alt.Advent from WordLive

A Social Network Christmas

I shared this a few years ago, but it's so good, I thought I would again...

Arvo Pärt - Seven Magnificat Antiphons V-VII

Arvo Pärt - Seven Magnificat Antiphons I-IV

Gaudate!

There is a little girl who loves to wear pink dresses, shiny paten shoes, with a little purse and sparkly headband.  You see her in a million different places, if you keep your eyes open.  She wears a smile and is usually holding the hand of someone she loves –that is when she is not twirling around watching her skirt branch out like a bell.  It is obvious that this little girl loves life, it oozes from her.  Most when seeing her smile back, chuckle to themselves, or wish to have even a little piece of her joy.  The little girl is Gaudete.

Gaudete is a Latin word that translates “to rejoice.”  This third week in Advent has traditionally been named Gaudete Sunday from Philippians 4: “Gaudete in Domino semper” (“Rejoice in the Lord always”) which we heard as our NT reading – a day when in some places a pink candle is lit on the Advent Wreath; and priests are allowed to wear pink vestements - the joyful lightening of the Advent purple and we are called to rejoice in the God who is coming.

Advent is a time for joy, not primarily because we are anticipating the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, but because God is already in our midst. That is what the prophet Zephaniah claims, and he makes that claim twice. He is speaking to a people who have been burdened with war and destruction and displacement. Their lives have been assaulted and their hopes have been dashed. In the face of this the prophet directs them to “Shout for joy… Sing joyfully…. Be glad and exult.” How can they possibly respond in this way?

The prophet assures them that with God in their midst, they can indeed move forward into a new life. In God’s presence they have nothing further to fear. No longer do they stand under judgment, for they will be renewed in God’s love. Are these empty promises? Can this really come to pass? It was up to Israel to decide whether they would turn to God and trust in the promises made to them or continue on the path they had set for themselves.

Unfortunately, our world is not terribly different from theirs. It too is burdened with war and destruction and displacement; lives have been assaulted and hopes have been dashed. We are probably as sceptical about peace and restoration as were the ancient Israelites—perhaps even more. However, this scepticism need not prevent us from trusting that God will encircle us with love and will grant us the peace we so desperately seek.

Saint Paul also calls us to rejoice. In fact, he says that we should rejoice always, because the Lord is near.  There is no contradiction here regarding God’s presence. Paul did not think that Christ is absent from our midst. Rather, he was speaking of Christ’s final manifestation in glory. It is that time that is near; hence there is reason for rejoicing. But notice what else he says. In anticipation of that time of fulfilment, he admonishes us: “Your kindness should be known to all.” Though peace and restoration are given to us by God, they do not simply drop down from heaven. We are involved in their fashioning. Still, we do not create this renewed world; God does. Furthermore, it is not given to us as a reward for our labours; it is fashioned within and through the very efforts we make.

“What shall we do?” This is the very question the crowds asked John the Baptist. We might expect this ascetic to make radical demands: Leave everything and join me in the desert; adopt a life of fasting and penance.

But John does not make such demands. Instead, he calls people to fidelity in the very circumstances of their lives: Those who have more than they need, share with those who have less; tax collectors, be honest; soldiers, do not take advantage of the vulnerable; parents, cherish your children; spouses, be faithful; neighbours, live in peace.

John models an attitude of mind and heart that is needed in today’s world. Though he was eccentric, he was very popular. People from every walk of life thronged to him. While some no doubt came out of curiosity, others were clearly motivated by religious fervour. They sought his advice about the direction their lives should take. John could have taken great pride in his reputation and in the influence that this probably afforded him, but he did not. Quite the contrary. He knew who he was, and he knew who he was not. He did not use his influence to enhance his prestige. He clearly was an honest man: a man of humility.

We cannot fail to wonder how much of the world’s sorry state is not the consequence of arrogance: arrogance stemming from military dominance, or economic prosperity, or educational superiority. Because lets’s face it - people and nations less fortunate are sometimes minimized or treated as inferiors. Resentment turns to hatred, and hatred breeds violence. This does not excuse acts of terror or insurgency but it does suggest that we have a hand in this.

