#KeepingAdvent: "Presents and Presence"

Image courtesy of Idea go / freedigitalphotos

We all know what today is. It’s Christmas Eve, the day before we celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ as God Incarnate, and tonight is when Santa Claus comes. In some households, the festivities begin today with Christmas pageants, dinners, the opening of a single gift or other traditions as many families split the holiday among more than one location. For others it is the last mad dash of preparation spent shopping, wrapping, cooking, traveling, or some hectic combination thereof.

Today is also my birthday. Yes, in the midst of all the other hubbub of Christmas Eve, I had the nerve to come wailing into the world some x-number of decades ago. In fact, I grew up with the story of that inconvenience told again and again each year -- as the youngest of four, it threw a real kink into the rest of the family’s plans – and combined it with other experiences growing up to come to the conclusion that I was not wanted.

Yet, despite all of that (or more likely, with God’s unfathomable help), I have always believed that He and I have something special going on, as if being born the day before Christmas put me just a little bit closer to Him. Now, that’s not to say someone having a birthday any other day of the year can’t be just as close to God. I never thought about it that way. It’s just that from before I can remember I pulled from the experience of my birthday a sense of connection to God or specialness that I now believe is the very definition of grace. It can be yours too.

Each of us has the potential to pull something out of our experiences or circumstances and point to it as evidence of God’s grace uniquely and unconditionally given to each of us. It may be a special talent or simply the miracle that we are here. As I reflect on my life I see a pretty direct correlation, regardless whether the actual circumstances were positive or negative, between how dark or bright certain periods were and my degree of closeness to God. The brightest times have been when I “walked with God,” looking for His love in other people and gratefully noticing more of His blessings, even if the circumstances were quite challenging. The darkest times have been when I tried to go it alone, working harder and faster to fix whatever needed fixing until I finally burned myself out, surrendered and turned back to Him. His presence is constant; mine is what waxes and wanes.

"Adoration of the Shepherds" by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622

Image taken from

This year I received an early birthday present, in the form of Bishop Gregg’s December 2nd sermon, when he said, “Every day, always and no matter what, you and I, my brothers and sisters, are the beloved sons and daughters of God where God is love. And everything comes from that truth.” He made it clear: it matters less whether the right people love us or if certain people love us in the right way. God does.

Isn’t that what each of us really wants for Christmas, and isn’t that why God sent Jesus in the first place?

Merry Christmas,

Elizabeth Witherspoon

www.stlukesdurham.org

Will our Marys have Elizabeths?

Mother of God Icon - Photo by: Klášter Pražského Jezulátka

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Who better to think about in the season of Advent—when the church waits and prepares for Christmas—who better to look at as an example then Mary? Mary, bless her heart, seems to have been just minding her own business when the angel Gabriel shows up to tell her she’ll be carrying and bearing the incarnation of God. Mary being pregnant when she isn’t married in that time and that place is no laughing matter; it was a HUGE deal. Joseph, her fiance, had the legal—and biblical—right to have Mary killed, stoned, in fact—not something that’s very Christmas cheery, but something’s that true nonetheless. Despite the picture of the grown woman that I know pops into my head when I say Mary, the fact of the matter is, at this point, Mary was young, really young--maybe even twelve. Though we may think of Mary as being meek, accepting, and/or obedient, I think Mary must have been so incredibly brave. She deals with what was indisputably the biggest challenge in her life incredibly graciously.

Our own lives can be dramatic on occasion, like Mary's. Obstacles and speed bumps pop up, because that’s just life. Maybe we don’t make a certain grade, make a certain team, or get into the certain college in the way we originally envisioned. Relationships evolve—we make new friends, our families might change or move, friends and family get sick and sometimes they don't get better. The only thing we can expect is the unexpected. I don’t know much about what Mary’s plan was, but I can almost guarantee you it did not involve getting pregnant when she was twelve or thirteen before she was married.

The reading from Luke for today picks up right after Mary’s found out this incredible, life-changing news. What does Mary do when life throws her the ultimate curveball? What would anybody do, but particular a teenage girl?  She went to go talk to someone about it.  Notice who Mary goes to see. Mary didn’t go and see any of her friends. Mary didn’t go talk to Joseph. Mary doesn’t go talk to her mom or her dad. No, Mary goes and sees another adult in her life, an adult with whom she already has a relationship. Mary goes to talk to her aunt Elizabeth.

