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Advent Word December 4 – “Reveling”

From Sunday’s 2nd Lesson: Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

I assume St. Paul’s point is putting on Jesus means NOT being a drunkard, no quarreling either, NO PROVISION for the flesh. I am sure many reading this add, in their own minds, “You mean NO FUN, right?”.

But this is the same Paul who writes in Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, Rejoice!”. So let us not think this admonition from Romans means No Fun, but rather a better way, wearing the armor of light, putting on Jesus like skin gives us every reason to rejoice and even revel in the grace of Christ, instead of reveling which leads to the type of behavior St. Paul describes in Romans, which does not allow others to see Christ in and on us. Revel in the Lord and our blessing, revel all you want while wearing Christ, just don’t forget to put Jesus on first!

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Advent Word December 3

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Forward Movement, the excellent resource for many things Episcopal, including the Forward Day by Day booklets many of you are familiar with, has once again challenged people to reflect on one word each day of Advent. Each word is taken from the Sunday liturgy – the prayers and readings for the Sunday in Advent for each of the 4 weeks of the Advent season. I am going to attempt (pray for me) to add a short reflection on each word each day of Advent. To subscribe to the Advent Word series from Forward Movement, click HERE.

Advent Word for December 3rd is “quietness”

In Psalm 122, our Psalm for the 1st Sunday of Advent, verse 7 says: “Peace be within your walls, and quietness within your towers.

Quietness is something I yearn for often. It’s so hard to hear God’s voice when the noise of the world is at high screech level! I think mayhap I need another silent retreat and I need it NOW! Oops, sorry to shout! However, I don’t think the word Quietness from Psalm 122 is about that kind of silence. The first half of the sentence from verse 7 says, “Peace be within your walls”. The quietness, it seems to me, is asking for the cessation of fighting or war, no need to be noisy in the guard towers, clanging weapons and barking orders. Instead the Psalmist, I think, is praying for peace and the end to conflict, so the walls and towers are quiet instead of filled with the sounds of battle. Quietness signals peace. So let us pray for peace, both from conflicts between nations and neighbors as well as the peace of Christ, which St. Paul says, surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7). This kind of inner peace comes only from God and it heralds (quietly of course) the presence of the Holy Spirit, guarding our hearts and minds, filling us with the grace of Christ, comforting us in our struggles, and, yes, quieting our souls so we can hear God even in the midst of the hard stuff. SHHH do you hear the quiet?? God is present, may God’s peace which passes all understanding, guard your heart and soul in the knowledge of God, and of God’s son, Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

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Advent Word December 2nd

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Forward Movement, the excellent resource for many things Episcopal, including the Forward Day by Day booklets many of you are familiar with, has once again challenged people to reflect on one word each day of Advent. Each word is taken from the Sunday liturgy – the prayers and readings for the Sunday in Advent for each of the 4 weeks of the Advent season. I am going to attempt (pray for me) to add a short reflection on each word each day of Advent. To subscribe to the Advent Word series from Forward Movement, click HERE.

Advent Word – Tribe

From Psalm 122 verses 3 – 4 (from the first Sunday of Advent):

Jerusalem is built as a city, that is at unity with itself: To which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, the assembly of Israel, to praise the Name of the Lord.

The brief meditation on the word “Tribes” provided by Forward Day by Day for today speaks very well of tribes – “Whether referring to the twelve tribes of Israel, indigenous tribes around the world, or musical groups, what connects us as people is up to us and up to God. What makes a tribe a tribe is belonging. Isn’t that good news!”

Yes it is good news, until it’s not. I worry tribalism is at the root of what ails our nation (and perhaps world). While belonging is great, at the same time I pray we are willing to listen to “other tribes” stories and experiences, which often enrich our own. I pray this Advent we all find ourselves in the one tribe that matters the most – beloved children of God.

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Advent Word December 1st

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Forward Movement, the excellent resource for many things Episcopal, including the Forward Day by Day booklets many of you are familiar with, has once again challenged people to reflect on one word each day of Advent. Each word is taken from the Sunday liturgy – the prayers and readings for the Sunday in Advent for each of the 4 weeks of the Advent season. I am going to attempt (pray for me) to add a short reflection on each word each day of Advent. To subscribe to the Advent Word series from Forward Movement, click HERE.

December 1st – SAID

From the 1st Sunday of Advent lectionary readings: Psalm 122:1. “I was glad when they SAID to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’.

Two interesting things in the Psalm verse. First it is a communal invite: let US go. Our faith is a communal faith, Jesus calls us (when 2 or 3 are gathered together) to community, the numbers don’t matter, but isolation, other than those moments of quiet prayer, is not the way. We need each other to both encourage and challenge one another. In this verse one group is encouraging someone to go with them on pilgrimage to a holy place, the house of the Lord. Calling one another to worship the holy one, together. It is fine to commune with God in nature, in your own quiet space, but from those experiences we must then be part of a community of faith, a community with plenty of faults, with people who annoy us and leaders who disappoint us. This is the way. Our Episcopal theology of the Eucharist (Holy Communion is such a great name for this!), we do not consider a Eucharist “valid” if the priest says the prayers alone. It takes a community praying together, offering “our selves, our souls and bodies”, for the ordinary elements of bread and wine to become the real presence of Christ.

Secondly, the group doing the invite (“us”) is quick to say where they want the one being invited to go – to the house of the Lord. This makes the one invited “glad”. As I said in my sermon Sunday, maybe not just glad but also relieved. Peer pressure can often find us going places we really don’t want to go or really should not go. We’ve all been there. There is a sense not just of joy over the invite, but perhaps also relief – I was GLAD when they told me where they wanted me to go with them! Perhaps you know someone who would be overjoyed with just such an invite. You could even warn them – we are sinners and hypocrites, yet we need one another, we need the love of one another along with the love of God. Come with us to the house of the Lord. Be welcome at the table of Christ. Let us go, together. Be glad they SAID let US go to God’s house.

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Advent Word – November 30th “Again”

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Forward Movement, the excellent resource for many things Episcopal, including the Forward Day by Day booklets many of you are familiar with, has once again challenged people to reflect on one word each day of Advent. Each word is taken from the Sunday liturgy – the prayers and readings for the Sunday in Advent for each of the 4 weeks of the Advent season. I am going to attempt (pray for me) to add a short reflection on each word each day of Advent. To subscribe to the Advent Word series from Forward Movement, click HERE.

Sunday November 30th – Again

Advent is all about “again”. In our opening Collect of the Day for the 1st Sunday in Advent we are reminded, “when he (Jesus) shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to life immortal”. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming”, and during this season before Christmas, we rejoice and celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ at his humble birth in Bethlehem, while also looking forward to his “parousia”, Greek for “coming” which is usually associated with the Second Coming of Christ. “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”, as we say in the Nicene Creed. And at the end of the book of Revelation, we hear an Aramaic word, “Maranatha”, which basically means: “Our Lord, Come”, or even “Our Lord has come”. This word incorporates the double meaning of Advent as we too wait for Jesus to come again, so we may rise to life immortal. Maranatha, Jesus, Maranatha again!

Itinerant: noun. a person who alternates between working and wandering.