Advent 2013

Belmont University

Advent Devotional Guide 2013

Advent 2013 This is the tenth edition of the Advent Guide for the Belmont University community! Looking back over a decade of world events, we are even more aware of the need for the Coming Christ in the lives of people here and everywhere. With conflict and concern near and far, we long for the Christ child!

The season of waiting that is Advent calls for us to realign our priorities and reimagine our place before God. We are reminded of the once and future visit of our Lord Jesus Christ and challenged to prepare our hearts for his coming this Christmas season. We pray these devotionals help prepare your hearts for the coming of Jesus Christ into your life.

You will discover instructions for daily devotions during this season.

Please read the scripture, the brief devotion, and pray each day as you prepare your heart for Christmas.

Each year students, staff, and faculty contribute to the guide. It is a community work and I am thankful to work with such fine people.

I am grateful for the continued support of this project by Provost Thomas Burns. Without his support we could not produce this guide.

Finally, I remain indebted beyond measure for the continued assistance of Debbie Jacobs. Her love for the students and her servant’s heart help us to achieve our larger goal of equipping and encouraging others. This Advent Guide serves as one among many projects she gives leadership to each year and serves as a tangible expression of her excellence in service. We are all grateful to have her with us.

May each day reflecting upon God’s Word and upon the words of these writers lead each of us through Advent and to the coming of Christ!

Blessings,

Dr. Darrell Gwaltney Dean, School of Religion

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Guide to Daily Prayer Opening Prayer Comfort, comfort your people, O God! Speak peace to your people.

Comfort those who sit in darkness and mourn, Forgive us our sins and end the conflict in our lives.

Confession of Sin eflect quietly before God asking for forgiveness for R all those things done and left undone that are unpleasing to God. Remember, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

1 John 1:9

Scripture Lessons

Read the Psalms for the day.

Read the Old Testament passage for the day.

Read the Gospel passage for the day.

Read the Epistle passage for the day.

Prayers The following is a suggested guide for prayer during Advent. ray for all Christians around the world and especially P for those who endure persecution for their faith.

Pray for our nation and all those in authority. ray that Christ’s peace may cover the world. Pray for P the end of conflict and war and the triumph of truth and justice. ray for all those who engage in the educational ministry P of the Church and especially for Belmont University.

Pray for those who suffer and grieve.

As a closing prayer, read the words to Come, thou long-expected Jesus appointed for the week.

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o Week One Come, thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free, From our fears and sins release us, Let us find our rest in thee.

o

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Sunday, December 1  Psalms 111, 112, 113, 146, 147  Amos 1:1-5, 13-2.8  1 Thessalonians 5:1-11  Luke 21:5-19 Each year I’m amazed at how the feelings from my childhood impressions during Advent come rushing back to me. I remember the honor, before I knew anything about humility, of being asked to light a candle in the Advent wreath at church. I remember the struggle to find patience in the expectation of what Christmas morning would bring. I am blessed to see those same emotions manifested in my children as they, too, make their way through this remarkable season.

While I have found a way to temper some of these emotions as an adult, I’ve also found new ways that this season brings those feelings to the surface as my family and I move through Advent together. I am able to appreciate, for example, the blessings of naiveté that allow children easily to separate, and comfortably live with, the Christian and secular trappings of the season. Try as we might, it can be challenging to fully live the reality of this season without distraction. In trying to find a way to place this time into context, I am able to find a center in the text of 1 Thessalonians 5:8-11: But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

In these lines I am reminded that as we celebrate the arrival of Christ that we also remember that God’s gift to us comes with a daily responsibility. We are here to love each other, to support each other, and to sustain each other.

The joy and celebration of this season allows us to find ways to engage with those around us and remind them of the care we have for them.

I hope that as you move through this season you will find ways to celebrate our commitment to each other, to share gifts of service and support to our community, and to use this time to grow more fully into the person that God intends us each to be.

Thomas D. Burns Provost

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Monday, December 2  Psalms 1, 2, 3, 4, 7  Amos 2:6-16  2 Peter 1:1-11  Matthew 21:1-11 In Matthew 21, Jesus identifies the greatest commandment of the Law: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind (cf. Deut 6:5). He adds a corollary: love your neighbor as yourself (cf. Lev 19:18). His emphasis on love puts Jesus squarely in the Hebrew prophetic tradition. His contemporaries, on the contrary, were fixated on superficial operation of the religious machinery at the expense of trivialities like mercy, love, and compassion. Amos cries out against the same issues in his own time (750 years before Christ). In Amos 2:6-16, the prophet proclaims a message of judgment against God’s people for various flagrant violations of the love principle.

Amos begins by condemning their callous commercialism. The people—God’s people—are more concerned with wealth than their poor brother’s welfare. They are willing to stomp him into the dirt to get what they want! They have abandoned genuine piety for a moral laxity veneered by vain religious observance. Fathers and sons frequent shrine prostitutes together. Then they go to God’s temple, but they bring wine that cost them nothing and garments they have no right to use. They forget that the God who saved them from Egypt, the wilderness, and the wild tribes of Canaan requires their love and devotion all the way down to the heart. Their love is damnably misplaced on themselves.

Christ’s coming is not simply a fulfillment of the Old Testament’s predictions about him. Christ’s coming gives flesh to the genius of the Old Testament: love for God and neighbor. Christ came to be neighbor-love and be God-love. He proved his two-pronged love beyond doubt by suffering for us and obeying the Father in his scandalous death on the cross. Since we have become “partakers of the divine nature” through him (2 Pet 1:4), he wants us to emulate him as a tribe of neighbor-and-God lovers. Never forget that we are saved to love our neighbor and our God as Christ did and that “if you practice these qualities [godliness, brotherly affection, love, etc.] you will never fall” (2 Pet 1:11). “These qualities” encourage feeding the hungry mercifully, not exchanging luxuries mindlessly. They encourage zeal for God’s righteousness, not lust for culture’s moral bankruptcy.

Let there be a fresh advent of Christ’s self-effacing love among us during this season.

Adam Pace Assistant Professor, College of Pharmacy

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Tuesday, December 3  Psalms 5, 6, 10, 11  Amos 3:1-11  2 Peter 1:12-21  Matthew 21:12-22 When I prayerfully consider the time of Advent it is easy to get caught up in the majesty of the narrative of Christ’s birth. The story is so familiar now and every year it echoes in large stage productions and sleepy little churches with a borrowed children’s doll to play the part of Jesus. Yet the birth of Christ, while still miraculous and wondrous as a snapshot in time, is not the beginning of the story of salvation. It is the climax of God’s promise to the world at the dawn of time.