I see our generations as being increasingly isolated. Families live further apart; kids have less free time to get to know the people they're not with all day long (their school peers). That can be one of the gifts of a church family--one of the last intergenerational spaces. Every Tyra needs a Ms. Taylor, Helen Keller an Anne Sullivan, DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle an Uncle Jesse or Uncle Joey, Harry Potter a Dumbledore. We all get sent down some twisty, kinda weird paths sometimes. Mary’s journey must have been waaaayyy different than she expected.

Will our Marys have Elizabeths?

Written by Ann Bonner-Stewart

www.stlukesdurham.org

#KeepingAdvent: "Waiting"

Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting……

I have been waiting for so many things this year.  Some good.  Some awful.

Waiting for my new home to be complete enough to move into.  Waiting for the punch list completion (still!).  Waiting to spend the night there (finally did that on a 22 hour visit to Durham).  Waiting for the rest of my belongings to be delivered from storage.

Waiting for airplanes and rental cars.  Waiting for doctors, nurses and aides.  Waiting for my mom who was moving more and more slowly.  Waiting for my dad who is looking harder for his words these days.

Waiting for the next Advent candles to be lit—this year in three different churches in three different states!  I also enjoyed the Advent wreath in my Maryland godchildren’s home and a lovely godfamily* reunion there.

Waiting for Mom to get better while praying, “God’s will be done,” and knowing Mom’s prayers were for her trip to heaven to come soon.

Waiting for the endless line of people to file past, hugging us and telling us how much they’ll miss my mom.  They were stopped only by my dad insisting Mom would want her funeral to begin on time!  He was right, of course.  And we had followed her instructions to close the casket so there was no danger of her sticking her tongue out at us!

I knew her prayer book was marked and we had talked about her earthly death for years so I knew how to plan the service and the day.  All our talking made the time so much easier as I stepped into the manager role Mom always played in the past.  Talk about this!  I promise it doesn’t make death come sooner.  We’ve been talking about it for at least 35 years.  I’m so thankful this time didn’t come until I was old enough to really understand what Mom meant.  I also saw clear evidence that my brother had been unwilling to discuss it.  My answers to some of his questions were, “Mom would haunt us if we did that!”

Amidst all the other waiting, I am waiting, as we do every year for our glorious celebration of the birth of Christ.  I especially look forward to celebrating with my St. Luke’s family this year.

Although we wait to celebrate His birth, He’s among us now, each and every moment of each and every day.  In this time when I’ve needed Him most, Jesus has made his presence known and felt.  It’s been so strong I couldn’t possibly have missed it.  So many prayers ascending on our behalf by friends all over the place!  I pray the same for you, my friends.  Amen.  Alleluia!

*If ‘godchildren” is one word, my logic says “godfamily” is, too.  In my book, a gathering of one godchild (her brother’s in college!), two parents and four godparents is a “godfamily reunion”.

Written by Nancy Usher Williams

www.stlukesdurham.org

"Apocalypse Now"

Episcopalians are pleased, on the whole, not to be a religiously-demonstrative lot; we can, as well, be a mite smug about our denomination’s relative lack of credulity. Still, our Lord is gracious. Occasionally, Jesus will bonk one of us on the head with a two-by-four, make jazz-hands, and say, “Yo! I’m over here!”  St. Thomas the Apostle is a perfect icon for such apocalyptic moments, and we celebrate his feast today.

