TO BEGIN
In many churches during Advent, it is common to light candles each week to mark the themes of Advent. You may want to light a candle as you settle in to consider my reflection for this week.
For this first Sunday in Advent, by tradition, you would be lighting a Candle for Hope.
SONG: MV#220, “Hope Shines as the Solitary Star”
Hope shines as the solitary star,
Faith is the inner light.
You and I together mirror the Light of Lights, and illumine the pathway home.
SCRIPTURE TO PONDER
Psalm 25
Opening verses selected from Nan Merrill’s Psalms for Praying, Continuum Press, 2002
To You, O Love, I lift up my soul;
O Heart within my heart, in You I put my trust. Let me not feel unworthy;
let not fear rule over me.
Yes!
Let all who open their hearts
savor You
and bless the earth!
Romans 8:22-25
There are passages in the writings of Paul that make us ache –
ache because they hit so close to home
ache by the sheer beauty of the writing.
This – and the larger passage from which it is excerpted – is one of those for me.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
MY REFLECTION FOR THIS WEEK
HERE’S HOPING
We begin again.
The annual cycle of the Christian Seasons has brought us back to Advent, the first season in the turning of the Christian Year. So much has happened over the past year – across the globe, within this nation and our local communities, and likely in our personal lives as well. We have been enriched and we have been diminished. We have been delighted and we have been frightened. We have celebrated and we have grieved. We have made major decisions and we have been lulled into lethargy. With almost biblically apocalyptic crises happening around us, life has continued its inexorable path through it all, taking us along for the ride. Has our experience this past year drained us of hope or deepemed our faith?
A circle really has no beginning and no end so that the symbolism of retracing the grand arching biblical story each year through these several seasons is both an artificial and a meaningful way to mark the time and its changes and to lead us into focussed awareness to help us notice and integrate our experiences along the way. Advent is a particularly helpful season to mark the transition from the old to the new, from what has already happened to what is yet to come. Nothing much happens in Advent itself (except for the busyness of getting ready for Christmas!); it is a season of waiting for what is coming (Advent is derived from the Latin verb, “to come”). So, as we wait, we are given time to reflect on what has been and to imagine what is to come.
Such Advent reflections put us back into “Old Testament times”, as we imaginatively re-experience with our Hebrew ancestors in the faith all their ups and downs as they awaited the “advent” of the promised Messiah to fulfill their longing for release from the many ways they had experienced corruption from within their nation and oppression from empires around them. For us in our context, that might translate into preparing for the birth of Jesus, not just as a chance for family gatherings and holiday festivities, but for the liberation of our truest selves and for the restoration to peace and harmony in the world around us.
The “coming” for which Advent is a time of preparation has also come to mean awaiting the “second coming of Christ”. That is a loaded phrase that has become confusing, controversial, and even abhorrent to some. It is all those things for me as well, though it still manages to retain some resonance as a way of recognizing that the original coming of Jesus was not a one-time-all-of-sudden-once-and-for-all-fix for our lives and our world. The fulfillment of the promise that is inherent in the coming of the Promised One still eludes us so that Advent becomes a time to listen deeply inside us to become aware of what yearnings are being conceived there and gestating towards birth. Part of that deep listening in Advent is also discerning how Spirit is calling us to participate in the creation of the new world order for which we long – and for which the Spirit groans within us.
Hence, hope. For who bothers to hope for what they already see? And when we hope, we wait with patience – or so Paul says – or maybe, as well, with trust and determination to help work for the changes we want to see in ourselves and across the globe. For who that is without hope bothers to try to make a difference?
For Further Reflection
Don’t feel you need to work with each and every one of these reflection starters. Read them through and, if one seems to tug at you, spend time with that one.
In this in-between season, look back at the year that has passed: What have been its gifts? Its challenges? Its surprises? Its lasting impact? …?
What do you need to remember that didn’t seem important in the moment
or from which you were too busy or too challenged to face up to at the time?
Is there anything from the year just passed that you need to let go of
in order to be free to live the coming year more fully?
How are you different now than you were when the last Advent season dawned a year ago?
In this in-between season, look ahead to the year that is beckoning:
What are you hoping for in the days, weeks, months … ahead?
Is there anything you dread?
How has the year that has just passed (and all the years prior) prepared and empowered you to meet whatever might come your way and the world’s way this year?
In this in-between season of introspection, consider this: As you look inside yourself at your own needs and aspirations and as you look around you at the world’s needs and aspirations, do you sense any stirring of Spirit calling you
to become a vessel of hope and healing in the year to come?
A PRAYER TO HELP ARTICULATE WHAT ARISES FROM OUR REFLECTIONS
Taken with gratitude from “Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle” by Ted Loder: LuraMedia 1984
O God of all seasons and senses, grant me your sense of timing to submit gracefully
and rejoice quietly
in the turn of the seasons.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of waiting:
of the snow joining the mystery
of the hunkered-down seeds
growing in their sleep
watched over by gnarled-limbed, grandparent trees resting from autumn’s staggering energy;
of the silent, whirling earth
circling to race back home to the sun.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.
In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of endings: children growing,
friends leaving,
jobs concluding,
stages finishing,
grieving over,
blaming over,
excuses over.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.
In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of beginnings: that such waitings and endings
may be a starting place,
a planting of seeds
which bring to birth
what is ready to be born – something right and just and different,
a new song,
a deeper relationship,
a fuller love –
in the fullness of your time.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.
SONG: “HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?” VU#716
An old folk hymn as rendered by John McCutcheon and friends
This is the song of a person and a people who hold fast to hope even as hard realities unfold around them.
My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, though far off hymn
That hails a new creation
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing
What though the darkness round me falls,
I know the truth, it liveth
And what though the tempest round me roars,
Songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?
And when tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knells ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging.
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?
Oh my life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, though far off hymn
That hails a new creation
Through all the tumult, and the strife
Those freedom bells come ringing
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?
Peace to you Ted