#82: Andrew Thompson: Preparing for Advent
Andrew Thompson is a pastor, theologian, and author who has devoted his life to sharing about Christ. In his latest writing, Watching From the Walls, Andrew explores what it means to prepare for the birth of Christ. In our conversation we explore; the power of the Holy Spirit, the meaning of Advent, and why all of this matters to you!
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EP. 82 Andrew Thompson
Tony: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the reclamation podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for faith and life. I'm Tony. And today is episode 82 of the podcast, and we're going to dive into the topic of advent. I get to sit down with my dear friend, a fellow pastor and author Andrew Thompson.
As we talk about his new book. Watching from the walls. It's all about why hope is an expectation, how prayer discussion and, getting into this idea about what it means to prepare. For the celebration of advent. I love the conversation. It is a deep dive with Andrew. He is such a gifted and anointed pastor and scholar, and really a friend.
I hope you enjoy this conversation so much. And if you do the best compliment, you can give us, leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. it really does make a huge difference. And please do me a favor. share this episode with a friend, if you found it meaningful. And if you really, really appreciated, what Andrew had to say without any further ado, let's jump into advent with my dear friend, Andrew Thompson.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited today to have a dear friend of mine all the way from Arkansas, Andrew Thompson, pastor author, extraordinary. Andrew, how are you?
Andrew: Doing great, Tony. It's really wonderful to be on. I appreciate the invitation.
Tony: Listen. you and I have now known each other for probably three or four years and we first met in Cuba.
Andrew: Yes, we did.
Tony: So I thought I'd start with, Asking you the question, what you've been to Cuba, how many times now?
Andrew: Three times.
Tony: Three times, what's your best Cuba story. And will you tell it for us?
Andrew: Oh goodness. Wow.
Tony: Right out of the gate I came swinging.
Andrew: Right. You have a story. what would be the best Cuba story that's okay. I've got one. and, I think this was the trip that I was on with you, which was the, Was it maybe the first trip. the first trip that I went on was the trip with you. And, I, you know, one of the things about it when you, you go down there with our friend, David Watson, it's, you, you get a, if you're a pastor, you get a preaching slot.
That's one of the things that our Cuban guests are very, very generous with as their pulpit and they, they want, you know, they, I really think that they, I consider it to be a real app systolic form of mission. They assume. I think our Cuban friends assume that we're there because the Lord has sent us because the Holy spirit has anointed us for that mission work.
And it's really a, I think, of a Pauline mission, a mission life, the kind of mission work. You've seen the book of acts with the apostle Paul, where. The M the mission work is about the body of Christ coming together from different areas. I mean, we are, we are bringing the church where we're from to the church where they are, and they take that very seriously.
They take, they take the idea that we are there. At the behest of the Holy spirit and with a word from the Lord to share with them. and so they open up their pulpits to, to us and they want us there, you know, preaching, they want us, they're engaged in the work of prayer and in the laying on of hands and of pronouncing words of healing.
And, and so, it is, you know, it can be a very daunting thing because I it's the Methodist church, but it's, It's it, it it's, it's Methodism with some pretty heavy Pentecostal inflections to it. and, and for me it's been very exciting because I, I have found myself more and more open to the presence of the work of the Holy spirit in my own life.
and that's a kind of spirituality that I've been increasingly drawn to over the past few years, but you know, down in Cuba, they take in the Holy spirit with their mother's milk. And so the, the, the. The type of the type of worship that you experience is very charismatic. It's very varied trumpets and dancing and ribbons and, and lots of instruments and, services that go on half the day and things like that.
And so when you actually stand up to preach, particularly if you are not going to preach in Spanish and I do not preach in Spanish, I'm not that confident in my Spanish then. it's, there's just a lot of, I don't know, there's a lot. It's a little intimidating, I guess, as well. I was invited to preach at a church called Santiago de LA Vega.
And. We went there that night. And we, we got there a little bit late as we usually are. We're traveling around, in, in a, in a bus, around Havana and we got to Santiago de LA Vega and we started to go in and I actually thought there was something wrong because there were so many people outside the church.
I thought, well, there's something, there's something going on in the church. They're outside the church yard because the church was so full that, people couldn't get in. And we went in and of course, as the guests, they had a place of honor for us up on the front row. And we started to worship and we worshiped for probably 45 minutes or an hour.
And then it came time to preach and I was invited to, to go up on. Up onto the chancel with my translator. And I got up and, a set of quick prayer under my breath. And I looked out and they, the people were so packed. They were shoulder to shoulder and they were, the, the balcony was completely full to the point where people were almost hanging over the front banister of the balcony.
And, And the, it was January, so it's it's winter, but you know, January and Havana is going to be in the eighties, probably. So, you know, it was hot, the doors and the windows were open and there were people that had been outside and could not get in, who were literally hanging. In the window and through the doors, sticking their heads in the doors, just so they could hear the bars.
Tony: Right. Weren't there bars on their windows.