If you are reading this on 12/21, as planned, we can all breathe easier knowing we’ve avoided the Mayan Apocalypse. Some folks (more credulous than we) were sure it would all wind up today with a burning bang, but have we dodged the apocalyptic bullet? As Inigo Montoya once famously said, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

‘Apocalypse’ is from the Greek words meaning ‘the veil away’ (απο + καλυμμα). Our sight, our hearts, our minds… are unable to see Truth clearly. We are unable to perceive ourselves and each other as God knows us and loves us. The perfect Beauty of all creation and perfect Goodness of God’s movement in and through that creation are veiled to our sight unless God removes the veil. The veil is not our sin (if it were, all we’d need to do is perfect ourselves, et voila!). Sin is a wound that God is healing day by day. Rather, the veil is our human finitude, and there’s no cure for that but grace bonking us on the head. The Good News is: that can happen anytime.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Apostle Thomas: the Doubter and perfect Episcopalian, who was confident enough in God’s grace and power to express his doubts honestly, but who was nevertheless completely unprepared for that grace and power to reveal itself quite so personally. Jesus ripped the veil away, just for a moment, and Thomas fell to his knees and worshipped. His life would never be the same. Apocalypse will do that to a person.

My Lord and My God!

God’s kingdom is one of peace and plenty. Our own is full of violence, destruction, and horror. We use the word ‘apocalypse’ to describe such things as 9/11/01, Katrina, and Sandy Hook – and rightly so, for in those events, the veneers of virtue, dominion, and invulnerability protecting our tiny proud selves are ripped away. Our faultiness, finitude, and need for grace pull us into a praying jumble where we wail together for help. When the veil is lifted, we see ourselves more accurately, and respond appropriately – as children who are grievously hurt, and in need of healing…. lost in the darkness, and in need of guidance and Light… 

The apocalypse is always NOW. THIS MOMENT is the moment of revelation and judgment that can turn us toward Light and transform us. Today is also the Solstice: one of the oldest holy days of humankind. The Solstice is the ancient celebration of Hope – of proclaiming Returning Light even on the longest night. And in our darkened world, with our veiled but hopeful hearts, we gather to proclaim that the veil is being lifted, even now.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.

No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

Written by Peach McDouall

www.stlukesdurham.org

#KeepingAdvent: "The Art of Being Unprepared"

"Yeah. I'm about to pop. Pop you in the mouth for saying that."!! (It never ceased to amaze me that being pregnant seemed to give everyone permission to comment freely on my size. Nothing like hearing, "You're so big!" every day for months).

I delivered two of my children in early January.  This means that twice, I spent Advent extremely pregnant.  I outgrew that cute little basketball belly the women who model maternity clothes have around 5 months, so by 8 months I was huge.  My pants wouldn’t stay up, I was bloated and uncomfortable, not to mention grumpy.  People pointed and stared at me on the street.  Strangers asked if I was expecting twins.  I endured these things along with the baby’s pokes to my ribs and kicks to my bladder. I sat in church, shifting back and forth in the uncomfortable pew distracted by indigestion, sore feet and the occasional sciatic nerve pain.  I listened to readings about John the Baptist urging us to “be prepared” like some kind of feral boy scout.  “Easy for you to say.” I mutter to myself.  “I am too tired to prepare lunch, much less ‘the Way of the Lord’.”

 These were not Advents that I was particularly organized about getting all my gifts wrapped or Christmas cards mailed.  They were not Advents that I gazed peacefully at the candles in the Advent wreath.  It felt like I went to church more out of habit and obligation than desire. Despite this lack of planning and preparation and general bad attitude, these were the Advents that I really got IT-- that feeling of awe and expectation, that deep knowing that whatever was coming was bigger and better than I could predict, bolder than I could imagine and more life altering than I wanted to think about. These were my second and third pregnancies and I knew that while I needed to prepare for these children, the neatly folded onesies and tiny footed jammies weren’t going to get me any farther than decorating the Christmas tree would prepare me for the coming of Jesus.  I knew that no matter how much diaper creme I bought or how many times I read the car seat manual, the real preparation was being willing to be knocked down and run over, to have everything familiar stripped away, to stumble through the dark and end up basking in the light of a new life.  To get there, I knew that I would have to cry and groan and push and struggle like generations of mothers had done before me.  But eventually, I would hold out my shaking, sweaty arms and take hold of a baby that would instantly change me, that would shake my center and crack my heart open like a walnut with the gentle stroke of a tiny finger. I knew that despite my insufficiencies and imperfections and unpreparedness that I already had a fierce and abiding love for this baby and that somehow and someway that would be enough.