Amos’ book of prophecy details how yet again the Israelites had betrayed their relationship with God and how God would punish them.

God’s perfect justice required reconciliation that the Israelites could not provide. The cycle of sin, punishment, and imperfect redemption stamps a mark on the Old Testament.

During their time of separation, when God allows the Israelites to be defeated and captured by their enemies, He does not forget them.

They cry out as echoed by the Psalms, asking for healing and mercy.

God has a perfect plan of reconciliation—one that does not offend justice but that makes sacrifices to honor it. The accounts and letters of the New Testament at times echo the Lord’s anger with those who would reject or frustrate the relationship and covenant that God wants with his people. God’s desire is to be in relationship with each of us, and with all of us.

God’s story is bigger than any one person. It is what one of my religion professors termed an “eschatological trajectory” of God bringing Christ to redeem the entire world. The narrative is the entirety of the world’s history and cannot end until the world does. During this special time of Advent, I believe it is important to see both the larger scope of God’s story but also to focus on the smaller piece of our personal relationship with Christ. Christ has come to the world and will come to the world—what a wonderful promise. But Christ has also come to me and desires a relationship with me. The end game, my personal eschatological trajectory, is that relationship as well.

Amy Moore Associate Professor, College of Law

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Wednesday, December 4  Psalms 12, 13, 14, 119:1-24  Amos 3:12-4.5  2 Peter 3:1-10  Matthew 21:23-32 Advent is the living, yearning desire of human life, as it waits in hope and in despair for the appearance of the living God. It is a season to ignite our hope for God. It is a time when we can be honest about our doubts and despair, as we wait for our God and Savior to save us from our suffering, brokenness, and sin. We hear the despair flow unrestrained from the lips of the Psalmist with words that many have had the misfortune to cry. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” (Psalm 13). It is not God’s absence that stings the heart. It is the duration— the weight of time borne by a heart who desperately hopes for the coming of God’s kingdom.

Perhaps, this is why Jesus says to the chief priests and elders of the temple, “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21). The prostitute crying out to God in her despair is nearer to the kingdom of God than the studied and venerated man of God. I must confess my own understanding of this upside down kingdom is limited to books, even if it is the Great Book. I don’t have occasion in my everyday life to engage with prostitutes, criminals, or other marginalized members of my community. As a “good and decent” person, I try to not to walk on that side of town, preferring the higher ground of Starbucks, the Green Hills YMCA and my well-educated, middle-class church. I do not demonize the education and middleclass life my parents sacrificed to secure for me, yet Jesus’ words force me to confront one of the great paradoxes of the Gospel. God has given the privilege of being first in the kingdom to those who know the despair of God‑forsakenness yet continue to wait on the coming of God with every hope of life and restoration.

Let us make time this Advent to cross over to the margins and sit down with one desperate, hope-filled saint that we may learn to wait on God’s kingdom from those who will enter ahead of us.

Manuel Cruz Assistant Professor, School of Religion

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Thursday, December 5  Psalms 18:1-20, 18:21-50  Amos 4:6-13  2 Peter 3:11-18  Matthew 21:33-46 Jesus relates the Parable of the Tenant to the Pharisees, a story implying that they, the powerful—like the parable’s vineyard owner—should not expect to reap the fruit they did not tend. The Pharisees condemn the tenant in the story for not relinquishing the owner’s share of the fruit.

One perspective on this passage puts us in the role of the Pharisees since we, too, are likely to judge the tenant’s violent behavior against the innocents whom the owner sends to collect his share.

Jesus’ story also reminds us of our own limited judgment and our participation in systemic wrongs, such as the absentee landlord’s claiming what he did not grow. Such wrongs are barely visible to us since the landlord’s entitlement seems justified by his ownership of the land. Yet his lack of involvement with the fruit’s cultivation or with his tenant has actually informed the tenant’s violent response, which we freely condemn.

When Jesus then asks the Pharisees if they have not heard how “[t]he stone [that] the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” it seems like a complete non-sequitur. This cryptic analogy points out how the stone that is scorned by those who decide what has value— the Pharisees, the vineyard owner, and maybe even the audience of this parable—turns out to be the building’s very cornerstone. Its value was overlooked by the powerful, but Jesus seems to suggest that its worthlessness was wrongly determined. Jesus further explains that the Lord has caused this marvelous reversal, which transformed the rejected stone into a cornerstone.

In his Gospel, Matthew urges us to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” As we endeavor to grow in grace and knowledge this Advent season, allowing the Christ child to birth new hope in our own lives, we must remember that we are not just cornerstones-in-the-making, tenants who faithfully nurture and harvest the fruit. We may be like the tenant, but we may also be like the Pharisees, like the vineyard owner. We must learn also to see the cornerstones in the rocks that we have spurned. We must realize how our thoughtless claims of privilege take away the fruit of others’ labor, violating their worth and hope, and thus sewing the seeds of the world’s violence.

Annette Sisson Professor, College of Arts and Sciences

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Friday, December 6  Psalms 16, 17, 22  Amos 5:1-17  Jude 1-16  Matthew 22:1-14 We live in a world that often dwells on fear and uncertainty. At a macrocosmic level we have the uncertainties of war, poverty, and injustice. At a microcosmic level we may have uncertainties about how we’re going to get through this semester or what we’re going to do once we graduate. Maybe there are uncertainties you are facing in your family, or maybe you’re having financial troubles.

Advent is the season of Christ’s coming. Many of us are familiar with the concept that Christ came to Earth to save us from our sins. While this is Biblical truth, I’d like us to consider a different way that Christ is our savior. The coming of Christ not only signified the end of sin, but also the end of fear, doubt, worry and uncertainty. Advent is a reminder that the Lord has not forsaken us; we don’t have to feel hopeless or alone.

Psalm 22:24 says that the Lord “has not hid his face from [us] but has listened to [our] cry for help.” We don’t have to carry our burdens by ourselves because the Lord is our refuge (Ps. 16:1, Ps. 17).

The Advent message replaces fear and doubt with joy and delight (Ps. 16). God offers himself as a refuge to all of us, we simply need to accept and trust Him. Jude reiterates this by saying that the Lord protects those who trust in Him. So, during this Christmas season I encourage you to give your burdens to Christ, don’t carry them all on your own. Seek the Lord when you experience fear and doubt, allow Him to show you the peace and joy his coming offered.

