historic captivity to a white, Eurocentric worldview. But if God were only universal, then God would stay abstract—just an idea or a philosophy floating above our lives — not a relationship.” (adapted 19)
But it is also how we remember with humility, when we try to shrink Christ – that Christ is always larger than any one era, culture, *any voting pattern*, empire or religion. Always surprising – growing in the margins where we least expect, exemplified in the most barren, seemingly desolate, looked over — shadowed — areas.
How much of Jesus Christ is a mystery, and how much of our lives are messy and hard and require a God that does not give up on us. A God that is both Intimate and Infinite enough to find us and hold us when we hurt.
“All things are held together in Christ.”
We need such great love to hold us through such great suffering—
a God who keeps pouring out love,
even when life threatens to sweep us away.
And so we hear the extent of this promise in Romans:
Romans 8:35 – 36 (Common English Bible)
35 Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?36 As it is written,
We are being put to death all day long for your sake.
We are treated like sheep for slaughter.
Now before we continue with the last three verses – I want to pause here… because this last verse I read – is referencing a different scripture – Psalm 44.
Where God’s people are having a real moment with God. That resonates strongly with me.
Where God’s people are saying –
“Guess who will feel separated from Christ’s love in times of trouble and distress? US! Guess who feels like we are dying as danger and sword come our way??? US!!!! We, we feel separated from your love.
Where are you God? We haven’t forgotten you – or broken your covenant? Or turned our hearts away! Yet you are not here.
Psalm 44: 23-26 (Common English Bible)
It says in verse 23 and onward,
23 Wake up! Why are you sleeping, Lord?
Get up! Don’t reject us forever!
24 Why are you hiding your face,
forgetting our suffering and oppression?
25 Look: we’re going down to the dust;
our stomachs are flat on the ground!
26 Stand up! Help us!
Save us for the sake of your faithful love.
WAKE UP! STAND UP! GET UP! HELP US! SAVE US!
If this world is truly Christ-soaked *down to its matter * — then where are you?
I don’t know about you – but I definitely feel like this when I’m getting no indication that God is with me — in ways that I can perceive — when God feels literally light years away.
Is it true God that you can really be for us? When life seems SOOOO against us?
Help us God!
It’s interesting because in the preceding verses in Psalm 44 – the people remember that God had been kind to their ancestors…
“planted their ancestors – given them roots…”
Set their ancestors free – and it was the light of Christ’s face that saved them.
It is hard, hard, hard to imagine that there is anything but nothingness around us when we are struggling. Why can’t God just show God’s face when we need it most?
I don’t know.
But I do know that wherever and whenever and in whomever we have felt goodness, experienced love in those times – help, comfort, reprieve, rest, a snack… whatever is good and true and beautiful, that HAS been — and WILL ALWAYS BE, Christ. Even if we have never ascribed the name “God” to it before.
Because wherever love has reached us, Christ has reached us.
With that in mind, last question: “Who is someone you love?”
That question takes me back to a moment from when my son first started preschool…
PRESCHOOL STORY
Right around the time my son started in the Kids programming across the way – he also started preschool in our town. And two afternoons a week, I’d go to pick him up at preschool and he would come running to me – yelling
“mommy, mommy you’re here!”
That winter though, a little boy in his class also started running to me at pick-up and calling me “Mommy….”
It was a heart-wrenching move – because his mom had recently died.
Something about me – held the likeness of his own mom in his eyes. ..
*And for split seconds I would think, “oooh noooo, I don’t know if this is the best thing for this little guy – … psychologically – for the process of grief – for attachment issues in the long run….?”
But in real-time I would just let him wrap his arms around my knees, and rub his little back a few times.
And then he’d toddle off to the playground.
Of course, no one corrected him – not the Director of the preschool, or the teacher, or me, or my kid. No one said, “that’s not your mommy!”
Because somehow in those moments we know – we can’t define or limit God by a word/or even a name. From the beginning YHWH (Yahweh) let the Jewish people know that no right word would ever contain God’s infinite mystery.
Any kind of real experience of God will usually feel like love.
It will connect you – at new depths and heights and dimensions – Richard Rohr says,
“In God you do not include less and less; you always see/perceive and love more and more. Anything that draws you out of yourself in a positive way – for all practical purposes – is operating as God for you at that moment – goodness, truth, beauty.” (52)
Your mom’s perfume, your pet’s death, the flowers on your birthday, maybe even that possum… are as much God – as the God we hope to encounter in church. And God celebrates this – God is not threatened, because God is free, not a God of control.
And in the moments that feel darkest to us – absent of God… God stands up, gets up, – wakes US up and nudges our hearts, our bodies, our minds, unto greater attention. It’s like it is to fumble and squint in the dark – until our eyes eventually adjust … so too, can our spirits adjust to the love of God that is the very essence of our DNA and in the very matter of everyone and everything we touch.
“Scientists have discovered that what looks like darkness to the human eye is actually filled with tiny particles called “neutrinos” slivers of light that pass through the entire universe. Apparently there is no such thing as total darkness anywhere, even though the human eye thinks there is. Knowing that the inner light of things cannot be eliminated or destroyed is deeply hopeful.” (Rohr)
We can think darkness is empty, like a deep trash can with something lifeless at the bottom, but then it blinks. The universe blinks. Our spirits blink awake. Christ blinks in the dark.
And somehow if my knees were a flicker of light for this little boy who lost his mom – or to his Dad who was always standing nearby at pick-up, so be it.
I’m not saying I was CHRIST in this scenario – not at all.
“I’m saying that Christ is everywhere; and that in Christ every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life.” (3)
And this is as constant as the light that fills the universe.
The last 3 verses *to end*, of the Romans passage say:
(Romans 8: 37-39)
“But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us. I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels nor rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.
BECAUSE THE height and the depth and the width of Christ’s love adds cosmic-sized-dimensions that we can’t ever fully describe, measure or define…. I don’t know what kind of space you are in today, friends.
- Maybe you’re in grief.
- Maybe your throat is hoarse from shouting, “Stand up, God! Wake up, God!”
- Maybe Advent finds you tired from waiting for things you’ve been longing for, for far too long.
- Or maybe you’re finding small comforts, a new shirt, lighting a candle, a stranger’s kindness, a poem, a bird, a tree at the end of your street.
Wherever you find yourself, may you trust that this too is where the love of God meets you—the “illuminating light that enlightens all things.” And remember: when Christ calls God’s self the
Light of the World” (John 8:12),
he isn’t asking us to look only at God, but to look out at all of life. To see that the same love and glory of Christ that shone around the shepherds, that visited Mary in that quiet room, that spoke to Zechariah, that laced the very matter of creation since the beginning of time…
All we can do is live it. Fully awake.
In a world where empire, intense political and militaristic landscapes and the killings of innocents are rampant… Jesus is born. A birth story that involves a sky, a star, AND astrologers that read the sky for God’s divine presence, and sheep and cows, and a donkey – all of creation – every creature somehow a part of the Good news, the ADVENT of love. . . And Jesus Christ is still being born – a love and a light that still compels us to discover God in new, stretching ways – today,
is here too.
and is still coming.
And is still unfolding—in us and with
ALL OF US.
Prayer to End:
Dear God, we know that if we were to ask you what you love, you would say, everything, everyone. “All of us.”
And you would name each of us by name.
Thank you for holding us together — here — today,
Thank you for holding this aching world in your very hands, in your steady light….
The light that streams through galaxies — as well as our hearts.
Amen.
Resource:
Book: The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe, by Richard Rohr