It is Advent again and I am still not very organized.  I haven’t figured out what presents to buy for who or ordered the photo Christmas cards.  We are several days behind on the Advent calendar and the house is a mess. This Advent, the world seems darker than ever.  I read the papers and listen to the news late at night and it feels like bad is trumping good. But sometimes, when my youngest is napping, I creep into his room, lean over the crib, listen to the gentle murmur of his breath and remember.  I remember those Advents that I was full and round with awe and expectation, simultaneously petrified and giddy with excitement. I remember what it was like to wait for what I knew would be the best Christmas gifts I had ever received.  It is Advent again and I remember that the most profound and amazing experiences are the ones that you cannot fully prepare for.  I remember that part of getting ready is realizing that our preparations barely scratch the surface. So I wait and hope and try to see the Light flickering in the night and I brace myself to be knocked over once again and to have my heart shattered by Love.

Written by Sarah White
www.stlukesdurham.org

#KeepingAdvent: "The Good Word."

During Advent, I sometimes feel like I’m . . . well, cheating. Advent is the lengthy novel that I’ve chosen to forgo in favor of SparkNotes. It’s the waiting, the lifetimes of waiting, that I don’t have to experience because I was born after the coming of Christ. I’ve never doubted the outcome of the Christmas story, because I knew the end even before I was told the beginning.

Maybe you remember your own childhood Christmases, or have young family members reminding you that they just can’t wait for Christmas to arrive. Maybe one of those children still tells you that he/she is “five and a half” years old, because that’s a very significant amount older than just five years old. Here is a sense of immediacy, a sense of existing right now and Christmas only six days away -- Ah! Unbearable. I see children in the mall on Santa’s lap who can’t sit still from excitement, wishing that Christmas would come a few days early. On the other end of the spectrum, I see harried shoppers who can’t walk slowly for fear that Christmas will catch up before they’re ready. I am reminded that Advent is about preparing, and reflecting, and waiting.

Waiting is the word of Advent, if I could pare it down to one. A better one might be “word” itself. We have the words of Scripture and centuries of oral tradition which speak of the Messiah: words of comfort and reproach, words of summons, of promises, of proclamations. Our Advent lessons are littered with words of promise, and it’s these words which culminate in the living, breathing Word of God: Jesus Christ.

So whether Christmas is coming too fast for you, or lagging behind, remember that we can’t change the time it comes in.  We don’t just have the waiting here, we have the words before Christ and Christ, the Word itself. And though the meme above pokes fun at the relative obscurity of Advent, we are reminded that our few weeks of waiting represent the centuries of waiting on Christ’s coming.  Advent reinforces the significance of the Word. It draws the community of faith together over time. Christ came before us, but Advent (literally, coming to) reminds us that he came for us, died for us, saved us.  Advent marks the beginning of Christ’s actions for us. Let it remind us also of His most precious gift.

Written by Audrey Cook

www.stlukesdurham.org

Where is God in Tragedy?

It’s Tuesday morning, December 18.  Four days ago, a young soul, lost in mental illness committed a crime that I, and our whole nation, cannot fathom.

I am a school teacher who has already thought about how I would push my piano in front of the classroom door and shove my students into my closet.

I am a mother who, this morning, saw a father get out of his car to kiss his high-school-aged son goodbye (right out in the open!)  when I dropped my own child off.  I shuddered as she walked by the police car parked boldly on the sidewalk in front of the school.  

I am also a mother who, 16 years ago, held her two month old daughter as she died … two months before Christmas.  

My Caroline never left the hospital.  Diagnosed with a birth defect when I was 5 months pregnant, she fought an incredible fight from the moment she made her first howl at the world.  Sometimes I think it was purely my will pouring into her.  But stubborn hope is something that has kept me going in life, so perhaps it was just who she was through DNA.  I chose “Faith” as her middle name and it fit her and me perfectly.  This was a time when her name was sometimes the only faith I had.  Medications had swollen her face, and I had not looked into her eyes in weeks.  She would try hard to open them when she heard my voice, her tiny eyebrows moving up and down to no avail.  I would stroke her in reassurance and she would relax the effort in her little face.  I spent two months driving back and forth to the hospital in conversation with God.  Half the time I was praying fervently for God’s healing; the other half I spent shouting to God how I hated him for doing this to her.  That’s right.  I told God I hated him.  I was not afraid of him striking me down.  I welcomed it.  What worse could he do to me than take my child? I offered myself in Caroline’s place.  I would be slapped back into reality (probably God’s form of striking me down) when I arrived at the baby-sitter’s and my beautiful, smiling, 2 year-old daughter came running to me with arms outstretched.  She was my “earthly savior” (my saving grace), a reminder that there is ALWAYS someone that needs and loves me.  