I want to leave you with Psalm 16:11 and invite you to hold onto it as an anthem during this Advent season. Trust in the promises of the Lord and find refuge in Him as the Psalmist did: “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

Have a blessed Christmas!

Cora Kilgour Senior, Religion and the Arts Major

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Saturday, December 7  Psalms 20, 21:1-7, 110:1-7, 116, 117  Amos 5:18-27  Jude 17-25  Matthew 22.15-22 Today’s reading comes from Amos chapter five. There, God is disgusted with God’s people. God despises and hates (in Hebrew, sane) their festivals, music, singing and offerings. God rejects celebrating prosperity on the backs of the poor; calling injustice justice; and, being grateful but not faithful. Festivals and offerings that celebrate injustice are truly an enemy (another translation of sane) of God. Amos warns that calamity awaits these hypocritical, unfaithful people. As it comes to pass, Assyria demolishes Israel not long after Amos speaks for God. What an odd passage for Advent, for this story seems to be driven by hate, not love.

Or is it? Could it be that hating lives that are divided—lives that are lies—is one aspect of God’s love for humankind? Could it be that John 3:16 just as easily could read, “For God so loved the world because God hated hypocrisy and injustice that God sent the only son…”? If so, a crucial question needs answering: “Why? Why does God hate divided lives?” Is it because they don’t produce the outcomes God wants: right worship, just action, and truthful speech?

Parker Palmer talks about living divided lives his book A Hidden Wholeness. He says, “The divided life, at bottom, is not a failure of ethics. It is a failure of human wholeness.” Divided lives are keys to our success, he suggests. Our contradictions emerge from the instinct to protect ourselves, to fit in, to hide our mistakes, to tolerate for personal gain, and to accept contradiction as inevitable. It is an instinct older than Israel.

Yet, Palmer says, we pay a steep price when we live fraudulent lives: our relationships are broken. People around us walk on ground made unstable by our dividedness. In other words, the ethics of community is failed, and this is a concern found in Amos.

But hope abides there as well: we can choose faithfulness; that is, turning from a divided life. Again, Palmer says, “The divided life may be endemic, but wholeness is always a choice. Once I have seen my dividedness, do I continue to live a contradiction?”

Advent urges a response, for God so loves whole lives—lives of truth, integrity, courage, kindness, and trustworthiness—that God continues to give us the healing gift of Immanuel.

Andy Watts Associate Professor, School of Religion

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o Week Two Israel’s strength and consolation, Hope of all the earth thou art, Dear desire of every nation, Joy of every longing heart.

o

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Sunday, December 8  Psalms 114, 115, 148, 149, 150  Amos 6:1-14  2 Thessalonians 1:5-12  Luke 1:57-68 Let every living, breathing creature praise God! Hallelujah!

(Psalm 150:6, The Message) If you sit still long enough, longer than most people do these days, you can almost feel yourself breathing with the universe. There is a movement, in and out, of the breathing of life as it flows through all we see. Recently in a class we discussed why there currently appears to be a tension between appreciating nature and worshipping God. The Psalmist certainly didn’t express this. Rather, throughout the Psalms there is the chorus of creation singing the praise of God. In today’s Psalms we see not only mountains and rivers flowing in praise, but creatures large and small. The Psalmist appears to be joining in a chorus much larger than one or many humans.

J. Philip Newell reminds us that there is a harmony in all the world that has been sung since before the beginning of time, started by the heartbeat of God. Jesus sung it for us as a reminder of that deep down current in us that yearns to sing along.

Perhaps it isn’t whether dominion is over or under but rather it is humans singing their part in the harmony of creation praising God. Surely the coming of Jesus in a manger brought echoes of joyful singing in all of creation. Surely the deep breath Christ Jesus took as he triumphed over death was heard by more than the humans too afraid to hope for his resurrection.

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!

(Psalm 150:6, NRSV) Judy Skeen Professor, School of Religion

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Monday, December 9  Psalms 9, 15, 25  Amos 7:1-9  Revelation 1:1-8  Matthew 22:23-33 Today’s reading gives us a wide array of witness as we seek to cultivate, within ourselves, a posture of receptivity and readiness concerning the coming of the one our tradition calls Lord. Before we try to open our minds to the strange, otherworldly-seeming image of Jesus arriving “with the clouds” in the vision of Revelation 1:7, we do well to recall the insistently this-worldly response Jesus gave to contemporaries hoping to trip him up over how far-fetched his claims concerning a life beyond the here and now had to be. What becomes of wives with more than one dead husband? Which one do they belong to in the hereafter? These questions, Jesus explains, completely confuse the radical good news of God’s future with the perpetuation of present arrangements. No woman will belong to any man when the kingdom comes (Matt. 22:30). Does this mean one can seek God and view a woman as a man’s property in the meantime, putting off the new way of regarding one another till that distant afterlife? Not at all, because the one Jesus proclaims is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (22:32).

Admittedly, none of this easily puts the reader in mind of the imagery popularly associated with Christmas, but this is only because we often neglect to look deeply at the traditions out of which the holiday arises. The psalmist prays that the Lord will instruct the nations in the humility and fear that comes when they “know that they are only human” (Ps. 9:20). The hope that those who wield power would come to see themselves as human beings among human beings is in sync with the purposes of this Lord who deserves our praise, because “he does not forget the cry of the afflicted” (9:12). We might begin to note how more than one Christmas song articulates longing for a sacred rearranging of the status quo: “For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever” (9:18).

With this longing in view, we can better discern “the faithful witness” whom “every eye will see” (“even those who pierced him”) and on whose “account all the tribes of the earth will wail” in the opening vision of John’s Revelation composed for the churches of Asia Minor (1.5-7).

The wailing, as I read it, is not born of fear of doom and destruction to come. It’s more akin to a collective realization concerning the ways we’ve crushed the divine image in our treatment of one another. A uniquely Advent hope will have to involve turning such processes around. If we embrace it, the wail can give way to the rejoicing that comes when we seek of God’s always-social righteousness.

David Dark Assistant Professor, School of Religion

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Tuesday, December 10  Psalms 26, 28, 36, 39  Amos 7:10-17  Revelation 1:9-16  Matthew 22:34-46 A Time for Community One of the most beautiful aspects of the Christmas season is the community it offers. Despite the hustle and bustle of the end of the year, one thing that remains certain is that people gather. People celebrate. People join hands and pray. They give thanks and offer gifts to one another to show gratitude, love, and hope. Time spent with my family has always been the most exciting thought for me when it comes to Christmas Day itself. It is not something that always is feasible or easy to plan during the rest of the year. It is something for which I am grateful.

