“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
An invitation to worship and reflection for the 2ND Sunday in Advent
Music Leadership: Sheelah Megill
GATHERING AND GREETING
As we gather, we acknowledge with respect the history, spirituality, and culture of the K’omoks First Nation and the Coast Salish peoples on whose traditional and unceded territory we meet. We also honour the heritage of all indigenous peoples as we recognize the need to seek a new relationship between the descendants of settlers and of those who were here before colonization. As a congregation of The United Church of Canada, we take responsibility both for past injustices and the need for healing and reconciliation. We love and honour this land upon which we meet and live and all whose footfall has trod and will tread upon it
Welcome and News
A Time of Centering,
with Quiet Music,
Begun and Ended with the Sounding of the Singing Bowl
CALLING THE ELEMENTS AND LIGHTING THE SPIRIT CANDLE
INVITING US TO BE ATTENTIVE TO WHAT CAN NEITHER BE HEARD NOR SEEN BUT WHICH IS PRESENT AND REAL
A CALL TO AWARENESS
A VASTER SKY
from “In Love with the Mystery”: Ann Mortifee, Eskova, 2010
There is a band of consciousness that we can access
that is more subtle than our daily awareness.
It is here that we meet the Gods and Goddesses of all religions. We can penetrate this realm through devotion
to any of these Deities who have deeply touched our imagination. Through them, we find access to a miraculous world of possibilities. We are meant to open to realms beyond our own.
As reverence and devotion awakens in us,
we find ourselves expanding into a vaster sky.
OPENING CHANT
Here, here, here in this moment, |
Now, now, now in this place. Yes, say “yes!” to Love’s urging, the power of Peace, |
READING FROM SCRIPTURE: Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” |
Thanks be to God for this Word. |
RESPONDING IN SONG: “FLOWERS WILL BLOOM IN THE DESERT”
(Walter Farquarson & Ron Klusmeier)
Flowers will bloom in the desert,
and enemies learn to be friends. God’s world will be filled with God’s being, will welcome the One that God sends.
The hungry will feed at the banquet, the blinded be able to see.
All captives will walk out of prisons,
surprised at their call to be free.
Flowers will bloom in the desert, captives walk free.
These promises, God, you have given, your people have nurtured this dream.
Flowers will bloom in the desert, |
captives walk free. |
The poor will know good news is spoken, their value affirmed by their God. The halting will dance with God’s praises and lilies shall burst from dead sod.
Flowers will bloom in the desert, |
captives walk free. |
TED’S REFLECTION
FORERUNNERS PREPARING THE WAY
I am beginning with a few random pieces in a jig saw puzzle which I hope will fit nicely together in the end to focus us for our reflection and conversation later.
The first piece features John the Baptist, the central figure in our Gospel reading today, as he usually is on the second Sunday in Advent each year.
John is an interesting character. The Gospel writer, you will notice, is painstakingly detailed in placing him within the actual historical moment in which he lived. In fact, there is more evidence outside the New Testament accounts attesting to the historicity of John than there is of Jesus. John is described in startling ways. To us, maybe he strikes our modern ears as a fanatic or even a madman. But, in context, he jumps off the page in the guise of an old style Hebrew prophet. And that may be the importance of John in the story of Jesus. The one who serves as a bridge between the old ways of his Jewish ancestors and the new vision Jesus brings. The background from Hebrew prophecy and the descriptions in the Christian scriptures hail John as a forerunner of the promised Messiah. The one whose calling is to prepare the way for the coming of this enigmatic figure and the vision, the message, the impact, and the transformation he (or maybe she) will bring. And, in that role as a forerunner, John not only prepares the people for the coming of this Promised One but he also helps to prepare Jesus for the role. Reading between the lines, it seems that Jesus was first a disciple of John’s until the penny dropped for Jesus and he realized it was time to move on and proclaim not only what he had learned from John but also what the Spirit had been teaching him deeper down in the process.
So, this first piece: John as the forerunner – the one who prepares the people to recognize and maybe respond to the Messiah when he arrives; and the one who prepares Jesus to recognize and act on his own unique calling.