You are an “earthly savior” to someone, or will be one day.  Just praying for someone can be enough.  Trust me.  God has interesting ways of way of reminding us that He is everywhere.

There came a day when I had to change my prayers from “please bring her home to us by Christmas” to “please let me look in her eyes again and be there when she dies.”  By God’s amazing and often hard to comprehend grace, Caroline opened her eyes again and looked at me in those last days. I was holding her in my arms as she passed into His.

People said, “God does not give you more than you can handle.”  I would say “I wish God thought I was a wimp.”  Some offered comfort by saying, “I cannot imagine what you are going through.”  Yes, I have lost a child, but even I cannot wrap my head around this recent tragedy. How do we understand?

I found God working through the people that prayed for me when I had no prayers left to utter out of my empty and nearly faithless heart.  I found great solace in the words, “God lost His child too.” But the most meaningful thing said to me was by the mother of a friend at church who, just 10 months prior, had lost her young son to cancer.  She said, “Peggy, God does not make our children sick and take them from us, He is there when these things happen.”  She was right and those words have comforted me many times since. Just fill in the blank before “he is there when it happens” and you have an idea of God’s all encompassing love. Today, like sixteen years ago, I am so thankful for the Heavenly Savior whose birth we await, for a God that loves us when we do not love him back, for the continued signs of God’s presence in the “earthly saviors” who appear in so many forms to bind us together in faith, and for the joyful and perhaps even comforting anticipation that Advent brings to my broken heart and to our broken world.  

Peggy Young
www.stlukesdurham.org

#KeepingAdvent: "One Week"

          

             Today is the 17^th of December.  There is one week before the Big Night.  One week from Christmas is tomorrow, the 18^th, but we all know that if you don’t have everything ready on the 24^th, it’s too late.  The presents better be bought – the food better be in the fridge or the freezer – the family better be at Grandma’s or wherever; because the 25^th is for relaxing and just enjoying the day of the Nativity.

            But some of us (myself included) have to work a bit harder to relax on the 25^th, because we are working the 25^th.  We also, very often, work the 24^th.  Those of you with “traditional” workweeks, of 9 to 5, sometimes forget that today’s society is very 24/7.  So much so that even a day like Christmas is just another workday to many of us.

            I work in air traffic (not in the tower or the radar room anymore – not for years).  I tell pilots about the weather, file flight plans, and help pilots plan their trips.  Then they know how safe it is even before they get in the cockpit of their private or corporate jets.  Pilots fly on the 25^th.  A lot fly on the 24^th, trying to get to “home” in rotten weather, and sometimes the pilot takes risks to get there.  Sometimes the pilot doesn’t make it.  And, no, I can’t track the NORAD Santa site while at work.

            I used to be a disk jockey – worked for several stations in the Triad.  One of them had the 30 hours of Christmas, from 6pm the 24^th until midnight on the 25^th, when all “glad tidings” and “jingle bell rocks” ended, and it’s back to the secular world.  (This was before the two months of holiday music, on several stations, nowadays.)  Somebody has to be at the stations to play that music, for you to enjoy, while you unwrap your presents on Christmas Day.  Sometimes that somebody was me.

            In years of yore, my parents adjusted to their son’s quirky schedule.  We’d have present openings in the afternoon, after my shift was over at 4, or on the 26^th or 27^th, when we had more time to enjoy the visit. (Note there were no kids under 10 who would die if they had to wait until after sun-rise on the 25^th!).  Now my wife deals with it by going to the family gatherings and just saying, “Michael can’t make it – he’s working tonight.”