Violence and terror seem almost to be a part of the world in which we live, and this curtails the freedoms not just in Syrian streets, but here in this country where our civil liberties, our freedoms are curtailed out of fear, well meant, but fear nonetheless.

But this does not have to be the case. It is precisely because this world filled with resentment and hatred and violence that can be transformed. It is precisely in and through our efforts to rid our world of such a scourge that the new world is fashioned, the reign of God brought forth.

Are these empty promises? Can this really come to pass? It is now up to us to decide whether we will turn to God and trust in the promises made to us, or continue on the path we have set for ourselves.

It took a faithful, brave and visionary man like John the Baptist to stand against the tide of first century Israel and their occupiers. It will take faithful, brave and visionary individuals to once again proclaim freedom, justice and the Kingdom of God where the blind see and the captives are free. This will keep us looking busy for when he returns again in glory.  God is already in our midst. Rejoice! … and keep busy.

H/T to Fr Simon Rundell for substantial inspiration for this post/sermon - thanks!

Christmas Worship 2012

Here are some details of our worship in the lead up to, and over the Christmas celebrations. Please do come and join us - all are welcome :)

May we (at least our waste) decrease so He may increase

What would you like for Christmas? How much packaging will it come in? Our bins all overflow for weeks after Christmas... as we celebrate the birth of life in it's fullness, I am left with a real unease. The more we consume, the more we consume of our life and the lives of others both now and in the future.

In the days that lie ahead, if you have seen something you like for yourself. Wait a week and if you still want it go and buy it then.

Advent was traditionally a period of penitence and quiet anticipation. But now it seems no more than four weeks of frenzied consumption in which stress, needless debt and damage to God's creation have become its defining hallmarks.

Did you know...?

125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging will be thrown away this Christmas?
333,333 trees will be used for Christmas cards?

Countless unwanted "gifts" will end up, at best, in the charity shops and, at worst, in the landfill.

If Jesus returned in December 2012, what would he make of us doing all of this in His name?

So, instead of shopping, we want you to come together to celebrate and anticipate the birth of Christ together, in community, reducing your consumption footprint over the Advent period, the time famed for its excessive rate of consumption and to build friendships whilst doing so.

We say no to singing Santa mugs, golf ball washers and umbrella hats that will be discarded by the 12th day of Christmas, and yes to living simply, together, over the Advent period.

As we prepare for God's coming to us, and therefore our coming to Him, can we do so with a clear conscience with those sorts of statistics to do with the way we are treating each other (made in the image of God) and the Earth (God's good creation)?

For further thoughts see the Operation Noah website

Bear Fruits Worthy of Repentance

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. (Luke 3:8)

Winter strips everything back and we are left to focus on what really matters. The hedgerows are devoid of leaves and only the red berries remain to signify the life multiplying truth of this plant's existence. Such an extravagant botanical investment in the future is also a present and welcome gift of food to many of the species of birds for whom the hedgerow is a vital part of their habitat. They in turn spread the seed far and wide beyond the parent plant. Such ecological mutuality and interdependence is a fundamental given of this landscape.

Mutuality and interdependence are integral to our wellbeing too. They signify an outlook which goes beyond self to others and which acknowledges the fundamental interrelatedness of life as a given of a healthy society. The fruits of such a worldview are obvious in terms of the bright red berries of welfare, social security, healthcare, justice and social capital which brighten up the wintry landscape in these austere and recessionary times.

The absence of berries in the hedgerow would indicate a catastrophic failure to provide for future generations and a breakdown in the local ecology which would put its very survival in jeopardy. Something would have gone terribly wrong.