Andrew: I don't remember. Or if there were bars that may have. Yeah. But I just remember looking out at the windows and seeing the faces pressed up, you know, to the, in, in, in the windows and the S the same way with the doors, just people crowded around the open doors, looking in and.
Obviously, these were people almost entirely who had gotten to church on foot that night and probably some of them from a fair distance away. And they were going to be going home in the dark and, and they were, and they were there because they were hungry for the Lord. You know, they were hungry for the word of life and, And I sat there and I realized that, that God was asking me to speak his word that night.
And it was so incredibly humbling. I mean, it was just, I felt unequal to the task, but at the same time, I found, That the joy and the joy and the energy of the Holy spirit, were filling me up. And it was one of the most, humbling yet also wonderful preaching experiences that I have ever had.
and I just, I, when I think about Cuba and when I think about how badly I want the Holy spirit to bring revival into our own land and into our own churches, Tony mot, my, the image that has always in my mind is the image of standing on the chancel at Santiago de LA Vega and looking out at all of these faces .
And thinking, Lord, I don't know why you've brought me here, but I just want to, I just want to preach your word tonight. So that was, you know, you said your favorite Cuba story. That's one of them I'll put it that way. That's the stories. There, there have been a lot.
Tony: I, I love that imagery and one of the questions that I always wrestle with and I'd be anxious to get your opinion on it is, why aren't American churches like that.
Like, Oh, why, how come we've lost that? And this is obviously a big question that you can't even fairly answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway, you know, w what, what's the difference between a church like that and, and most American churches in terms of where did the hunger go ?
Andrew: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's a complicated question. And I think it probably has a complicated answer. I, I will tell you, I'll give you an example that I used to use. I, I used to teach in a seminary in Midtown Memphis. I was a tall church history and Wesleyan studies. And, I'll tell you an illustration that I used to use with my students when we would cover the period of early American Methodism.
If you look at, the formation of the men of the Methodist church in America happened in 1784, the year after the revolutionary war officially ended. And, By the early 1790s, you had the beginnings of, real powerful revivalism happened. And then around the turn of the 19th century, a little after the turn of the 19th century, you had the full development of camp meetings.
which themselves were something of an outgrowth of the old Methodist quarterly meeting when the whole circuit would come together once a quarter. And, before you knew it, you had this form of charismatic, dynamic spirituality that caused the Methodist church to very quickly become the largest expression of Christianity in, North America.
Tony: Would it be like a, like a big revival, right?
Andrew: So, so what you would have is you would have these spread out circuits, the American, the American frontier. And once you got away from the Northeast, okay. Once you got away from new England and New York and Pennsylvania, you run have big cities very much.
And you had smaller settlements, villages, towns, and hamlets, and, the Methodist circuit system would set up where there would be, you know, you. You might have a preaching station where you were expected to be here and then a preaching station, 25 miles away that you needed to be day after tomorrow. And then one, you know, 15 miles from there.
And, and you would, you would preach at one and then you go to the next one, preach there and go to the next one to preach there. And you would be somewhere. Every single Sunday. And of course you'd be there in the middle of the week to go to prayer meetings and help to visit, visit, and lead class meetings and things like that.
I might come behind you. So after you left one town, I might be the preacher who came in and there might be. a dozen of us that would be on this circuit, or there might be seven or eight of us on this circuit. And, and we would spend three months preaching around the circuit. Okay. Going place to place.
And then after three months, every once a quarter, in other words, our presiding elder for that, Circuit would call us all together in a place. And we would carry out the business of the church. We would talk about how many baptisms we had done. We would talk about how many people we had buried. We would, we would, take up the, or share the collections that we had taken up.
And then that would be a great celebration. And it was the kind of thing that attracted. It started attracting a lot of people. So they would come because you had all the preachers in one place and some preachers were known as really good and you wanted to hear them. And so people would take off and they would go and they would stay for two nights or three days or four nights.
And eventually some, some of these meetings would last for an entire week and, they would have to camp. And so they called them camp meetings and those became, Enormously, spiritually powerful events and actually the kinds of things that you and I have experienced in Cuba, faith healings, and, Extraordinary manifestations of the Holy spirit in people's bodies.
And, within the, within the, the time of worship, the place of worship itself, those types of things, very similar ones showed up at camp meetings. I mean, it happened all the time. And, so you get into this. When you're teaching students of Methodist history, you get into this and. You can read these accounts because all these preachers, they were inveterate journal keepers, and you can read, you can read passages from their journals that are, just remarkable with what they're describing.
And, and I would talk to my students about this and I would say, you know, one of the things that's remarkable about it is that. So many people would show up, they would travel great distances just to get to the camp meeting, you know, and then they would pitch a tent and they would stay for four or five days.
And it's kind of like people traveling those distances to get to Santiago de LA Vega to go to church that night in, in, in Cuba. And, and I would say to my students, I'd say, so if you're, if you're coming in from the farm for day's work and you open the door of your cabin, describe for me the technology that you see.
When you open the door of your cabin, describe the technology. And they would think about it. And I've said, you know, say the years, 18, 10, or 1815. Well, the technology is primarily fire driven. There's a fire in the fireplace and there's probably a big pot over it there where, your wife has been cooking stew throughout the day or something like that.
