Watch it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Keep us, O Lord, while we tarry on this earth, in a serious seeking after thee, and in an affectionate walking with thee, every day of our lives; that when thou comest, we may be found not hiding our talent, nor serving the flesh, nor yet asleep with our lamp unfurnished, but waiting and longing for our Lord, our glorious God for ever and ever.

–Richard Baxter (1615-1691)

If you go to the BBC 3 Programme link here, you can find Elizabeth Poston’s beautiful piece (my favorite) beginning at around 11:55 (it lasts just over three minutes).

Lord Jesus, you were born in a stable in Bethlehem and came to us as a healer and reconciler. Send forth your healing touch to families, communities and na-tions. Where there is estrangement, build bridges; where there is hostility, sow love; where there is con-flict, bring peace; where there is inequity, establish justice; where there is revenge, bring forgiveness; where there are historical wounds, pour out your heal-ing balm; where there are unruly wills, establish your gentle sovereign rule; where there is spiritual hunger, pour out your peace that passes understanding. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Son of God, Son of Abraham, Son of Man, now and forever. Amen.

The Rev. Timothy Paul Jones kept hearing one thing when — four weeks before Christmas — he brought a wreath and some purple and pink candles into his Southern Baptist church near Tulsa, Okla.

And all the people said: “Advent? Don’t Catholics do that?”This prickly response wasn’t all that unusual, in light of the history of Christmas in America, said Jones, who now teaches leadership and church ministry at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

“In the dominant American, Protestant traditions of this country, we’ve never had a Christian calendar that told us anything about Advent and the 12 days of Christmas,” explained Jones, author of “Church History Made Easy.”

“We went from the Puritans, and they hardly celebrated Christmas at all, to this privatized, individualized approach to the season that you see all around us. … If you mention the church calendar many people think you’ve gone Papist or something. They really don’t care what Christians did through the centuries.”

Read it all.

It features an Episcopal parish toward the end–good for them. Watch it all.

Check it out.

How do we encounter the poor? Are they simply the recipients of our unwanted clothing or our spare change, forgotten until we are confronted by a Salvation Army bell-ringer or a donation-collection truck?

Jesus called the poor blessed because they more readily recognize and receive the kingdom of heaven. People who are the most vulnerable often discover that what they need can only come from God.

Each meeting with shelter or a meal or the kindness of a stranger can be seen as divine providence.

Read it all.

It’s a lot like bringing the boxes of Christmas decorations out of the attic or wherever you have them stored. Like pulling the Christmas sweaters from the wardrobe closet””that to my mind is the way the Church, each Advent, drags him out of the liturgical mothballs. His given name is John bar Zechariah. You know him as John the Baptist. He is completely out of step with what I have dubbed the Shopmas season. That is a word I coined some years ago to describe the season that begins the day after Thanksgiving and lasts until December 31. It is celebrated with lights, glitter, cards, parties, presents, and most of all shopping accompanied by holiday music. It is enchanting how puissant such songs as “Winter Wonderland” or “White Christmas” can be for the shopkeeper’s business. Some preachers complain about this festive celebration. I kind of like it.

My problem is with the lectionary. Just when I’m in the mood for the nostalgia of Shopmas the Church drags John the Baptizer out of the pages of the Bible and plops him smack dab in the middle of my life and I have to deal with him again. And not just for one Sunday but for two! I can see him there in the barren desert that borders the Jordan River near where it flows into the Dead Sea. The lowest place on earth and the last place most of us want to be during Shopmas. He’s out there preaching. He’s dressed austerely in skins and camel’s hair; living on a sparse diet of locust and wild honey. His voice raging like a furnace; his message burning like a wild fire in the chaparral, uncontained and uncontainable””“Repent,” he cries, “repent.”

There are those people, few and far between, who come into our lives with an austerity, even a harshness that the causes us to grow. They are tough on us, and yet for some reason do not offend us. Or if they do, we get over it and go on. Maybe it’s a teacher, a coach, or even a boss who gets the best out of us. They push us to become more than we thought we were able to be. John the Baptist is like that. This is one of the reasons the Church drags him out each Advent.