And in the view of John the Baptist something had gone terribly wrong in contemporary society. The natural ecology of God's Kingdom of Love was in dire jeopardy. The fruits of mutuality and interdependence were remarkable by their scarcity. Looking around him John was struck by the comparative lack of the bright red berries of compassion, righteousness and service which signify a healthy faith. He confronted those who came to him with the simple facts of conversion, discipleship and Kingdom living. Their lives should bear clear witness to their belief. Their longing for a fresh start with God should entail a fresh start in how they live their lives towards others. They should bear fruits worthy of repentance.

The bright red berries which John looks for are very practical and down to earth and one can easily imagine that they are tailored to the individuals and groups who come to him asking what they should do: “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:11-14) John emphasises the social, collective and communal dimensions of authentic faith in God. In this is he being absolutely true to the faith he has inherited and in which he stands. Without these expressions of mutuality and interdependence one can rightly conclude from the Hebrew Bible that as long as the heart remains unmoved, lip service is being paid to faith, for to take God into the heart of our being is to take the heart of the other there too.

Because the human ecology of grace is such a fundamental given of John's faith landscape, in his wintry words he strips everything back and focusses on what really matters; and not just to us, but to God. To be told unequivocally to bear fruits worthy of repentance is as much of a shock to our sensibilities today as it was when the phrase was first uttered by John the Baptist. For it suggest that the opposite holds true, and draws our attention to all that remains unworthy.

Our wintry world desperately needs to see evidence of bright, berry red lives. And John still prepares the way for us to take that truth to heart in Jesus and make it our own.

~~~

This post comes from the ever wonderful Visual Theology blog, by Dave Perry. The original post can be read here

Hope

Thanks to Occupy Advent for this gem - you can also look at their blog here...

Advent: How Deep is You Love (God)?

How bleak, how awful were things for her in recent days. How desperate that she felt that the only way out of a situation was to take her own life. She decided that taking her own life was the permanent solution to the short term problem she found herself in. How utterly utterly awful.

How awful that she was not able to live with the consequences of her actions. How awful that she was not able to see herself as how people described her in death, as an excellent. How awful that she could see no other way through. And her family are utterly utterly broken, devastated at their loss.

I am speaking of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who made the headlines this week but I could also be speaking the words and sentiment of Israel, to whom God spoke through the prophet Baruch.

Like last week’s first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, through Baruch, God is speaking to His people in exile after the Assyrian attack of Jerusalem. Many are now slaves in Babylon or dispersed to other parts of the Mediterranean. Earlier on in the book, God chastises Israel for their lack of faithfulness to Him, and the exile is God’s judgment for their waywardness.  She, God’s people Israel, is bereft of her home, in a wilderness of hopelessness, bleak, broken, grieving, unable to see a way through. Yet, says God through Baruch, that is about to dramatically change, and change because God alone wills it.

Israel is pictured in mourning after a bereavement - wearing sack cloth and ashes. Into that bleakness and barren hopelessness, God offers hope. He reminds them that they are His much loved people. The language is tender, like a newly married husband to his much loved wife. God will restore his people in hope like undressing from funeral attire and redressing into the beautiful clothes of a princess and the dignity He gives to Israel is His to give - there is a call to share in again the divine life and purposes of God.

And lets face it - everyone loves this sort of rags to riches story. It feeds right into our own inbuilt longing for justice and into our celebrity obsessed, lottery roll-over mentality. God is the handsome Prince Charming to Israel’s Cinderella.

With that image in my mind, Baruch then goes on to portray God as reaching down to the cowered Israel in all her finery. Unsure that she deserves all this lavishness. He helps her stand, and leads her to the dancefloor in the sight of many wealthy guests. This is full to overflowing with the romance of a Jane Austen novel.

God will restore Israel and give her a new dignity, but will also restore her children to her from the places that they have been dispersed. Again the imagery is deeply intimate. This is the tear-streaked face reunion that we all long for for Kate and Jerry McCann with their daughter Madeleine.

But this isn’t simply an undoing of all that has gone before. This isn’t a raising to life of a tragically dead husband returning to his grieving widow; nor is this the reunion of missing children to a distraught and worried mother. This is God doing something new in His love for His people. The love that God has for His people is so intense that the landscape is physically altered so they can return to Him in safety.

It’s like the love that flows and shapes the landscape of God’s heart is so intense, like the Colarado river carving the Grand Canyon, that it flow from His heart in a way that shapes and reshapes the world in the same way it did when all things were created. Even the stuff of that natural world will be used by God, the trees will bow low to shade His people from the scorching heat of the sun, to ease their journey home. God is not just in the business of renewing a relationship. He is doing something completely new, with such intensity of love, that it captivates the heart and reshapes the physical world as we are called home.

It is into the wilderness of our lives that God speaks and continues to speak and into which John comes. But through John, God comes to a very specific time, to a very specific place, to very specific people, but his message comes again and again - resonating down the years of history.

That message that we hear echoing through this Holy season. It is Baruch’s message but for all people. Many of us are enslaved and far from God’s intimate and intense love.  We self obsessed, unwilling to look for Him or now too blind to see Him - are focussed on our rights not our responsibilities to others; on what I can gain not what I can give; on the language of ‘me’ not ‘you’ or ‘us.’ Many of us are literally and metaphorically in a wilderness of hopelessness, bleak, broken, grieving, unable to see a way through.

It is normal and commonplace these days to deny this loving God and to shake our fists at the sky... If these’s a loving God how can He allow such and such. He cannot be.  And yet we all too easily forget that we are far from loving too -  to ourselves and others and especially to those whom we say we love the most.

Advent calls to our heart and in these days of bleakness and hopelessness, and God woos us like a lover. He sings songs of love and hope to all things created, in the climax of which He reaches down to even to us, having dressed our brokenness and failing with lavish love and outlandish hope, and in His coming among us, calls us to dance with Him in His Divine life and purposes.

Cinderella’s story only really begins when she recognises what she has been, and with the guidance and gift of her Fairy Godmother and the determined love of Prince Charming, she then accepts what she is - beautiful and worth loving whether dressed in a ball gown or not.

The same rags to riches story is God’s call to us - it begins, when we recognise what we have been - broken, failing, hopeless - and then filled with the intense love of God, we begin to accept what we are - beautiful and worth loving no matter what we have done, no matter who we are.  This is the repentance that John calls us to still - God doing a new thing - that this Advent God comes to us with a love for us so intense that it leaves the glories and grandeur of heaven and reshapes the intimate landscape of our hearts, and He asks us, even us to dance with Him in Divine life and love.

And I now have this song in my head...

How to Celebrate Advent and Lower Anxiety

What follows come from the Lutheran Confessions blog. I thought it an inspiring and engaging post and it has helped me over recent days. You can read the original post here.