And, and then if you look at, she asked the question, well, where's the information technology. It say, well, you know, There on the table. There's a King James Bible. And if, if there's one book in the house, that's what it is. It's a, it's a version of, it's a King James version of the Bible. If there's a second book, it's probably a hymn book.
It's probably a Methodist hymn book. And assuming that the people in the cabin are literate, then that's probably the books that are there. You know, that's probably it . Well, when that's the technology that you're dealing with, then, you there a couple of things. Number one, the church doesn't have a lot of competition.
Right? And number two, you don't have, you have to rely on God because the material things that you're relying upon are scarce and are subject to dissipationless. Right. One bad crop. And you're at the verge of starvation, you know? So you are, you are, led to rely more on the power of God because of that, that Tony is where I see a connection with our friends in Cuba.
We have seen what. What things are like there. And I don't know if, if you remember when we were coming back, we had spent the night Embarcadero and we were coming back and we stopped at a place. This was a time when there were a lot of people that had gotten ill on the trip and we stopped at a town.
Where we ended up going to church that night there we went and we ate in a restaurant.
Tony: I remember.
Andrew: Yeah. Do you remember that? That was, that was the one place that I went, that I remember more than anywhere else that we saw more horse drawn vehicles than we saw actual gas vehicles. You know, they were now they had tires on them, you know, they had like automobile tires on these wagons and buggies and things, but there were.
It, it reminded, it was like, I thought this is what walking through a town in the 18 hundreds would be like, I remember there was like horse poop all over the roads. Like it was everywhere. And the only place that you actually saw motorized vehicles was like the main drag coming into town. And there was a gas station where we had actually stopped.
And once you got on all those side roads and stuff, it was mostly horse-drawn vehicles and bicycles. There were bicycles, obviously, of course, too. And, and so what the situation that. Our friends in Cuba have right now is they have a situation that is, that is ripe for revival because they are in an economic reality that causes them to need to rely on God, because they don't have a lot of other things that can serve as crutches. All right, go ahead.
Tony: I love it. That's incredible. And, and it, it, it's actually the perfect segue into this new piece of writing that you've got out, watching the walls, watching from the walls. Excuse me. And it's all about this idea of. of advent and hope and expectation. I'm curious in, in just your kind of theological and just your pastoral opinion, with, with COVID and with the political tension and where we see ourselves in the world, do you feel like there's, a shift in the winds of, of Christianity in America?
Andrew: I would like to think that it's, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with, pastor friends, as well as with laypeople, many members of my own congregation, about the likelihood of that. I mean, I think the, the challenge that we face is one that transcends political division economic recession, and COVID those, those are the three.
You know, th the unholy Trinity, the unholy Trinity of 2020 has been political dissension or political conflict, economic recession, and COVID, you know, and, and I think what we face, that's a challenge that transcends all three of those is, is what I would, when I was. The same conversation I'd have with my seminary students.
I would, when I would talk them, talk them through, what is the technology you see in 19th century cabin? I would say now think about walking into your own living room this afternoon. Tell me what the technology is that you see. Well, there's a 62 inch TV. There's a laptop. There's an iPad. There's a smartphone.
I have an Apple watch, you know, screen, screen, screen, screen screen, and these things, all these screens. Are clamoring for my attention and they are there. They are all, they all tempt us, to kind of give ourselves over to a life of entertainment, to a life of consumption. And when we do that, you know, we, we can enter into a kind of a spiritual haze.
We it's not that our spiritual need goes away. It's that it's been numbed. In the same way that a drug addict will have his senses numbs to the reality of his world. That's what technology does to us. It numbs us in that way. And, you, you talked about, you know, talk about the challenges that we're facing this year.
I think I would hope that. that these things would be catalysts for people to realize that we've got, we've got a search for something deeper. We've got to ask the hard questions about, about what is, what is this sickness? There's clearly a sickness in our world and the sickness is not just about a presidential election.
And the sickness is not just about the levels of unemployment. I mean, there is a, a deep and abiding spiritual sickness. And, and I would like to think that the. The conflicts and the difficulties and the challenges that we've been facing would, would cause us to, to reach out for God, to ask God, to come into our lives, to invite the Holy spirit in, to submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus.
My worry is that we have so surrounded ourselves with this technological accoutrement in our lives that, despite. The sickness, despite our recognition, that things don't seem right, that we have these idols that we fill our houses with, that keep us from getting down to the level that we need to get to.
That might not be a very hopeful answer. I just, I'm trying to name the challenge though.
Tony: Sure. Yeah. Well, it leads me to the next question, right. Which is like, so you, you know, you're obviously, Serving a fantastic church. You're you're working hard. You're writing, you're putting out lots of information.
You're you're in the thick of it. Just like the rest of us. how do you keep yourself from the spiritual sickness? What are your practical disciplines? I love to try to get to like, daily routines are the things that you do to make sure that cause, I mean, like, as you said, those things, I'm, I'm myself like, Oh man, he is so right.