Read it carefully and read it all.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Sometimes it is helpful to state the obvious: as a species, Homo sapiens are not nocturnal animals. If we were exhibited in some intergalactic zoo we would not be housed with the night-foraging creatures. We are a diurnal species. Our eyes are not the wide, round eyes of owls nor even of lemurs, which glean the faintest trace of light in the darkest of nights. Maybe you can remember when you were a child and awoke in the middle of the night. Even a misplaced coat draped over a chair could become a most sinister looking figure. Fear of the night has motivated our race in past ages to devise many kinds of unusual lights. From Kings in Babylon to Kubla Khan, from Alexandria to Rome the human race has constructed search lights, pyres and lighthouses on one continent after another.
Today in our well insulated neighborhoods where lights are just a switch away, we may think we have left behind the primitive night-fears of our ancestors. But are there not times when you get out of your car on a dark street, or walk down a darkened corridor, that some shadowy presence seems to follow or lurk around the next corner? Driving down a winding mountain road at night your head lights suddenly go out, the brake peddle pushes clear to the floor and just as your car careens off into the utter darkness of the canyon you awaken from your dream. Crawling back to consciousness you’re left momentarily feeling your helplessness in the darkness.

Is it any wonder the lights of Advent and Christmas, the flickering of candles and the logs burning in the fireplace bring a heartwarming glow to the lengthening nights of December? The true message of Christmas, however, goes far deeper than this nostalgic glow. Yet light is still at its center. The prologue to John’s gospel echoes down the centuries to human beings still groping and lost in a darkened cosmos”” “In him [Christ] was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5). For John, the darkness is an apt symbol for the presence of evil in the universe, in our civilizations and their systems, and in our personal lives. In Jesus Christ the divine light shines through the darkness of the world as we receive him into our lives. So the gospel continues “”¦the true light that enlightens every one was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believe in his name, he gave power to become children of God”¦.” (John 1:9-12)

It is this Christ and the luminosity of the life and light he brings into our darkened lives that is the truest meaning of Christmas. It glows long after the Christmas lights come down. To come to this light of the world is always, as William Temple put it, “an act of self-surrender.” On the far side of this self-surrender the light is about hope. Indeed, this hope is our experience and what we are privileged to witness to””for once this self-surrender is initiated it becomes the passion of the follower, the disciple, to bear witness to the light of Christ””his warmth and his illuminating presence which no cosmic darkness can absorb.

My prayers for a bright and radiant Christmastide,

–(The Rt. Rev.) Mark Lawrence is Bishop of South Carolina

I can clearly remember sitting on the front porch with my brother and watching down the street for my uncle’s car. We knew he was coming sometime that day and with him would be our cousins. We were not a patient duo. We had many plans of forts to build in the basement and, if it was winter, snowball fights to be staged. These plans burned in our minds and every minute that passed meant one less minute to play.

To keep the boredom at bay we would play tricks on each other. If I caught my brother not looking down the street I would excitedly say, “There they — aren’t!” He would do the same to me when I tired of gazing down the empty street.

Every now and then we would hear a car coming. We would crane our necks to see who it was but be deflated when we realized it was not our uncle. After the momentary disappointment faded we would go back to watching and waiting.

I think the Gospel writer had this kind of watchfulness in mind when he exhorted the faithful to stay on the lookout for the coming of the Lord.

— Jeff Hedglen

A reflective stillness lies at the centre of Advent. Placed between Christ’s first and second coming, the rhythms of the liturgy measure our time. Quietly, but insistently, it awakens our hope and invites us to wait upon the Lord who will fulfil his promise. It assures us that we will not wait in vain. Advent calls us to renew and deepen our trust, while the world finds trust difficult, and “hope” is dismissed as naive. Now, in this season of Advent we come to know that this time, the time in which we live, whatever the time, is the time of our redemption.

The liturgy of Advent is not like the seasonal background music in the shops, designed to put us in the right mood for spending. It is the song of faith, which expresses the reality from which we live our lives, and that faith gives us a particular way of seeing the world, of living in it and for it. Without pretension, we might describe it as a prophetic perspective. The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel calls it the “exegesis of existence from a divine perspective”. I think this is a good description of what we mean by discerning the “signs of the times”. Christ is the centre of our existence; he is the one who establishes our perspective. For this reason, the Christian way of seeing things is necessarily distinctive. To those who do not share this perspective, it will appear strange. Hence the problem and the puzzle that Christianity poses for a secular culture. The puzzle is not caused by a Christ-centred perspective alone, however. Where a post-Christian society has forgotten how to read the substance of Christian faith, there can be a genuine ignorance but also a cultivated misunderstanding among those who presume to know Christianity already. The old cliché about familiarity breeding contempt can be disconcertingly true. We live at a moment when our society is marked by deep struggles about its identity, values and purpose. The Church wants humanity to succeed, not fail. That is why it is passionately engaged in this struggle. It does not have any ambition to take away the legitimate independence of the secular but it does have a vision of what that might be.