What happens for those who have nobody with whom they can gather and celebrate? This might be one of the toughest times of the year.

This is a time of year when community matters all the more, but that does not mean it is insignificant the remaining days of the year.

I have been feeling convicted about this lately. I am removed from my family while I am in Nashville, but that is no excuse to be removed from community entirely. The way I have most neglected this has been with my spotty church attendance. Community, as I have been learning (the tough way) lately, is something about which we need to be intentional. We need to seek others, especially brothers and sisters in Christ. Without community, our sense of place is harder to pinpoint, tasks seem quite unconquerable, and celebrations seem to be lacking fervor. We need others to hold us accountable, to fill us with hope, to encourage us, and to exhort us to follow Christ with all of our being. Removed from community we are quite small. So, I encourage us to seek real fellowship with fellow believers, our truest and grandest family, as we celebrate our Lord’s coming to earth to save and redeem us.

Prayer Lord, help us glorify You with our communities, big and small. Remind us to celebrate You wholeheartedly, all year long, and to appreciate what a gift it is that the Body of Christ is so vast and that Your Holy Spirit is what sustains us.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

(Hebrews 10:23-25).

Rachel Wilder Senior, Religion and the Arts Major 14

Wednesday, December 11  Psalms 38, 119:25-48  Amos 8:1-14  Revelation 1:17-2.7  Matthew 23:1-12 Whatever they do is done for show… you are all brothers (students)… you have one Father… if you are recognized at all, let it be for your service.

(Matthew 23) I spent a great deal of time and money earning a Ph.D. for the thrill of being addressed as “Doctor” or “Professor,” with the prospect of wearing a black robe as icing on the cake. When young, the tip of the hat in the direction of specialness is very satisfying. Mercifully, that does not last.

Jesus says instead of aiming at being superior, why not aim at being equal? As the text says, “We are all brothers” or an alternative translation reads “we are all students.” God has placed us in the laboratory of life and our spiritual education begins with the awareness we are all frail dust. Being all children of God, we can let go of the competition for who looks best: no phylacteries needed.

Small wonder that Christmas begins with a baby in the manger as we are invited to behold the face of God. As St. Francis said, “A kind face is a precious gift.” Jesus moves the lesson from showing off to serving.

“The greatest among you will be your servant.”

Now everything is different. Now we are not scrambling for the chief seats at the table; now we are working to make sure no one is left out. As Buechner’s St. Brendan said “To lend each other a helping hand when we’re falling… perhaps that is the only work that matters in the end.”

Ben Curtis Professor, School of Religion

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Thursday, December 12  Psalms 37:1-18, 37.19-42  Amos 9:1-10  Revelation 2.8-17  Matthew 23:13-26 I arrived at Troas during the Belmont Holy Land trip after traveling for hours through Turkish hills. Far from any highway or major metropolis rests the ancient town in the throes of excavation. Daisies and crimson poppies spring to life among temple ruins and still smooth marble columns. A light rain douses our shoulders. Troas sits crowning granite cliffs scattered with cattails and potsherds, overlooking a sea upon which heaven opens and paints the blue with crystalline. Clouds part and morning light pours over the Mediterranean; light wind nudges the cliffs of this place where Paul once shared the love of Christ and where that love once raised the dead to life during one of his sermons.

My experience here could be likened to a resurrection of my own. I walk away feeling clean, physically and in my spirit, bearing a sense of purity no rain, dust, or pain could infringe upon. Whatever the cause I knew God’s presence strongly in that city now abandoned, drawing undeniable life out of walls some would deem broken.

A year later I am bundled in coats and gloves as I arrive at Glen Coe, Scotland, on the edge of night. A few stars bloom through the blanket of sky and all is silent. The presence of humanity or anything destructive seems a distant thought, yet these hills have been shaped by volcanic activity and clan warfare, a far cry from the peace now permeating the valley. I am flushed with a sense of awe that recalls my experience at Troas, possibly for the great paradox of beauty found in both places despite being formed by thousands of years of decay and change.

Mountains carved by weathering and a city tumbling to time somehow gave me ultimately a sense of joy and of redemption’s power.

In a similar paradox, today’s readings deal with a few passages concerning destruction and judgment, yet this week of Advent centers on joy. The Psalmist asserts that while destruction covers the land, God will bring rest to the faithful. What often surprises us is that this rest often intersects suffering. Amidst judgment we find God’s faithfulness when we trust him and pursue goodness, whether or not we do so perfectly (Psalm 37:3-9). God promises joy, security, and cleansing for his people but also hardship (Amos 9:1-10). However, each promise leads to refinement and redemption. We find the epitome of these promises in the coming of Christ, who was born into a landscape of destruction and wickedness, a light of peace in a broken world. We rejoice, for he comes to finally take upon himself that destruction and give us the hope of salvation, rebuilding us and his kingdom in us.

Mary Elizabeth Vance Senior, Religion and the Arts Major

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Friday, December 13  Psalms 31, 35  Haggai 1:1-15  Revelation 2:18-29  Matthew 23:27-39 At Advent (from the Latin adventus, meaning “arrival”) we are called by the Church to consider both the first and second coming of Christ.

It has long been tempting to see the so-called “God of the Old Testament” as the Mean One, and Jesus as the Nice One. Likewise, we may have the impression that the first Advent is rather sweet, while the Second Coming and Last Judgment are when Jesus unfortunately reverts to his Old Testament roots.

But when Jesus came to earth the first time, he often said things along the lines of the Advent reading for today: “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” Now, that’s just a bit harsh for our ears. Doesn’t He know it’s Christmastime!?

It has been said that for most of us, righteous indignation is 1% righteous and 99% indignation. But Jesus’ anger is always borne of his deep love for us. As the German theologian Karl Barth put it, God’s “no” to us is swallowed up in God’s “yes.” But we need to hear the forceful “no” to our self-seeking, self-directed, and self-justifying ways first. Only then can we hear the resounding “yes!” from God, who is longing to save us from our sins, but is unable to save us if we are stubbornly clinging to our sins.

Hence the achingly tender words of Jesus as he wept over Jerusalem: “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” It is our unwillingness to come into a transforming encounter with the love of God that first angers and finally kills the Son of God, who “loved us and gave himself for us.”