Like there are days where I could just get home and sit on my phone for, and all of a sudden it's like, do we remember to feed the kids? You know, like, I mean, like those are real concerns. How do you prevent yourself from getting into that spiritual sickness?
Andrew: Yeah, well that, I think it all has to do with the discipline, with which you approach the practice of the means of grace.
And, and I can tell you that a, there are a couple of cornerstone, weekly practices that I have that I think helped me stay on the right track. One of them is the, is the colleagueship and the friendship that I have with my fellow pastors here at our church. It's, I'm one of four on our pastoral team and we meet together on a, on a weekly basis on Mondays and that, Clergy meeting.
We have a lot of things to go over that we have to go over the pastoral care needs of the church. We have to go over, developments that are happening in our committee leadership in the church. We talk about staff related issues, things like that, but we also just spend a lot of time in one another's company and, and, you know, being able to be around that table.
Whereas just the four of us, leaning on one another and sharing our concerns and our frustrations and our hopes. It is a very important spiritual touchstone. So that would be one. The, the second one is that I am a part of a clergy band. that's a, Wesleyan model of, of an accountability group where a small group of people come together for the purpose of really confessing their sins before one another and praying for one another and offering God's absolution to one another.
And, and then just praying for God to work in our lives generally. And I do that with four other pastors. we do it on a video conference, but actually the way you and I are talking today, Because none of us live in the same town. I there's two of us in Arkansas, a friend of mine, Matthew Johnson, who lives just to the town, to the door for me, and then two pastors in Oklahoma and one in Atlanta, Georgia.
And so the, the five of us gather on Wednesday mornings for a couple hours, for that band meeting and that. That is a very important touchstone for me. now other than that, you know, it's my practice of prayer, my practice of the study of scripture, spiritual disciplines, this during COVID, I've fasted more than I've ever fasted in my life.
but I would, I would be the first to tell you that, I don't stay on track all the time and I, and the past eight months has been the, the most. Not the most because there was one period of my ministry that was even believe it, or not even more difficult than this, but one of the most trying and difficult times in my 20 years of ministry, has been this year.
And, particularly I find myself and preachers get into this habit a lot. maybe you can relate, but you know, you really need to be studying. You need to be reading the Bible devotionally over and above what you're studying for your weekly message. And, and I th the mat where I know that I'm starting to slip is when I find that all of my study of scripture.
I mean, I study scripture every week. but when I find that I'm slipping into that habit of only studying scripture, For the purpose of preaching that Sunday. And I'm not just studying, I'm not also reading devotionally to feed my soul. That has happened to me again and again and again, throughout COVID and when it starts to happen, that's when I recognize that, I need a course correction because, that, to me, that's a sign that my disciplines are starting to suffer a little bit.
Tony: Yeah. One of the things that we love to say around here is that if you're not dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions. And so I really, really appreciate that. Write that down, please steal it all. I'll it all you want. Yep.
Andrew: I'm going to put that that's you're going to show up in a sermon.
Tony: Listen, I feel like it's just one of those. Things that it's honestly, it's kind of the catalyst for this entire podcast is because so many of us are trying to follow Jesus and we get out of the discipline of the relationship and I feel like we see it over and over again.
And. And one of the things that I appreciate about this new resource you've got coming out is that it's, it gives us the opportunity. For course, correction, should one of us need it. Right. And so, advent and liturgical seasons now I grew up Catholic. So advent is super meaningful to me. But I think that there are probably a lot of our friends who are listening, who have no idea about what advent is and why advent is important as a liturgical season.
And I was wondering if you might start there, you know, of give us kind of the, that the four one, one on advent.
Andrew: Sure. Well, there are, there are these two great seasons in the life of the church and, and one of them is advent that always happens in the month of December. The other one is lint, which is a season that happens in the 40 days leading up to Easter.
And it's no coincidence that our two great liturgical seasons happen. Before Christmas and Easter, because those are the two highest Holy days of the church year. And the reason for both of them, I'll say this, and then I'll speak specifically to advent. The reason for both of those seasons is, meant to be an opportunity for believers to prepare themselves for the feast to come.
So advent prepares us for the feast of Christmas and Le prepares us for the feast of. Easter. And, and why are those the two high Holy days? Well, because one of them Christmas is about the incarnation of God in the person of our Lord. Jesus Christ. That word incarnation means to take on flesh and Christmas is about the fact that God condescended to us and actually.
Took the form of a person whose name is Jesus, who was born to a woman named Mary who had conceived by the power directly by the power of the Holy spirit. So God actually came into the world. And when he did, he brought the power of his divinity into human flesh, and that began to work like a divine chemotherapy against the cancer of our sin.
and so we, we needed a period of preparation for that Easter. By the same token, Easter is of course that Holy day, where we celebrate the fact that death could not contain our Lord, but rather he was raised to new life on the third day after having been crucified. And that by the power of that resurrection, he has essentially torn the veil asunder between the Holy of Holies and the world.