            Please don’t think that I am complaining.  I enjoy my job, a lot.  I’m thankful that I have a job – a lot.  But it also makes me realize that Christmas isn’t just a day – it’s a season, a feeling, and aura, over a series of days.  Sure, they bring jokes of “I’m not off for Christmas, but I’m off for the three French hens and the four calling birds.”  It’s a time for reflection at the end of the year, even before the New Year’s Resolutions (and I work that Eve too!)

            Please remember, especially in Durham – the “City of Medicine” – that there are many people who consider Christmas just another workday, and have to “work” around it to be with family. Doctors, physician assistants, nurses – they all have shifts on the 25^th.  Sometimes 12 hours, with another the day before or after.  They have to adjust to enjoy the day off, even if the day off is not until “5 golden rings.”

            St. Luke’s, the church named after the patron saint of medicine and doctors, has more than its share of people in this situation.  The parish also has firefighters and other emergency personnel who must respond on the 25^th as if it was any other day.  We just relax on Boxing Day, or St. John’s, or Holy Innocents.

            I try to call several radio stations on the 25^th, and tell the person “thank you” for being there.  I can’t call the fire stations, and I don’t want to call 911 just to say that, but I do find ways to appreciate those who must watch, and wait, while most of us just relax and unwrap on the 25^th.  One week from tomorrow.  More or less.

Written by Michael Hale Gray

www.stlukesdurham.org

Keeping Advent Together

Image taken from.

Last Sunday, Anne preached a sermon on anticipation and preparation for the coming of God, and she talked about confessing sin during the Advent season. As I’ve thought about what it means to “keep” Advent this week, I realized that those three things—anticipation (hope/joy), preparation, and confession of sin—don’t typically form a nice unity for me during the Advent season. I tend to associate anticipation and preparation with one side of Advent, the memory of God’s coming to dwell among us through Mary’s baby, and confessing sin with the other side of Advent, the future second coming of God when Jesus “will judge the living and the dead.” I don’t know how to bring together these two sides of Advent because it feels like they pull me in opposite directions. The preparations and pressures of the arrival of Christmas can easily push the future side of Advent out of my mind, while the work of acknowledging and confessing sin in the face of imminent judgment can easily transform hope into fear. So how do I—how do we—keep all of Advent?

Today’s gospel reading from Luke 3:7-18 provides some helpful direction here. We see and hear the prophet John the Baptist proclaiming the word of the Lord to the people who have come down to the river for baptism. Like many prophets before him, his message is scathing, dubbing these crowds “progeny of vipers.” In true prophetic form, he paints a picture of what the people can expect with “the coming wrath” and exhorts them to “produce fruits worthy of repentance.” At first glance, this whole scene seems fear-inducing; after all, an ax ready to uproot trees and a fire waiting to consume them are not images that immediately incline us to hope. For all its charged rhetoric, though, this provocative passage actually opens my imagination to envision and prepare for the coming of God and the coming judgment differently.

First, it challenges some of the ways I’ve thought about The End and Judgment Day. In the past, I’ve imagined a scene like the TV show Survivor, in which God opens the book of my life, weighs the good and the bad that I’ve done, and decides whether to vote me off the island or let me stay. John’s words in the gospel story do not point to a balancing of the scales, though. Instead, he uses the metaphor of a tree, which either bears good fruit or doesn’t. The tree can’t work harder to produce good fruit to make up for all the bad; it will either exhibit “fruits worthy of repentance”—that is, fruit that demonstrates that a turning around, or transformation, has taken place—or it will not. If we are supposed to identify with the tree in this prophecy, then John’s words suggest a contrasting Judgment Day scenario, in which the turning around, the transformation of one’s life as the source of good fruit, becomes the crucial factor.

John’s prophecy also unsettles my focus on my own individual salvation or damnation. As a prophet, John is not speaking just to individuals and telling each one of them to get their own individual lives in order before the wrath of God comes. His prophecy is for Israel, for the people of God as a whole, and his instructions concern the entire social and political fabric of their lives. He calls those “who have two coats” to “share with the one who does not have” any, and those “who have food” to “do likewise” and share food with those who hunger. He tells tax collectors to “collect nothing more than what has been commanded” for them to take from the people, and he exhorts soldiers not to “harass” or “oppress” civilians or to “slander” but to “be satisfied” with the wages they receive.