~~~

Some things just work in the doing of them. For example: take a really deep and full breath right now. Now take another one. Can you feel your body melt slightly, your heart slow, your head ooze out tensions into your neck? There is a reason practitioners of meditation, prayer, and exercise focus on breathing--it matters.

Keeping Time matters: This week is the beginning of the year, according to Christian tradition. We keep time according to a slightly different pattern from the lunar calendar. The year begins with anticipation of Christ's coming, and Christ's birth. We begin a new year recognizing God is the Lord of our years, and our weeks, and our days, and our hours. We begin the year relaxing into a sense of God's watchful care over all of our moments, keeping time with us.

Living life on God's clock brings real peace. It is relaxing to melt into the solidity of the Christian calendar, the life of weekly worship, the offices of daily prayer.

Prayer is healthy for those who practice it.

Ritual matters: In church last Sunday we had distributed a simple Advent calendar, and our goal as a family is to do the activity for each day. So last night our family blessed each room in our house, per calendar instructions.

We tried to invent a ritual that would make sense to the kids. So we lit a candle and carried it around to each room in the house (having dimmed the house lights in advance). One person said a prayer over each room, prayers to bless sleep, help stay clean, lots of thanksgiving for food and toys. By the third room, even our 22 month old had the liturgy figured out, and so whispered quietly, "God---thank you."