T.S. Eliot, the British poet, said of Christ’s Church in relation to the world, “She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft. She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.” Our Advent reading for the day records Jesus saying, “I have this against you: You tolerate… sexual immorality.” How can Jesus say a bad word about toleration!? But Jesus loves us too much not to tell us the truth, just as a doctor cannot help us without letting us know our true condition. The Great Physician not only loves us enough to tell us the truth, he is willing to come into our lives to heal all that needs healing until we fully reflect both His love and His truth.

Todd Lake Vice President, Spiritual Development

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Saturday, December 14  Psalms 30, 32, 42, 43  Haggai 2:1-9  Revelation 3:1-6  Matthew 24:1-14 Revelation at Christmas is not exactly the most comfortable of readings, or what we usually associate with the celebratory season! However, Advent is not only about anticipating Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. It also reminds us to watch and prepare constantly for Jesus’ coming in our lives today and for his final coming when the good news of God’s just reign becomes a reality for all the nations.

In the third chapter of Revelation, the prophet John, on behalf of the risen Lord, delivers a message to the congregation at Sardis. It’s specifically crafted for a group of Jesus-followers in western Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) almost 2,000 years ago, but it’s also meant to be overheard by us. John writes in v. 6, “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” Churches, plural.

That’s the other six churches mentioned in Revelation 2–3, but it’s also communities of faith today. It’s also us.

So what is this message? Revelation 3:1-6 is, basically, a wake-up call—a plea for renewal. Twice in just six verses, the cosmic Christ commands and pleads with the church to wake up, to rouse themselves from a state of sleep into a state of alertness and watchfulness and life. It’s the same word Jesus uses in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asks his disciples to stay awake and keep vigil with him as he prays.

He doesn’t want us to miss what’s going on, to miss the signs of God’s activity in the world around us and in our own lives.

So where in your life have you fallen asleep these days? Or, to use the even stronger language of Revelation, where are you “on the point of death” (3:2)? What part of your divinely-given being is about to wither away?

Advent is a time of celebration, a season when we remember the hope, joy, peace, and love that Jesus’ coming offers to us. It’s also a time for renewal, a time that calls us to clear away the debris that keeps us from recognizing God’s hope, joy, peace and love, and from offering it to others. I pray that you and I both might wake up anew this season, that we might revive ourselves with a newfound appreciation for God’s work all around us, every day. Blessings to us all as we wait with bated breath for the coming of the Prince of Peace, and blessings as we work with all our strength to participate in that Advent every day.

Amanda Miller Assistant Professor, School of Religion

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o Week Three Born thy people to deliver, Born a child and yet a king, Born to reign in us forever, Now thy gracious kingdom bring.

o

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Sunday, December 15  Psalms 63:1-8, 98, 103  Amos 9:11-15  2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, 13-17  John 5:30-47 Isn’t worship one of the weirdest things to observe or experience?

A group of people come together and close their eyes and lift their hands in adoration of something significant to their hearts. However, it isn’t only the significance that is being adored, it is that the someone or something is entirely set apart and different in a way that resembles nothing else. We don’t worship someone for being really good at a skill.

We might admire them and recognize they are superior at a particular skill set such as singing or architecture. However this does not bring us to our knees in humility. For something or someone to be deemed worthy of worship, there is an element of distance from ourselves that we admire. There is an aspect of unattainability in someone or something that makes us speechless and yet simultaneously full of words of exaltation.

Creation longs to worship. Humanity is made in the image of God but lives in the reality of compromise. We often settle for pleasures that cannot sustain. Advent is the announcement that the rushing water our parched hearts desperately need has come in Jesus Christ. There is living water that will forever quench our thirst. Jesus announces in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” That which was unattainable now lies within our reach.

We lift up our hands as if to touch that which could not be grasped before. God is no longer a distant beauty but has come so near that He appeared in flesh and bone. Jesus was made of dirt, like us. Yet, He was different. He was perfection. He was life at its best. It is in this beautiful blend of God being so unattainable yet absolutely within reach that we find ourselves in this odd yet natural place of worship, and rightly so. Jesus has come, and He is worthy of worship.

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth; Break forth and sing for joy and sing praises.

(Psalm 98.4) Josh Solowey Senior, Christian Leadership Major

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Monday, December 16  Psalms 41, 44, 52  Zechariah 1:7-17  Revelation 3:7-13  Matthew 24:15-31 We see in our texts for today that we are called to be faithful people as we await Christ’s return. What is faithfulness? What are we to be doing as we wait? There are many specifics that can answer this question, but today I want to focus on Psalm 41:1 and Revelation 3:8 in the context of Advent.

I heard a student who was working with homeless people say she wanted to welcome a homeless woman into the realm of humanity, to acknowledge that the homeless woman was one of us. The student said she wanted to embrace the homeless woman, “not outcasting her.” I have been thinking about that phrase ever since I heard her speak it.

I rather like making the word “outcast” into a verb. It is an action, not a person, and its negation involves us choosing to welcome, to embrace and not cast out. Psalm 41 begins: “Happy are those who consider the poor; the Lord delivers them in the day of trouble.” Or to put it another way, happy are those who are not outcasting the poor.

What is the result of such work, of such welcoming? What happens when we open our hearts, our wallets and our doors to the poor?

When we look to Revelation 3:8, we see that WE are offered an open door. When we welcome the other, when we bring in the ones who are being outcast, when we open the door to others, the Lord sees our faithfulness and opens the door, in many and varied ways, to us.

Come, Lord Jesus, through the door You have opened.

Ann Coble Adjunct Professor, School of Religion

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Tuesday, December 17  Psalms 45, 47, 48  Zechariah 2:1-13  Revelation 3:14-22  Matthew 24:32-44 Most of the first six chapters of the book of Zechariah are something like a diary of the prophet’s dreams. The second chapter contains the third dream or “night vision,” followed by a prophetic oracle addressed to the people of Israel who have been living in captivity in Babylon. There are two angels present in this dream, so it has some elements in common with the stories of the birth of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

In the dream Zechariah sees a man with a measuring device in his hand, which is immediately reminiscent of Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple in which a man is measuring. The man in Ezekiel’s vision has a stick and the one in Zechariah’s a piece of rope. Ezekiel’s vision is of a temple almost boundless in scope, with a river running through, so that it is like the Garden of Eden. In Zechariah’s dream the man is measuring the boundaries of a Jerusalem with no walls, protected by God like a wall of fire.

