Behold (Part 2): Beholding the Unexpected
TO START
This week, we continued with part 2 of “Behold” as we anticipate Christmas. In particular, this series is calling us to consider what it means to behold the news of Immanuel, God with us. So, the aim of each week is to allow God to redirect our attention to where we look and how we look at the good news of Jesus. But to start each week, we have to come to terms with what’s trying to capture our attention.
What’s consumed a lot of your attention this week?
TO DISCUSS
To start the sermon, Zane mentions that the world around us tries to capitalize on the predictable ways our attention is captured. He even points to the algorithms that tell companies where we will look. But what really matters is that where we look for God tends to be in the most unpredictable places.
How do you best behold the news of God when you have parties to attend, gifts to buy, and family to see? How can you better fix your attention on the news of Jesus coming?
This morning, Zane helped to redirect our attention to Emmanuel through the story of the shepherds. Read Luke 2:8-20
The shepherds in the story mirror the men and women in our society who have lost the attention of the majority but are also those whom God has never stopped paying attention to. If God is paying attention to those who no one else in the world pays attention to. Who are the shepherds of our day?
What does God showing up in such a majestic way to the shepherds tell us about God?
Zane argues that God likes gift wrapping and that God is hidden in ways that we would never expect. In particular he says, “Jesus is wrapped (literally) and placed in the world”. Jesus is found among the powerless and that matters.
What moments in your life have you looked back on to realize that God was hidden in ways that you would never expect? A time when you glossed over someone or something only to miss out on God?
What is God teaching us through the arrival of Jesus who is not found among the religious elite but who arrives among the powerless?
Prominent Asian-American thinker, Tracy Gee talks about seeing and interpreting God is like finding a dropped contact. If you’ve ever lost a contact, or seen someone lose a contact, they tend to look ridiculous searching for it. They tend to stop everything they’re doing, get on their knees and stare intently. Why? Because unless you look extremely close, you will see right through it thinking there is nothing there at all.
Do you find yourself chasing after God like you would be chasing after a lost contact? What would it look like in your life to stop everything you’re doing and to stare intently to find God?
How much attention do you pay to those who receive the least attention in society?
To close, Zane argues that a big part of faith is going and seeing and that the shepherds of Jesus’s birth story aren’t passive at all when their attention is captured but rather they actively seek to give their attention to something that deserves the attention of the world.
So, are you ready to “go and see”? Do you notice the unseen and/or do you actively look and seek relationships with the unseen? Why or why not?
What would it look like for you to give your attention to someone who receives very little of your attention? What is something you can do to give attention to those who have very little of your attention?
TO CLOSE
Give group members the opportunity to share a place, person or thing that has the least amount of their attention whom they will actively give their attention to in this season (if they don’t have an example, invite them to pray for God to show them who or what God is calling them to pay attention to).
Pray over these things and then close with this prayer from the Attention Calendar:
God with us, may we behold you in all things, in all moments, in all people and in all places.