He has unleashed. The power of his resurrection, the world, and opened up the pathway for us to know eternal life through our own resurrection. so that's the reason why, when you think about the awesome significance of those two days, it makes sense that the, and her wisdom throughout the ages has seen it as right and fitting and good for us to have a period of spiritual preparation that leads up to them.
And that's what those two seasons are about. Both lint and also advent. Now advent, the word itself is this wonderful, a Latin word, meaning a word that comes from the Latin language and the word is too. Com or to arrive the word means to arrive or to, to reach the point of, or to come. And so what is advent?
It's the season of coming and it's the season of God's coming into the world in Jesus. And we have four Sundays that we recognize that those the four Sundays prior to, The the day of Christmas itself. I said it's always in December. Oftentimes that first Sunday of advent will actually be the last Sunday of November.
I think that's what it is this year, although yeah. Yeah. The 29th. Yeah. So this podcast will be dropping on the 24th of November. And then we'll start the following Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. So, the, the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, which of course is always on December the 25th. And, you know, I, and this, this book that I've got this little book watching from the walls, I tell a couple of stories about what we would do and my family to get ready for advent and art to get ready for Christmas.
And one of them is that. we, my mother had a friend who made advent calendars for us when we were little bitty. And if you've, if you've never, if your listeners out there, I've never heard of an advent calendar, it's a, it's a calendar that helps you keep track of the days leading up to Christmas. And so there's a, a kind of an element of anticipation and expectation that's built into you going through the calendar hours.
Were these big. Felt rectangular things that was handmade. We hung them on the wall. There were four kids in my family, and so we hung them on this one particular wall in our den. And they, they, there was in the middle of the big piece of, of rectangular white felt. And when I say big, I mean, it was probably three feet tall.
There was a big green Christmas tree. And then there was a row of. 12 pockets and then 12 pockets and a twin and a in a, at a 25th when at the end. So, so one, two, three, four through 12, and then 13 through 25 on the bottom. And in the little pockets were little ornaments.
Tony: Yes. I know we had the same thing.
Andrew: Yeah. The same thing. Yeah.
Tony: A hundred percent.
Andrew: And so you would get up on the morning of, December, the first you would get up and you would run into the Dan and you would take the little ornament out of the first pocket. It would be on a ribbon and with a straight pin. And then you would pin the little, a little ward, went onto the tree and every day you did that, getting up and getting ready to go to school.
Until around the 20th or 21st, you looked in your tree was almost full of ornaments and it was this sign that we're almost here, we're almost here. And then the, the last ornament which you would get on Christmas day was in ours, was always a baby. It was ours.
Tony: Ours was a star and ours is not ours. Wasn't nearly as Jesus y .
Andrew: So, but that, but that was, you know, that was a, it was a way. It was a wonderful way to build anticipation and to actually help us as children understand that Christmas is not just a day when you get present . But rather advent is a season that is meant to build up your excitement for what God is doing in the world through Jesus.
and, so I include our, include that little anecdote in one of the chapters of the book, because I, I think it's important when, we, we live in a world where. Felt calendars with little plastic ornaments are not as exciting to kids as they were when you and I were growing up in the 1980s.
Tony: I listened when we, we used to set up the whole, like, who would go first based off of who we thought, like we would push people to go first because we always went in like birth order.
And then when we had four kids too. And so we're like, okay, if, if Angie goes first, then on the 20. Then I get to do the star. You know what I mean? Like it was like, we were like doing like serious strategic planning around who would do the start and if somebody forgot, Oh man, all hell would break loose.
Andrew: Yeah.
Tony: Pun intended. We do it now with my kids with chocolate advent calendars. That are store bought. Do you, do you do an advent calendar with your kid?
Andrew: We have one, but I, when I was growing up, we each had our own, so there were these for each one of us, my sister, and I would race in to see who would, could put their ornament on the tree first.
And we were separated by a few years from my two older brothers. But, but, now we, we do have one now, but it's just one for, for our three kids. We have three children and we just have a single advent calendar. So, but no, I, it seems like with a store bought one with chocolate, the orange, I mean, you just get to eat the chocolate. Is that what it is?
Tony: So, so the kind of the way it looks is it's like this big, like two foot white thing, and then you open up a door and in the door is scripture. And then once you read the scripture, you get to eat the chocolate.
Andrew: Oh, okay. Okay.
Tony: And so eventually what happens is you open up all the doors to the scripture of the, the birth narrative, and that's kind of how you build the advent calendar the other way.
So, I mean, it's not nearly as cool as the felt, but.
Andrew: It seems like in the 1980s, half of everything was made out of felt. You just don't see a lot of felt these days.
Tony: True confession. When I was cleaning out the church here in Centerville, when we first got appointed, a lot of what needed to be done is just some good old fashioned housekeeping.
And I can't. There was probably, I probably threw away enough felt to, to cover the entire church on the outside. There was so much felt there was so much felt. That's great. one of the things that you write about in the book is about advent is both. look, you said, ad that looks both to the past into the future . I think it's easy to see how advent gives a nod to the incarnation, which would be obviously the past, but help people understand the importance of advent to the future. And you know, the other kind of theme is this idea of hope. And so an expectation. So talk to me about, cause I, I think man, do I feel like 20, 20 needs a little?