An important thing to remember about dreams like these is that they are not goals, or objectives, or action-plans, but counter-realities.

They are not subject to evaluation or assessment. For the people returning to Jerusalem two and half millennia ago, even building a finite temple was a long struggle, and they rebuilt the wall around the city, even though the previous one had ultimately failed to save them. The counter-realities of our imaginations are there to sustain us through the struggles of reality, the accomplishing of goals and objectives, which at best will be a dim reflection of those dreams.

Mary and Joseph had dreams about giving birth to the savior of the world. What they got was a baby who needed to be fed, cleaned, and held, every day. As Advent comes around again this year, for some the realities of life are better, but for others they are worse or about the same. The coming of Jesus offers us a counter-reality to energize our living for another year, something about which to dream.

Mark McEntire Professor, School of Religion

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Wednesday, December 18  Psalms 49, 119:49-72  Zechariah 3:1-10  Revelation 4:1-8  Matthew 24:45-51 During the Christmas season we are bombarded with contrasting messages between spiritual and worldly views. If our eyes are not fixed on Christ, the message that our joy and security come from things of this world can take reign in our hearts. We are reminded in Psalm 49 that no amount of wealth or physical comfort will keep us joyful or save us from death. The rich and poor alike will die; however, for Christians, death is freedom, the continuation of our eternal Godlife. A life redeemed from sickness, loneliness and anxiety… true life free from fear… the life for which we were created.

Society’s messages convey to us that our security and joy are based upon health, beauty, relationships, career success, and wealth. Our desire to achieve success based on these attributes can encourage a spirit of fear and longing—the fear of failure, fear of loneliness, fear of fitting in, fear of illness, and fear of death. The emotion of fear wreaks havoc on our body, mind, and spirit. Left to our own devices, fear makes us recoil from life and unable to stay afloat when the waves of hardship wash over us. Christians often speak about their faith and the ability to weather the storms of life; however, we often speak most loudly about our faith when life is going well. Our goal is to live out our faith when we are facing significant challenges so that others can see God’s glory revealed through us.

As we celebrate Christ’s birth and plan for a new year, we can take comfort in God’s promise of a peace that passes all understanding.

God is faithful whether we are enjoying a time on the mountain or in the valley, a time of feasting or mourning, a time of great blessing or a time of great loss. As we prepare for the New Year ask yourself what fears are keeping you from living fully, and pray for God’s strength as we eagerly await the return of Jesus when his peace will reign throughout the world.

Holy, holy, holy Is the Lord God Almighty, Who was, and is, and is to come.

(Revelation 4:8) Paula Gill Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness

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Thursday, December 19  Psalms 33, 50  Zechariah 4:1-14  Revelation 4:9-5.5  Matthew 25:1-13 It’s Everybody!

I remember reading a story a few years ago that went something like this: A man was driving out West on a rural stretch of the interstate listening to a local radio station when an emergency announcement broke into the regular programming warning motorists that a driver was driving on the wrong side of the interstate. Naturally, the man was alarmed, so he proceeded with caution. Almost immediately the errant driver was upon him—a near miss! Relieved he watched the other vehicle in his rearview mirror speeding away. Suddenly he was jerked back to what was happening in front of him as his eye caught another vehicle heading toward him—another near miss! Then to his amazement he saw several cars and trucks headed toward him.

Stunned at the bizarre phenomenon he exclaimed, “There’s not just one guy headed in the wrong direction; it’s everybody!”

Because of our wounded vision, my favorite way to think about the biblical notion of sin, we sometimes live with the illusion that our reality is the objective truth. In my experience, the more certain I am that I am right, the probability increases that I am wrong. Two of our passages of Scripture today, the one from Zechariah and the one from the Revelation, are apocalyptic in nature. Apocalyptic literature arose in times when life really looked bad for those who were persecuted for their faith. Intended to encourage readers, some interpreters have taken apocalyptic passages like the ones found in today’s readings as scary warnings and elaborate timetables about the end of life as we know it. However, the main point of these passages from Zechariah and the Revelation intends to convey that God ultimately prevails despite contrary evidence.

The two parables of Jesus found in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, one involving a wedding, and the other involving the affairs of an absentee landlord, make the same point about waiting for the kingdom of heaven. We must be ready for its arrival, whenever that occurs. Advent is not primarily a time for speculations, which usually miss the point anyway. Advent is a time for preparing our hearts that we may see clearly where we are and where we are heading. That may call us to repent, turn around and head another direction rather than point to the misdirection of everyone else.

Marty Bell Professor, School of Religion

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Friday, December 20  Psalms 8, 24, 29, 84  Genesis 3:8-15  Revelation 12:1-10  John 3:16-21 At the Fall in Genesis 3, humankind was separated from God. This world we live in became broken and fallen, and we were born into it already separated from our heavenly Father. On our own there was nothing we could do to fix our broken relationship with God, but God loved us enough to send Christ into the world to restore our relationship with Him. The story of Christ’s coming is something far more than the story of His birth. The story of the Old Testament points to His coming and illuminates us on the difficulties of trying to renew a relationship with God on our own. The Old Testament is filled with people who tried and failed to live up to God’s standards. When Christ came He fulfilled the Law and offered us the chance to have right relationship with our Father despite our sinful nature.

We are undeserving of the gift of grace Christ brought us in His coming, but still we are offered it freely. As Psalm 8:4 says, “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” It is only by God’s steadfast love for us that we are able to have relationship with Him. There is absolutely nothing in us worthy of the gift He offers us, but as John 3 reminds us, Christ came not to condemn us, but that we might have salvation for now and forevermore (v. 17).

He is what makes us worthy.

The gift of grace is not just something for the future, but it is something that should affect our lives daily. John 3:17 says that Christ was sent so that we might “be saved.” The word “be” implies something that is currently ongoing. Unlike human love, God’s love is relentless and unending. It is constant day in and day out. God loved us enough to save us from our sinful nature and loves us enough to call us His children despite our own shortcomings. Daily Christ calls us into intimacy with Him. As His love fills us and shines through us, the world is changed, not because of what we have done but because of what He already did. This Christmas season be reminded of the unmerited love Christ offered us despite our shortcomings, and be ready to extend that same love to others.

Trey Hayman Senior, Christian Leadership Major

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Saturday, December 21  Psalms 66, 67, 116, 117  1 Samuel 2:1b-10  Titus 2:1-10  Luke 1:26-38 The passages from 1 Samuel and from Luke provide us with narratives of two very different mothers with very different stories: Hannah and Mary.