By the end, there was this sense of unity in our family, prayer calling us together in a common purpose. In each room, we made the sign of the cross. We did the cross together. And our oldest had invented a portion of the ritual I will never forget. In an operatic manner, he sang "Aaaaaaaaameeeeeeeen" the way families sing the Amen at the conclusion of the Doxology.

It was somber and hilarious in equal measure.

Keeping time as keeping calm: In a sense, keeping time and keeping rituals are keeping calm and lowering anxiety. The benefit is in the doing of them. Often when we are sad, anxious, depressed, we tend to avoid these habits. We stop exercising. We fail to call friends to talk on the phone. The way out of the hole, the healing that is available, is to step into the routines, and let the givenness of the ritual and prayers lead us to a new place.

This week we are mindful of Zechariah. In fact our mid-week worship will include meditation on his story at the beginning of Luke.

Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside (Luke 1:8-10).

With Zechariah, or at least with the whole assembly of the people praying outside, we give ourselves over to these practices, entrusted to us by God and the communities out of which we are risen, and we trust that in them, God will give us rest.

Do not be anxious. Light some candles. Do not fear. Breath. Find some others to breathe with. Celebrate Advent.

wrapping paper (tree)

wrapping paper (tree), a photo by ben bell on Flickr.

This just made me think... Thanks Ben Bell for a fantastic photo.

God's greatest gift just shoved under the tree?

God's greatest gift willing to to be amongst the other gifts in life?

Looks like all the others...

Incarnation

Masterchef

As I write this I am watching Masterchef and I am beginning to feel hungry - I know that's a bit Pavlov's dog (I see food therefore I feel hungry) - but there it is!

Advent is the expectant waiting, the hopeful anticipation and cheerful preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas - His breaking into our world and into our lives every day. Advent is not to be confused with Lent even though both seassons are coloured purple.  Advent is about hope and not repentance, the hope of God coming amongst us.
In the story of God's involvement with people as told in the Bible, again and again God speaks of things many of us hunger for - justice for poor, liberty for the metaphorically and literally captive, food for the hungry and so on.

The question is, as we wait, what are we hungry for? Are we willing to be fed from God's menu of justice, mercy and peace? And are we prepared to be a part of satisfying the appetite of of our neighbourhoods and our communities serving up God's love in practical and demonstratable ways?

O Come O Come Emmanuel - Sufjan Stevens

He sees when you are sleeping...

I loved this poster referencing Psalm 139... using lines from a well known Christmas song... 

With thanks to Occupy Advent for the heads up on htis where you can even buy a copy!

Hope - like light in the darkness

This week the Leveson report was finally published - 2000 pages long, so big it has to be carried in it’s own box.The inquiry’s origins lie in the public’s utter revulsion that the phone of a murdered teenager was hacked for information by someone acting for a section of the British press and their sole aim was - with ever increasing sensationalist stories - to sell more papers. This led to the seventh inquiry in less than seventy years which has dealt with concerns about the press and it carried the personal authority of the Prime Minister.

Lord Leveson’s inquiry has left no stone unturned into the culture and practices of the press and has exposed endemic failings, unacceptable practices and and deeply unhealthy relationships especially with the police and other media empires.

Many significant and robust recommendations have been made by Lord Leveson. Many people agreeing that they are needed to atrophy the all encompassing power of the press. And yet after months of investigation and hundreds of witnesses, some would argue that it has all been brought to nought by parliament being unable to agree on the need to implament the key recommendations.

And the gut-wrenching massacres in Syria and Gaza continue... and the world has largely stood by, sucking it’s teeth and shaking it’s head. All too quick to act to bring about peace in Afghanistan or Iraq and yet unable or, worse still, unwilling to bring an end to the hopelessness that fills make shift refugee camps and appartment blocks.

Place that alongside another round of failed UN led talks in Doha to seek to slow the global affects of climate change, and the increasing hardship that many in the UK and across the world are feeling due to a continuing recession that slowly but surely is grinding many into deeper and deeper debt and unemployment, and a bleakness settles like new fallen snow.