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me, let me get at that by talking about the phrase itself, watching from the walls, because that is not a, I mean, when you think about Christmas and even if you're familiar with the season of advent, if you think about advent, that phrase watching from the walls is not one that would.
Probably immediately leap to mind. And what that phrase is, is it's a, a phrase that. Come from the old Testament and you see it, you see the theme or the motif of the Watchman on the walls all over the old Testament, particularly in the Psalms and also in the profits. And so you can go to Isaiah or easy heel or Habakkuk.
Can you see this theme of the wash when you can go to a number of different places in the Psalms as well and see it. And the idea was that. in the ancient world, cities had walls around them and they did that for defensive reasons. You didn't know that an enemy was coming against you until their army appeared on the horizon.
And so, you, if, if you didn't have walls, it would be too late at that point. So cities had walls and those walls had centuries or guards or watch when that were posted on them. And they were supposed to watch for anything coming over the horizon. There was also a sense at night, especially that the Watchman were.
Watching for the coming of the Dawn, because at night you would, every night you would close your city Gates because that was, you know, if, if, Enemy spies were going to come in or thieves were going to come in, then they would steal in by night, of course. And so you would shut the Gates of the city at night.
And the Watchman would watch for the coming of the Dawn because when the sun Rose, once again in the East, then you could open up the gate to the city and commerce could continue and travel and people could go about their, their daily lives. And so that was the reality of what life was like and, and Watchman on the walls would have been as.
Plain as the nose on your face to people back in the ancient world. Well, and the old Testament in the Psalms and the profits, this motif of the Watchman on the walls is employed in a very creative way to talk about the relationship of Israel and Israel's God. Mm, because what did the, what did the Jews experience time and time again?
Well, they experienced falling away. They experienced exile. They experienced times of being estranged from God when they were exiled the great exile and with the Babylonians, it wasn't God that was taken away from them. It was, they, they, that were taken away with them that were taken away from God, by being literally carried off, away from Zion, away from the city of Jerusalem, into the land of Babylon, but always in.
And the profits and in the Psalms, it always depicts the people as still being in their city. But God who has been taken away and the, and the encouragement that's given is that the faithful are meant to stand as the Watchman on the walls who are watching for the coming of the Lord, not the coming of the Dawn, but rather the coming of.
Real Dawn, which was the, the, the sun arising in the people's lives again, because God has returned to them. There's actually a passage in Isaiah chapter 62, which suggests that not only should the Watchmen on the walls watch for the coming for God's return for God to forgive and to be reunited with his people.
But it actually in Isaiah 62, it, it actually is encouraging those Watchman. To pester God until he relents, like, like don't, don't give him any, don't give him any Slack. And this is what it says in verses six and seven on your walls. Oh, Jerusalem. I have set Watchman all the day and all the night, they shall never be silent.
You who put the Lord and remembrance take no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. And so when I, when I read that, you know, to me, what that communicates is that there is an expectation on the part of believers that they have an active role to play.
In serving as Watchman for the coming of God, that, that, that's not just that we're reading a story passively as people, a couple of millennial later, but that, but that the story is living and active and that we indeed are meant to be active participants in it. Now you asked about what this has to do with Jesus.
Well, we know that Jesus has come that's what Christmas is about. Sure. It is Jesus's coming into the world, the incarnation that is in our memory as believers and what we're doing when we celebrate Christmas and we pull out our little nativity sets, you know, we have living nativities in our churches and we read the story from Luke chapter two, every Christmas Eve, we are calling to mind.
We are remembering that Christ has come, but we also know Tony. That the work of Christ has not been completed. We know that Christ has promised to come again. That Christ is going to come back and victory and that the dad are going to rise and he is going to bring all things to completion. I mean, Jesus himself tells parables that allude to this fact and the gospels, the apostle Paul refers to it in a number of places, very powerfully, like in first Thessalonians chapter four, for example, the book of revelation is all about this. And so in a certain sense, advent is not only meant to be about remembering what Christ has done. Advent is also meant to look forward with hope and expectation with what Christ will do. And it's in that sense that we're called to be Watchman who are in the tradition of Isaiah pestering God until Christ returns again in glory.
Tony: Ooh, that'll preach, man. I love that. okay. So look as a pastor and I know that I have the same feelings. I'm always like, I want the absolute best for my flock. Right. I, I want them to connect with Jesus at a deep personal level. And I hope just to stay out of the way enough to so that they can do that.
Right. Like, so. Somebody who's listening right now who maybe has never leaned in to the tradition of advent before who's maybe never thought about it as arrive or calm or never thought of themselves as a, as a Watchmen before. W what are a couple things that he or she can do to really maximize the 25 days of preparation before?
Andrew: Yes. Yeah, that, that's a, that's a great question. I mean, I. One of the reasons, the reason that I wrote the book and the way that I did, I start out each chapter with a passage of scripture there right below the title of the, of the, of the chapter is a passage of scripture, that pertains to what it is that I'm talking about in that chapter.