Hannah was bereft because of her inability to have a child. When God finally blesses her with the child she has asked for, she graciously gives the child, Samuel, in service to God’s servant Eli then she praises God and acknowledges that all belongs to God. I have never understood how she could give up her child, the boy she had so desperately wanted.

Then, there is Mary. This young woman did not dream of a child and certainly did not pray for one. When she learns that she is to hold a key role in God’s seemingly impossible plan, she declares that she is the Lord’s. She does not resist or protest, but rather, she accepts her role.

I have never understood her response either. Both these narratives make me uncomfortable.

I don’t understand Hannah or Mary and their willingness to be selfless because I don’t often have to be selfless. I hug my children and cannot imagine having to give them up, and I have never been faced with having to give up my own sense of place to be a parent. These narratives call me to consider more seriously what it means to belong to God. What does it mean if I believe that everyone and everything belongs to God? If I truly believe this, how does it transform my perspective?

Shortly after Mary calmly accepts her position in the Lukan narrative, she is depicted as visiting with her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, and she rejoices through singing the Magnificat. Recently, when I was having a particularly bad day, I happened to have a few moments with a friend. She told me about a song she sings to her new baby boy every night before bedtime. It’s called The Canticle of the Turning (by Rory Conney), and the lyrics are based on the narratives of both Hannah and Mary. I asked her to sing it to me, and she did. It was a beautiful moment for me, a moment of being and hope and peace.

My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great, And my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait.

In this moment, I came to understand Hannah and Mary a little bit better.

Their capacities to be selfless were rooted in their understanding of what belongs to God. It’s almost Christmas day. Everything belongs to God. We wait in this time of Advent for the Christ child, for God’s purposes to be realized.

As we wait, we are called to rejoice, as our moments are God’s moments, and God’s purposes are realized through them.

Sally Holt Associate Professor, School of Religion 26

o Week Four By thine own eternal Spirit, Rule in all our hearts alone; By thine all-sufficient merit Raise us to thy glorious throne.

o

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Sunday, December 22  Psalms 72, 111, 113  2 Samuel 7:1-17  Titus 2:11-3.8a  Luke 1:39-48a (48b-56) I love this time of the year.

Without fail, every year between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays my world seems to slow down enough for me to more clearly recognize the beauty and wonder of a God who seems to be pressing in on His creation. I’m reminded that God is not far off, but instead, a constant and steady presence in an ever-changing and uncertain world.

Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?

(Psalm 113:5-6) By now our semester is long over, and our Christmas shopping nearly complete, and we’ve likely begun the annual tradition of gathering with friends and loved ones. We’ve broken from our rhythms and routines that bring shape to our lives for most of the year—and we (hopefully) now find ourselves with more time and space in which to experience the many blessings of the Christmas season, most especially the hope-filled anticipation of a coming Savior.

Our scriptures for today speak to us of situations and scenarios from different points in time—about a reality that is not too terribly different from our own life circumstances.

All is not right in the world—yet, there’s reason to be hopeful. Why? Because the story is not over. The final chapter has not been written.

Things now are not as they will one day be.

It is no matter how bad off things get in our lives or the world in which we live, there is (and has always been) an understanding among followers of Jesus that God is still at work. God is up to something.

God is aware of the state of His creation, as well as the humble circumstances of His beloved children—and He is not distraught. He knows that one-day all things will be made right.

Knowing this, believing this, we are then called to live as a hope-filled people. We are invited to share with others about the hope that we have. The same Jesus that came as a babe in a manger more than 2,000 years ago will one day come again. At that time, all that is not well will become well. All that is not right will be made right.

Praise Jesus, the light of life and hope of the world.

Guy Chmieleski University Minister

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Monday, December 23  Psalms 93, 96, 148, 150  Isaiah 61:1-11  Galatians 3:15-22  Luke 1:67-80 or Matthew 1:1-17 Throughout Advent we have been preparing ourselves to praise the coming of the Christ-child who will humbly invite us to follow him, share his message, and love God as well as one another without ceasing. The psalmist encourages us to “sing unto to the Lord a new song” (Psalm 96:1) such that the heavens rejoice, and the earth is glad, and the seas roar (Psalm 96:11). As someone who is, often times, more comfortable with contemplative forms of prayer, I can easily become overwhelmed by the notion that my quiet meditations can have such profound results.

One of the readings appointed for today includes the Benedictus, that beautiful portion of Luke’s Gospel that tells the story of Zechariah praising the Father and giving thanks for blessing his household with a child—John the Baptist. We know Christ would later be baptized by this child.

One version of this wonderful text describes Zechariah as singing or praying “whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us; to give light to them who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). This sentiment of a dayspring coming to walk among us is echoed in one of my favorite Advent hymns, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

Late tomorrow evening I will walk with my family into a muted candlelit church for a midnight service; the warm fragrances of incense and Advent greenery will permeate the space, and shadows will meander across the flat surfaces. I will be surrounded by the familiar, and my thoughts will be with loved ones. I will, as I have done each year throughout my life, quietly and prayerfully contemplate the coming of the Christ child and the timelessness of the parables and rich narratives through which Christians seek to understand his life, death, and resurrection.

Tomorrow evening throngs of believers will once again join the communion of saints to welcome and praise the coming of our redeemer singing, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!” Are we ready to end our waiting and anticipation? Are we prepared to rejoice, adding our own forms of energetic praises or soft prayers to the celebration? Our songs, our prayers and our praises, like those offered by Zechariah and countless others throughout the ages, will be indeed heard.

Matthew McCrickard Associate Registrar

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Tuesday, December 24  Psalms 45, 46  Isaiah 59:15b-21  Galatians 3:23-4:7  Matthew 1:18-25 “Silent night, holy night…”

It always took a while to calm us down for the night. Who could expect anything different in a house with three boys? Silence and stillness was the anomaly any time of the year, and after a day filled with cooking peanut brittle and chocolate-covered peanut butter balls with Mom and Grandma, and an evening with our aunts and uncles and cousins and mounds of ham and turkey, dressing, sweet potato soufflé (the kind with the crunchy brown sugar and pecan topping), and a buffet of desserts, and presents, getting our little household settled down for Christmas Eve night was no small feat.