I am sure that I speak for all of us when I say that throughout my life, I have had longing that things on the world stage as well as things local and personal would be better by now. God knows we pray that it would be. And yet, as we we edge ever nearer another season of goodwill, it feels like we no nearer that utopian goal. The things that I hope might have been resolved have been replaced by other seemingly unsolvable issues.

The people of Israel, at the time that God spoke through Jeremiah, understood hopelessness on a far grander scale. In 587 BC Assyria attacked the nation of Israel, burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried off its people into slavery. Their situation puts ours into stark contrast doesn’t it? In those years of exile the people of God quite rightly asked God again and again ‘why?, Why are we in this situation? Why did you allow it God?’

It is into this sense of devestating defeat and discouragement, this longing for God to right things, that these words from Jeremiah come. In that context, they feel like naive words indeed. Yet it is all to easy to ‘grin and bear it’, because it takes real courage to stand up, to make your voice heard, to swim against the flow, and to complain.

But Jeremiah goes one step further. In the midst of their sense of gut-wrenching hopelessness, Jeremiah along with the prophet Isaiah, proclaim a different vision based on a renewed trust in God. "Your God reigns!" All of those grand phrases that are so well celebrated in Handel’s Messiah "Comfort, ye, my people," "And he shall reign forever and ever" came out of exile. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah... In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety" says Jeremiah. The time is coming! I will restore, re-gather Israel and Judah, do for you that which you cannot do for yourselves, namely, bring you home.

Pushy, risky theological claim that, all present evidence to the contrary, God still reigns and God's purposes shall not be finally defeated. It takes a lot of faith to express confident joy in the reign of God and at the same time honesty about the situation. Israel's prophets managed to pull it off.

But...  The nation never returned to their homeland as a whole. The restoring vision that God shared through the prophets was true for only a handful, a remnant of the the people ever made it back... But look again at what God says through Jeremiah as that’s not what he promised - a future time is coming, when I shall not only restore things to the way they were, but also do a new thing - a righteous branch shall spring up for David. A new spring shoot will begin to grow from the long dead tree that is the historical line of King David. When that time comes says God - things will not only restored to the way they were but the lasting the peace and security that you long for will come. Hope will shine out like blinding light in the middle of the deepest darkest night.

Advent is a time when Christians are invited into exile. It is a time when the church calls us to live differently. To slow down. To refocus our priorities. To step away from the madness that is the innevitable rush to Christmas and to stop and look at the world and our lives and the mess that they often really are. But instead of being stilled into inactivity through a crippling hopelessness and despair that thing have ever been thus and will not change. Instead we should live as exiles - refocussing our lives and hopes on God, knowing that it is only He who can bring the transformation we long for.

Advent calls us to look for the searing bright light of the hope of God.  Jeremiah reminds us that that things in our world and in our lives will not only be restored, but that God will do a new thing in us and amongst us personally and globally. Advent must be time to cry to God about the injustice of war, of debt, of a climate change, but also to expect, with sure hope, that God will bring a new spring shoot of faithfulness to grow in us. So that through us our world and our lives together can be transformed. Friends I still hope that the world would be a better place and that my life would be in better shape - in Advent God reminds me that it will be. That’s not wild hope. That’s Advent hope.

Advent Podacasts

The CofE's Advent podcasts for 2012 are a great way to make the most of this holy season.  Here they are, introduced by Archbishop Rowan Williams.


To enhance our spiritual journey through Advent this year, The Church of England are offering a daily Reflections for Advent podcast from Monday to Saturday from 3 December to Christmas Day.

Each podcast (lasting approximately 7 or 8 minutes) includes:
A piece of music for Advent (including traditional favourites and new commissions)
A Bible reading from Common Worship Morning Prayer
A reflection on the reading from Reflections for Daily Prayer
A Collect (or gathering prayer) for the day

To make sure you receive all the Reflections for Daily Prayer podcasts, subscribe to 'Church of England Podcasts' on iTunes here