A Word on Advent
Though Advent (literally “arrival”) has been observed for centuries, most people today acknowledge it only with a blank look. For the vast majority of us, December flies by in a flurry of activities, and what is called “the holiday season” turns out to be the most stressful time of the year.
Even we who genuinely love Christmas often lose sight of its point. How many of us, content with familiar traditions and feelings of goodwill, forget the dank stable, the cold night, the closed door of the inn? How many of us share the longing of the ancient prophets, who awaited the Messiah with aching intensity thousands of years before he was born?
We miss the essence of Christmas unless we become, in the words of Eberhard Arnold, “mindful of how Christ’s birth took place.” Once we do, we will sense immediately that Advent marks something momentous: God’s coming into our midst. That coming is not just something that happened in the past. It is a recurring possibility here and now. And thus Advent is not merely a commemorative event or an anniversary, but a yearly opportunity for us to consider the future, second Advent—the promised coming of God’s kingdom on earth.
Excerpt from the Introduction of ‘Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas’
ADVENT SERMON SERIES
Christ has come! This is the central celebration of the Advent season. During the darkest time of the year we remember that the Light has come into the world, and we renew our longings for Christ to come again. But during Advent we don’t just celebrate the fact that God came into the world, it’s also important for us to meditate on how God chose to come—by putting on flesh and dwelling among us. The embodiment, or incarnation, of God is no small thing, and during this series we want to look at how central this beautiful reality is to our lives. This pandemic has caused us to be largely virtual and disconnected from each other, and remembering that we are embodied beings is crucial for our spirituality. God became human. God put on flesh, and thus shows us what it looks like to live fully embodied lives! As it says in the hymn Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, “Hail, the Incarnate Deity!”
TUESDAY NIGHT TABLE
We are inviting everyone to participate in the practice of the Lord’s Table (communion, eucharist) every Tuesday evening (12/1 - 12/22 from 8pm-8:45pm) over Zoom through the season of Advent. Communion is one of the most foundational spiritual practices given to us by Jesus, and part of it’s significance is to help us meditate on reality that God became flesh, and what that means for us as enfleshed beings made in the image of God. Each Tuesday evening we will begin with a prayer practice that helps us to engage our own embodiment as image bearers of God, and we will spend the rest of our time at the Table together. You will need to have bread and wine/juice available each week. We’d love to have you! Please sign up here in order to receive the Zoom link!
ADVENT COMMUNAL DAILY OFFICE
We would love for you to participate in the communal daily office that we will be engaging through the season of Advent. By signing up here you will gain access to a daily devotional reading and a daily Bible reading plan to guide you through each day of Advent. This is a great way for our community to take a deeper dive into Advent and to grow in our life with God together.
Made Flesh by Luci Shaw
A Poem
After
the bright beam of hot annunciation
Fused heaven with dark earth
His searing sharply-focused light
Went out for a while
Eclipsed in amniotic gloom:
His cool immensity of splendor
His universal grace
Small-folded in a warm dim
Female space—
The Word stern-sentenced to be nine months dumb—
Infinity walled in a womb
Until the next enormity—the Mighty,
After submission to a woman’s pains
Helpless on a barn-bare floor
First-tasting bitter earth.
Now
I in him surrender
To the crush and cry of birth.
Because eternity
Was closeted in time
He is my open door
To forever.
From his imprisonment my freedoms grow,
Find wings.
Part of his body, I transcend this flesh.
From his sweet silence my mouth sings.
Out of his dark I glow.
My life, as his,
Slips through death’s mesh,
Time’s bars,
Joins hands with heaven,
Speaks with stars.