I remember always having the feeling that it was difficult to go to sleep on Christmas Eve night as a child, as though it took hours and hours, as though time itself stood still merely out of spite in order to postpone Christmas for children everywhere. I would close my eyes, but my sugared-up mind would be buzzing with pictures from the day, from playing with my new six-shooter cap gun with my cousin Jason, to images of the presents that, if I had been “good” the preceding year, might just be waiting for me under the tree in the morning.

I’m not a child anymore, at least not in any of our culture’s ways of typically defining childhood. Even though I’m not a child, I find so often this time of year, my mind is still buzzing. Instead of cap guns and sugar-highs, it’s buzzing with busyness, buzzing with the grief that now tinges holidays since people I love are no longer with us. It’s buzzing with what work I need to be doing over the Christmas break.

It’s buzzing with a laundry list of responsibilities, of presents to buy, of people to see. I’m still trying to be good enough. I’m still trying to earn those gifts under the tree.

And into this tumultuous, buzzing life, the Lord of hosts, the One who is with us, the One who comes to us himself as a gift whispers and says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” “Be still,” remember you are human, so very human. “Be still,” you’re not made to run so fast. “Be still,” to see that the gift is life, that life is grace in a world where we forget that. “Be still.” “Be still, and know that I am God.” Donovan McAbee Assistant Professor, School of Religion

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Wednesday, December 25  Psalms 2, 85, 110.1-5, 132  Micah 4:1-5, 5.2-4  1 John 4:7-16  John 3:31-36 I began my academic career at a Christian university in south Florida 20 years ago. While I was serving there, a colleague named Perry Hildreth began producing an annual Advent Guide. It was deeply appreciated by the university community so when I came to Belmont 10 years ago I decided to see if I could continue that tradition here.

Our first edition was for the Advent season in 2004 and we printed almost 3,000 copies to distribute for our Christmas at Belmont annual event, to share with the university community, and to provide to interested local churches. We received such a positive response we kept at it and this year marks our 10th edition of the Belmont University School of Religion Advent Guide. Thanks for reading!

We have had faculty, staff, students, pastors, trustees, and alumni write devotions over the years. When I sometimes pull out old editions of the Advent Guide and look over the devotions I find my heart warmed by the memory of these friends and colleagues and their many contributions in the life of Belmont.

I am reminded our Advent Guide now serves as one of our traditions of this season. Moreover, it stands out as a way that we can work together to make something wonderful and inspirational for each other. It reminds us of the high calling we have in Christ Jesus to live and work in community with each other.

Our Advent Guide lives as a holy document each year. It is set apart, borne by the individual labors of all those who write, design, and publish it. It is our gift we each share within this university community and its many constituencies.

This guide is not unlike the many things we do for family and friends each year in this season. On this Christmas Day, beginning with the celebrations around the tree and extending beyond shared meals, games, and other traditions, we will celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the way he comes into all our lives.

This Advent Guide and the many individual traditions we engage to celebrate this day proceed from the love of God in us. We find these stirring words in Scripture: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16). The good things we do for each other and with each other find their sharpest focus on this day. For this day is the day that God shared with us the greatest expression of love possible and said, “Here, this is my gift to you.”

May we continue to rejoice in the love of God we share together in Christ Jesus!

Merry Christmas!

Darrell Gwaltney Dean, School of Religion 31

School of Religion Vision The School of Religion seeks to be a premier academic community that nurtures a living faith in God, reflects critically on its discipline, develops skills for Christian ministry, and distinguishes itself through its emphases on contemplative spirituality and social justice.

Purpose The purpose of the School of Religion is to provide student-centered, academically challenging religion classes to the diverse student body of Belmont University and to provide a foundation of religious studies for students preparing for congregational ministry and advanced theological studies.

Goals

1. To provide all Belmont students with a solid foundation in biblical and theological studies.

2. To teach courses for religion majors and minors in the following areas: biblical languages, biblical studies, religion and society, theological and historical studies, practical studies, seminars and special studies. To offer professional education courses in practical ministry.

3. To offer continuing education opportunities to ministers and laity.

4. To integrate contemplative spirituality and social justice into the curricular and co-curricular program.

School of Religion Faculty and Staff Dr. Marty Bell, Church History Dr. Robert Byrd, Greek & New Testament, Emeritus Dr. Ben Curtis, Pastoral Care & Spiritual Formation Dr. Manuel Cruz, Theology Dr. David Dark, Religion and the Arts Dr. Darrell Gwaltney, Dean Dr. Steve Guthrie, Theology & Religion and the Arts Dr. Sally Holt, Christian Ethics Ms. Debbie Jacobs, Assistant to the Dean Dr. Donovan McAbee, Religion and the Arts Dr. Mark McEntire, Hebrew & Old Testament Dr. Amanda Miller, Greek & New Testament Dr. Steven Simpler, Theology Dr. Judy Skeen, Biblical Studies & Spiritual Formation Dr. Andy Watts, Christian Ethics

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Belmont at a Glance

Belmont University is a student-centered Christian community providing an academically challenging education that empowers men and women of diverse backgrounds to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage and faith.

Ranked No. 7 in the Regional Universities South category and named for the sixth consecutive year as one of the top “Up-and-Comer” universities by U.S. News & World Report, Belmont University consists of more than 6,900 students who come from every state and more than 25 countries. Committed to being a leader among teaching universities, Belmont brings together the best of liberal arts and professional education in a Christian community of learning and service. The University’s purpose is to help students explore their passions and develop their talents to meet the world’s needs, a fact made evident in the University’s hometown, Nashville, where students, faculty and staff served more than 243,000 hours of community service (valued at more than $5 million) during 2012. With more than 80 areas of undergraduate study, 22 master’s programs and five doctoral degrees, there is no limit to the ways Belmont University can expand an individual’s horizon. For more information, visit www.belmont.edu.

Accreditation

Belmont University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award baccalaureate, masters and doctoral degrees. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097 or call 404.679.4500 for questions about the accreditation of Belmont University.

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1900 Belmont Boulevard Nashville, TN 37212 www.BELMONT.edu

Belmont University is a Christian community. The university faculty, administration and staff uphold Jesus as the Christ and as the measure for all things. As a community seeking to uphold Christian standards of morality, ethics and conduct, Belmont University holds high expectations of each person who chooses to join the community. Belmont University does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, military service or sexual orientation. Inquiries or complaints concerning the application of these policies to students should be directed to the Associate Dean of Students, Beaman Student Life Center Suite 200, 1900 Belmont Blvd., Nashville, TN 37212, deanofstudents@belmont.edu or 615.460.6407.

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