Christmas Means

Christmas means that we believe the Kingdom is coming and is to come.

Christmas means that Christ is True God, "begotten not made, of one being with the Father."

Christmas means atonement, that is, at one ment: God with us, "pleased as man with men to dwell."

Christmas means that the words of the prophets are fulfilled in our hearing.

Christmas means that God loves us, comes to us, and invites us into relationship. Christmas means that God offers us prevenient grace in the form of God as man.

Christmas means that the True Light is already shining, and we are called to live as children of light.

Christmas means that God fulfills promises; we are still a waiting world, and Christmas is the hope that someday, our waiting will forever cease.

Christmas means lighting the Christ candle, the fulfillment of the candles for hope, peace, joy, and love.

Magnificat

This past Sunday was Gaudete Sunday, the Advent Sunday focused on joy. This is also often a Sunday for the Magnificat. Because of some services I've been to in Budapest, I have a new favorite Magnificat arrangement. This isn't the choir I've seen sing it, but here's a link to a video. Enjoy!

Before Him Shall Peace, The Herald, Go

"Hail to the Lord's Anointed" by James Montgomery is more upbeat and joyful than a lot of Advent hymns. Advent may be a traditionally penitential season (even if we don't always consider it that way), but there is great joy in what we await.

Hail to the Lord's Anointed, 
great David's greater Son!  
Hail in the time appointed, 
his reign on earth begun!  
He comes to break oppression, 
to set the captive free; 
to take away transgression, 
and rule in equity.

We are not waiting just to wait. Christ does not come simply to come. Christ comes as the Promised One, the One who sets free, the King.  We look around and see oppression, wrong, and inequality, but because we await the One who sets all things right, we do not lose hope. We believe that the Lord's Anointed comes in the time appointed and reigns on earth and in heaven forevermore.

We light a candle for hope, and we hail the One who was and is and is to come.

Now The World Is Waiting

One of my favorite GLAD Christmas songs (on "Voices of Christmas") is really an Advent song: Bob Kauflin's "All the World was Waiting."

All the world was waiting for the promised One.
Prophets through the ages claimed that He would come.
Would He be a warrior, or a conquering king?
Could he be the one who’d save us from our sin and suffering?

During Advent, the first Lectionary readings (the Old Testament readings) are almost all from the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Malachi. We hear the despair of a people, even they are just a remnant, and we hear the Lord's promises. God has not forsaken the people. The promised One will come and save.

All the world was waiting the night that you were born.
God of life eternal, in a fragile form.
Shepherds gathered closer, gazing at your face;
Wondering how this helpless child could save a fallen human race.

So often we think we know what will save us. But throughout scripture we see God calling out to the least and the lost, working in ways we wouldn't expect, appearing in places and ways that surprise us. It was the shepherds who gathered around, and a newborn was proclaimed as Savior and Messiah.

If God Can Find a Corner Small

The URL for this blog comes from a hymn by Martha Spong, written a couple of years ago. It happens to be an Advent hymn, so I thought I'd post about it on this first Sunday of Advent.

If God can find a corner small,
a town constricted as a tomb,
to house the sweeping Life of all,
we too can find a little room.

I have two weeks until finals and, if I'm counting right, six assignments due by Wednesday. The past few days I've been on Thanksgiving break, so I took the opportunity to travel, especially since Hungary's Christmas markets have just opened. When I've been home, I've been pretty worn out. Despite that, I spent several hours yesterday and today cleaning.

I don't generally enjoy cleaning. I'm usually comfortable with some level of mess, and I don't like that things tend to get messier before they get cleaner. But Advent is about preparing the way, about every heart preparing Him room, about finding a little room. Yes, that room is primarily spiritual, but our faith is inherently active and physical, not solely spiritual. We think of Lent as the cleaning season, but preparing a way is more than pushing everything else out of the way. That always causes problems later. So I cleaned. I knew that in order to find and prepare proper room in my heart, I needed to make physical room. I needed to sweep and do dishes and sort through the huge piles of paper that always manage to accumulate when I'm not looking.

Christ is "the sweeping Life of all." Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. God found a corner small, a cave in a crowded town, to come to us. We too can "clear the chaos and the clutter, clear our eyes that we may see all the things that really matter, be at peace, and simply be" ("Come and Find the Quiet Center"). We can find a little room for God to truly be with us.

Raise the Song of Harvest Home

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Come, Ye Thankful People Come," is  a traditional Thanksgiving hymn, and its first verse is directly related to the harvest and being thankful. After that, though, it keeps the harvest language but turns eschatological.

Come, ye thankful people, come, 
raise the song of harvest home; 
all is safely gathered in, 
ere the winter storms begin. 
God our Maker doth provide 
for our wants to be supplied; 
come to God's own temple, come, 
raise the song of harvest home.

We move from fall into winter. The weather grows colder, the colors fade from the trees, and it grows darker. Everything seems a little greyer, a little bleaker. So we sing. We sing to our God who is Light, in whom we are children of Light.

Our call as thankful people is to come and sing to God, God who is not only our Maker but the Maker of all creation and the One who provides for us. We sing because God creates. We sing because God provides. We sing in praise of our Lord. We sing in gratefulness to the One who watches over us. We sing to a God of seasons, a God who helps us weather the storms, a God who welcomes us into God's own temple, where we can dwell forever in the presence of the Lord.

Links from the Past Couple of Weeks

Some of these posts are older, but here are a few things I've read over the past two or so weeks:

April Fiet's sermon on Christ the King Sunday and Psalm 95:
All about Christ the King Sunday as New Year's Eve, God extending love, grace, and invitation to us before any action of our own, and how to live as a response in gratitude. Also, the sermon ends with quotes from "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling." (The whole sermon actually reminded me a lot of some of the Wesley I've been reading recently.) Some quotes:

• "Today, as we are on the cusp of a new year, we are invited to come and worship. We are invited to come and humble ourselves before our God and King. And, in so doing, we are invited to be more like the One we worship. We are invited twice before we’ve had the opportunity to do anything else."
• "We are being re-membered by God, and we are called to be agents of re-membering here on earth."
• "If we were to dream big dreams and believe that where God calls God equips, what risks might we take as we live as children of the King?"

Steven D. Bruns on Scripture reading in the early Church
"For the early Christians, Scriptures were read at length in the context of worship, they were seen as a unified voice spanning God’s work in Israel through the life of the Church, and they were interpreted together, always pointing to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of every passage."
I have mixed feelings on the Lectionary, but the fact that each week it includes an OT reading, a Psalm, an Epistle passage, and a Gospel passage to be read together is one of the things I like most about it. What Bruns talks about here is part of why that's valuable. My favorite line from this post is this: "The early Church completely integrated the Old and New Testaments and created a poetry to the faith."

Alastair Roberts tweeted about liturgy
Liturgy is about practicing and living our theology; it is the "work of the people." This was in the context of liturgical theology vs systematic and biblical theology, but it's good commentary on what liturgy actually is and why it matters. The best quote from this series of tweets: "All the streams of theology converge at and flow from the font."

Drew McIntyre on Advent outreach
This starts off as a response to the Greater New Jersey Conference's announcement about commuter train communion, but then there are ten ideas for Advent outreach, ranging in originality, audience, and scope. Also, Drew quotes "I Come With Joy," which is appropriate both to discussions of communion and outreach.