Read it all.

Nevertheless we realise on reflection that not all waiting is tedious. Waiting can be essential. Think of the grapes that have now been gathered. New wine is being prepared. The best must not be drunk too soon. We have to wait. By doing so we respect the vintage. Waiting is respectful. And it is more than respectful. It is also wise.

One aspect of that wisdom is something personal. When I have to wait, I realise I am not in control. I cannot make everything happen at my command. I may wish that I could, but that is fantasy, unreal. Waiting keeps me in touch with reality. Another aspect of that wise reality reminds me of others’ needs rather than my own. While waiting, I place myself at their service. It is not by chance that those who serve in restaurants are called “waiters”. And good waiters are also attentive, they watch.

Read it all.

The Bishop of Reading urges everyone to ask themselves, ‘what do I really want for Christmas?’

The Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury launched a website for Advent encouraging people to think about the true meaning of the holiday and reflect on the birth of Christ.

In response to the website, Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Reading, said he thinks that rushing through Christmas without thinking about the essential meaning is a trap most Christians get caught in. Getting caught up in the traditions and festivities that come along with Christmas make it hard to focus attention on the true purpose.

“Christmas carols would be a good example,” he said. “I love singing Christmas carols but it feels like we start singing them in October and a bit of ancient Christian wisdom would be the balance between the feast and the fast.”

Read it all.

Evangelical Christians are adopting ”” and adapting ”” the rituals of Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas that are traditionally celebrated by Catholics, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox and other liturgical churches.

They’re giving a new, personalized spin to the prayers, candles and calendars to track the building excitement, and set a spiritual tone day by day. This year Advent begins on Sunday.

Popular evangelical authors are offering readings and composing prayers for the Advent season. And Family Christian Stores, the nation’s largest Christian retailer with 301 stores nationwide, has seen sales of Advent-related items climb 35% in the past year.

Read it all.

One Episcopal Church rector’s recent Advent sermon (about 21 minutes, an MP3 download).

Of those things reported in the Scriptures that strain credulity, from the perspective of 21st-century America, it is not so much the miracles that pose a problem, but, I would suggest, the popularity of John the Baptist and his message of repentance. Can you imagine such a thing? We have officially entered the silly season of American politics with 2008 presidential campaigns ”“ we’re getting a good taste of it this weekend here in South Carolina ”“ but can you imagine any of the candidates taking a John the Baptist approach to winning the electorate’s affections, taking up John’s style of slash-and-burn oratory?

Not only is it difficult to imagine a politician taking such a tack, the call to a penitent life is rarely to be heard in the church these days. Indeed, America’s most popular preacher, with perfect hair and a smile that brings well-deserved glory to the modern practice of cosmetic dentistry, channels not so much John the Baptist as Norman Vincent Peale and a “gospel” of self-affirmation and positive thinking ”“ which is no gospel at all. And we eat it up. Flatter me, coddle me, affirm me – but don’t tell me I am wrong down to my very roots, that to be fit for the Kingdom of Heaven my life will have to be completely re-thought from the inside all the way out.

But that is just what John came preaching. And of course, it’s a sermon not unique to that wild man John. If we were to read ahead to the next chapter of St. Matthew’s gospel, we would see that “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” is exactly the message Jesus proclaimed in his own preaching ministry. [ii] And were we to read ahead to chapter 10, we would see Jesus send his disciples out on their first mission trip and actually provide their sermon text: “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” [iii] And if we wanted to skip even further ahead, out of St. Matthew’s gospel altogether and into the Acts of the Apostles, to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, what is the climactic exhortation of St. Peter’s sermon that day? “Repent and be baptized every one of you.” [iv]

But that is a difficult message to preach and to hear in our own day.

Read it all.