So there's a chapter on Mary, a chapter on Joseph chapter on Elizabeth, who is the mother of John, the Baptist and Mary's cousin. there's a chapter on the shepherds that are chapter on the wise men. And. What really, the story of the birth of Christ is we find it in two places in the Bible. One of them is the gospel of Matthew, and one of them is the gospel of Luke.
And there are differences between the two. So Matthew tends to focus a little bit more on Joseph from the figure of Joseph and Joseph's role in the nativity of Jesus and the gospel of Luke very much focuses on the person of Mary and of her role. I think that all believers every year should go back and should read through Matthew and Luke. And I actually think that it helps if you don't read through it all in one setting, I think it helps if you break it up and read it slowly, and read it meditatively. and, and that's why I broke it up in the book, the way that I did so that we're so that we're actually.
Not just reading it to say, well, we've gotten through that again this year, but actually reading it with some level of intentionality and reading it in a prayerful way. So I, I mean, I think that's one thing. I would always say that when we think about our practice of the means of grace and particularly with seasons of the year, that we should go to those places in scripture where.
whatever season of the year it is, is actually described to us. So, you know, when we get to the Pentecost, you got to go read the first couple of chapters of the book of acts. When you get to Holy week, every year before Easter, you need to go back and read the passion narratives and Matthew Mark, Luke, and John, it's the same thing with advent.
You need to go to the gospel of Luke and the gospel of Matthew and read that again. And another thing that I would say. And I, I'm not going to claim to be an expert on this, Tony. certainly we struggle with it like any other parents do, but for parents of school-aged children, you need to, do what you can, to help your children understand this season of the year.
In terms of its spiritual significance, not just based on the excitement that they have at getting presents on Christmas morning. and, and, you know, we talked about the advent calendar. I mean, that's a, that's a great example of that. You know, find, find ways of embracing traditions in your own family that will help your entire family really embrace.
The season for the deep and profound, significance related to our salvation that it has to do with, I'll tell you one other story, and I'll tell this one in the book as well. When I was growing up. My grandparents, we would always go over there on Christmas morning. I grew up in a town called Paragould and, and my grandparents lived in a lot bigger town called Jonesborough, about 20 miles to the South of us.
And so we would get up on Christmas morning, we would open up presents. And then in about mid morning, we would head down to Jonesborough to my grandparents. Well then there was another round of gift opening at there with my aunt. My uncle were there and my grandparents and other family members, but before we could do anything, we.
We enacted a Christmas pageant where we would pull. I actually, I never knew anybody else who did this growing up, but I have since learned that there are other families do this as well, where we, we, we had costumes that we would pull out of the attic. Oh, Christmas morning. And yeah. There was a costume for Mary and a costume for Joseph.
And there were costumes for the wise men with crowns, you know, and then there were shepherds costumes for the shepherds. And that sounds amazing. And I'm going to need to see a picture. Yeah. Well, and I'll tell you, so here's the thing about it. We would, we, we even had a costume for the innkeeper, you know, there was one person whose job it was to say, I don't have any room for you, but you can stay in the stable, you know, and we actually, in my grandparents' living room, we, we actually had a play, that we would, and before we could get to any of the wrapping paper gift, you know, type elements of Christmas, we enacted the story, particularly from Luke chapter two.
And, somebody's always got to be Mary and somebody's got to be Joseph and, you know, we would trade parts year in and year out. Well that stuck with us. And when we grew up and we all started having kids at my parents, we did the same thing. Oh, that's awesome. So now for close to, you know, probably 15 years or so, we we've been doing that same Christmas pageant at my parents' house and, you know, it takes.
It takes 10 or 15 minutes. It actually takes more time to get out the costumes and to divvy those up and to figure out who's going to play what part than it does to actually enact the play. But, but what it does is, you know, the fact that we do it every single year and that we privilege that, ahead of actually unwrapping presence is intended to give our children, the message that there is.
a level of importance to what it is that we're doing when we gather on Christmas, that is biblical. And that is, that is, you know, at the very heart of God's relationship with us in Jesus Christ. and I, it stuck with me with my grandparents doing it. Now, my mom and dad have invited us to do that at their house.
And, and that's just, you know, things like that. You said, what, what should we do to live into the season? It's stuff like that. You know, I mean, I mean, God wants us to delight in his son and, and delighting in his son is part of that is finding delightful ways. Practice our spirituality as Christian believers.
Tony: So, you, you've obviously been doing ministry a long time. You've taught at a lot of higher education places. You've studied this. what are you going to do this year to stay fresh in, in preparation for the season of advent? Any, any new things, any old things that you dust off around this time of the year?
I'm kind of, honestly, this is question is more for me. Like, I feel like I'm like to try something different. So what can I steal from you?
Andrew: Okay, well, I'm going to give you a boring preacher answer. It may not be boring to you because you're also a preacher, but it may be boring to some of your listeners.