The second jig-saw piece is the Hebrew Scriptures.
Christians tend to call that collection of writings the Old Testament. But I shy away from that traditional designation, for it seems demeaning, dismissive, and arrogant to me, rendering them secondary to the New Testament, or what I prefer to call the Christian scriptures. Whatever may be their strengths or weaknesses, the Hebrew Scriptures are an original, brilliant, and important literary collection, complete within themselves, and precious to the people whose sages and poets and folklorists and prophets and historians and scholars and dogmatists created them.
In conversation with a friend last week, he spoke of ruing the day the emerging Christian Church opted to keep the Hebrew Scriptures as part of the total canon of Scripture recognized in Christian circles. His argument is that most of the negative images of God we carry in our culture are derived from those earlier writings and actually contradict the vision of God Jesus talks about and which the Christian Scriptures – the so- called New Testament – records. I can see his point, though I also see the value in those earlier writings: for their literary and poetic merit, for example; for their overarching view – in conjunction with the Christian scriptures – of the universe’s story as a movement from Creation, into the very real and often painful human
condition, into a process of redemption from evil and suffering that finally culminates in the emergence of a new heaven and a new earth in which suffering is no more; and, maybe most of all, because it is hard to understand Jesus without some understanding of the culture that informed him and which he always sought to reform rather than disavow or replace.
I had a dream the other night in which an elderly and frail former professor of mine from seminary days wasinvitedtoreadthescripturesduringaServicewewerebothattending. Hemadehiswaycautiouslytothe lectern, aided by two canes and the gentle, guiding hand of his daughter. Standing straight and firm behind the lectern and just before he began to read, spontaneously, he lifted the big, leather-bound, pulpit bible and cradled it lovingly in his arms, like a parent a precious child, or a lover his beloved, or an old friend, the two of them having grown old together. Jesus, having been cradled precious by his mother in birth and in death and nurtured throughout his lifetime in the scriptures of his people had come to the point where he could read between the lines and beyond the words and commune with his Abba residing more deeply, the one who loved him and whom Jesus had come to know as Love itself.
Whether for good or for ill, the Hebrew scriptures in the Christian world have always functioned as a forerunner to the new vision of Jesus, that helped prepare the way for generations after him to more fully understand his teachings. So that is the second jigsaw piece in the puzzle I am trying to put together this morning: the Hebrew Scriptures as one of the ways Jesus and generations after him were prepared to receive and understand the new vision of God and Creation that dawned with his birth.
The next jigsaw piece I want to describe concerns the meeting of cultures in certain parts of southern and western Europe, the south coast of England and into Wales, across the sea into Ireland and then back across the sea into Scotland and northern England.
I am speaking about the way the Christian story was presented to and received by the earlier Celtic peoples of those regions. There is a tendency to romanticize and idealize all things Celtic and we need to be careful about that as we re-explore it in our times. But, at the risk of oversimplifying something much more complex, let me highlight this: that, when Christians first arrived in Celtic regions of Europe and the British Isles, they did not try to eradicate the spirituality that was already there. They honored it. They listened to and learned from the Druidic priests and priestesses. They told the story of Jesus in a way that recognized common chords and interweaving melodies in both spiritualities. They were enriched in their own spirituality by the insights and practices of the peoples that already inhabited those lands. Many pre-Christian Celtic people were moved to adopt Jesus as their personal Druidic teacher because their own spirituality had prepared them to hear the Jesus story in an intriguing and resonant way.
So, this piece of the jigsaw puzzle suggests that pre-Christian Celtic spirituality was a forerunner and preparation – for some at least – that allowed them to hear and embrace the Jesus story as a further and deeper step into the spirituality they already tended and practiced.
By contrast, I offer the last jigsaw piece as the way European Christians interacted with the peoples they found and the spirituality practiced when they first arrived on the shores of the so-called new worlds we now call North and South America and parts of Africa and the South Pacific regions.