So, and I'm not sure how applicable it is, but for me, One of the things that I do every year is I try to figure out how I'm going to make the message fresh to my people.
Tony: That's I mean, the hardest thing about, and I'm only into this like seven years, like I'm not even into this like 30 year. I mean, you're, you're probably at what, 20 years.
Andrew: Spring it'll be 20. yeah. And that's the thing. So it's how do you make the message fresh? That's why I wrote watching from the walls. I mean, that's why that my friend I'll tell the story in the introduction about my friend, Alex Jackson and I who came up with this idea over a decade ago.
And. This started out back when I was in graduate school over a decade ago, Alex was in ministry in Tennessee and we would call each other up and talk about sermon series ideas. And we actually came up with this idea of watching the walls together a long time ago.
And I just pulled it out years later and dusted it off to, to write a small group study, with the same theme. But it was, it goes back. How do you make it fresh? How do you make it fresh? And. This year, doing that again. I mean, we will read the traditional passages related, but I'm not actually electionary pressure.
So I don't go to the revised common lectionary to find out what I'm preaching each week. I, I find the lecture to be. Personally, I was a lecturer and a preacher at one time, but when I started getting into the idea of really trying to teach Christian doctrine, I found that the lectionary did not allow me to carry out sustained topical sermon series that would really allow me to get into doctrine on a multi layered, in a multi-layer way.
So, So we'll look at the traditional Christmas stories, but, but thematically, I try to go with something to make it fresh each year. And this year I'm going with a theme called healing from heaven. The idea that the incarnation. Brings about the possibility of divine healing in our lives. And I'm going back and I'm, I'm reading Athanasius.
Athanasius was a church father, early church father in the fourth century. He has a very important treatise called on the incarnation of the word. And, and I'm going back and I'm reading that, as a way to develop what I'm going to be preaching on for those four weeks of advent. So that's how I'm doing it myself this year.
Tony: I love it. I love it, dude. okay. So I know my listeners are gonna want to, first of all, they may want to listen to that sermon series. Cause it sounds incredible. And they're gonna want to follow you. What's the best way for them to connect with you on the interwebs?
Andrew: Sure. Well, our church address or our church, on Facebook is just first church Springdale. So if you look up it's first United Methodist church, if you just look up first church Springdale, you can find our churches page and we post links to our live stream. So if anybody wants to watch, they can, they can do that same thing on YouTube. All of our videos are we have our own channel on YouTube under first church Springdale, and we actually do sermon cuts there.
So, serve 25 minute, you know, sermon. clips that you can, that you can look at in order, on there I'm on Twitter at the real Andrew, just at the real Andrew. not to say that there are fake Andrews out there. I got on Twitter, light enough to where all the good handles were taken.
And I couldn't, I couldn't do any combination of my first and last name because there Andrew Thompson is way too common of a name, so you can follow me there. I, I guess I'll stop there. I, my website that I had for years is now defunct because I wasn't able to maintain it and the church that I'm at.
So I just kind of let that go by the wayside. So those would be fine or Facebook and Twitter would be the two best ways.
Tony: I I'm so thankful for your time today and your generosity. The, the, the last question that I always love to ask people is, is an advice question, right? And so I ask you to give yourself a piece of advice and, I'm going to take you back to a very specific time and your very first time preaching advent, right?
Your very first church as pastor. If you could go back and talk to that young. Preacher young Andrew, what's the one piece of advice you're going to give him?
Andrew: It's a great question. my first appointment was in campus ministry and so I didn't preach advent there. the first time I preached advent would have been as an associate pastor. at a church where I served from Oh three to Oh six. I think my advice would be to, pay more attention to the older members of my congregation and the wisdom that they had to share. That's beautiful. Beautiful. I knew, I was in a church where there were real saints. There were real living saints, and I recognized it at the time, but, didn't recognize it enough.
And a lot of those, a lot of those men and women have gone on to be with the Lord. And I would give anything for another conversation with them. Man that feels especially on topic for 2020 and the amount of isolation that we're seeing in our older church family. And so, that's, that's probably going to be super convicting for a lot of us.
Tony: Andrew, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for this incredible resource. Thank you for what you're doing for the local church. It, it was so great to have you on the podcast.
Andrew: Appreciate it, Tony blessings on you and your family and on your congregation, for this upcoming season. I hope that the Holy spirit visits y'all in a special way. And, it's great to connect with you. I appreciate the invitation.
Tony: I loved the way Andrew talked about how advent is about looking both to the past and to the future. Such great preparation for the feast of Christmas morning. The world really is holding its breath in preparation for what Jesus has to offer us.
And I'm so excited to be here on this journey with you. If you could please do me a favor, share this episode, let's get the word out about what God is doing through the podcast and through Andrew's writing. Go follow him on all the social media and tell him how much you appreciated him being on the podcast.
As always, don't forget the best compliment you can give us, share this episode with a friend and leave a rating or review on iTunes. We're trying to get to a hundred views by the end of the year, we need your help hundred reviews. We can do it. Thank you guys so much. And I'm looking forward to celebrating the season of advent with you.