Instead of speaking of Jesus, of God, and of spirituality itself in respectful interface with the beliefs and practices already alive in the indigenous peoples of these lands, the agents of European empire and of Christian mission devalued it and sought to educate and even torture it out of them, especially their children. Shame! Shame on our forebears for their crimes against humanity. Shame on the church for its complicity. Shame on me for my ignorance of it for so long and my apathy towards it as I gradually learned more about it.
What a difference it would have made had early settlers and stewards of the Christian story come to this land and met its peoples with open wonder about the profundity of what was already here; if those of the church in earlier centuries here had recognized the spirituality of the peoples of this land as a preparation for the coming of the story of Jesus; if those of the church in earlier centuries – and maybe today – had recognized the story of Jesus as preparation for them to listen to the stories already told and to reverence the spirituality already practiced here before their arrival.
So each of these several jigsaw pieces have had this in common: each in some way pictured a forerunner; something that prepared the next generation to be receptive to something new, that grew out of what came before. In the examples I shared, John the Baptist as forerunner and the Hebrew Scriptures as preparation for the way Jesus not only grew out of what came before him but also inhabited the old with his own creativity, insight, and brilliance. The last two contrasting pieces depicting, first, the meeting of the indigenous Celtic folk with the migrating Christians and, then, the indigenous people of this land with European explorers, settlers, and missionaries – offering two different ways such meetings might develop.
So, with those pieces in place, I am inviting you to finish my reflection for me and with me. I offer the reflections starters below for your consideration.
If I were to share my responses to those reflections starters, for example, I might talk about growing up surrounded by ocean and forest and cultivating an introspective nature; or the way the childhood stories of Robin Hood, the honest outlaw – and maybe my immersion in the 60’s counter-culture as well – prepared me to see Jesus from an angle different from the prevailing Sunday School norm; or I might speak of long-time friends, Ron or Jane, or later mentors, such as Fred and Gordon, and their influence on me; and so on. Your responses will be different, of course, because your life and your nature and your experiences are unique to you. Let me also say that, if your reflections take you someplace else entirely, go there instead because that is likely where Spirit is nudging you to explore. And please know that I am always interested in hearing from you where all this is taking you.
For Further Reflection:
- However you may name or articulate your spirituality – with each and all of its beliefs and values and practices – what prepared the way for you to be open to what is rich and meaningful for you now?
- Are there John the Baptist figures in your earlier life who sensitized you to spiritual matters and perhaps served as role models for you to emulate?
- How has your whole life’s story – from its earliest moments even until now – served as an “old testament” preparing you to recognize and receive new and enriching teaching that is coming your way along your life’s path?
- Do you sense a stirring inside calling you to a new chapter in the story Spirit is writing with your life?A TIME FOR REFLECTION AND PRAYERIn our public gathering, we enjoyed a musical interlude, while those present were invited to use the quiet to reflect on the readings and thoughts shared, to light a candle or place a stone or shell as an expression of prayer, and to place an offering in the basket. Once any movement had settled, we welcomed conversation arising from today’s Service and Reflection.
OUR DEDICATION
A Blessing by John O’Donohue
From “To Bless the Space Between Us”, Doubleday, 2008
For Longing
Blessed be the longing that brought us here and quickens our soul with wonder.
May we have the courage to listen to the voice of desire that disturbs us when we have settled for something safe.
May we have the wisdom to enter generously into our own unease to discover the new direction our longing wants us to take.
May the forms of our belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship – be equal to the grandeur and the call of our soul.
May the one we long for long for us.
May our dreams gradually reveal the destination of our desire.
May a secret Providence guide our thought and nurture our feeling.
May our mind inhabit our life with the sureness with which our body inhabits the world. May our heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
May we come to accept our longing as divine urgency.
May we know the urgency with which God longs for us.
THANKING THE ELEMENTS A SUNG BLESSING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYFnLIs5p4M
https://www.godsongs.net/2016/11/prayer-for-peace-peace-before-us-haas.html/
Peace before us
Peace behind us Peace under our feetce wiithin us Peace over us
Let all around us be peace.
Peace to you, dear friends. Fondly and faithfully, Ted