What strikes me about these instructions is that they expose the disparity, the corruption, and the violence that far too often are both the fruits and roots of communities and societies. Through these specific commands, I think John is inviting the people to recognize that they are all in this together. The people gathered around him at the riverbank are not just individual trees. As a people whose lives are bound up with one another, they form a single tree together, too. The sinful acts of one person are not just between that person and God; they affect other people as well. In the same way, one person cannot prepare for the coming of God alone, because the whole social fabric is what needs transformation. In contrast to the current disparate, socially harmful structuring of life, John’s prophecy announces that there is indeed a completely different way to live life together, a way of sustaining relationships through sharing and receiving, a way freed from unjust divisions, greed, violence, and terror. And this other way of knitting the social fabric is what God desires for God’s people.

If I replace my Survivor image of Judgment Day with the picture outlined by John’s prophecy in Luke, new possibilities for inhabiting Advent begin to emerge. Instead of worrying about whether I’ve done enough good to outweigh the bad, I am invited to open my eyes and recognize that we are in this together. And instead of seeing our overwhelming need for social transformation as cause for despair, I—we—are invited to confess our sins together and place our hope in God, the only one with the life-giving power to knit our lives together differently. And instead of associating preparation and anticipation only with the arrival of Jesus’ first coming, we are invited to hope for his second coming right in the middle of this Christmas season by embodying the transformation that God is already working in our everyday life together through the Spirit and by joyfully anticipating God’s completion of this work.

Written by Jodi Belcher

www.stlukesdurham.org

Advent Adventures

If you look in a dictionary, Advent appears very close to adventure. 

The Pregnancy of Advent

Well, I've almost gotten through today without major calamity.

I picked today to write because it's my daughter's birthday.  I think this whole season of Advent is like pregnancy. Of course, we are waiting for the birth of the Christ; and it's all the more personal when you are waiting for the birth of your own child. Both my daughter and one of my sons were born in this season; Andrea, today, on Dec 14, and Joshua on Jan 14. Also a co-worker, and good friend, is carrying a child right now, and will birth her son in January.

It's interesting and very reflective to be around pregnant women this time of year, as we wait for the birth of the Christ child. I think of Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, and I think I can identify with some of his fears and the threats that were made concerning the baby his wife was carrying.  Things change so much when a baby is born, and I like to think about how much better my life has become because of my children.

The other thing I think about at this time of Advent, as we head into the third Sunday, is the Traveling Wilbury's song "Heading for the Light".  When the days are getting darker earlier and earlier, it seems so depressing to be so dark and cold.  But like in the song, "I see the sun ahead, I ain't never looking back, All the dreams are coming true as I think of you, Now there's nothing in the way to stop me, Heading for the light."

I think of my children, of the Christ Child, and the sun which will be returning soon, and I know I'm saved.

Written by Jeff Pitts.
www.stlukesdurham.org

When does Advent start for you? #KeepingAdvent

The season of Advent was of little memorable moment in my  childhood in the Burke County mountains, though we clearly observed it  in one sense. Our Christmas tree went up the afternoon of December 24, never earlier. And it always came down on January 1. Why, I have no idea, probably because so it was when my grandmother's grandmother was a child. Change is hard. I well remember though the excitement of being old enough to go to the midnight service on Christmas Eve at Grace Church, Morganton, NC. That was right up there with graduating from the children's table at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.

To my surprise I found Advent faithfully observed at the federal prison at Butner in my 17 years there. Men and women doing time, away from home and family, don't want to start singing Christmas carols
in November. Christmas is hard enough for them without starting a month early. For them, the Advent hymn 0 Come, 0 Come Emmanuel does fine for the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In truth that hymn works every day of the year, as does the Epiphany hymn, We Three Kings, when you think about it.

Advent in the "real" world of course begins on Black Friday, in the middle of the night after Thanksgiving, or even earlier. The Christmas parade in Raleigh this year was on November 17. It would be lovely to be free of all that before Christmas, but we do still live in this world, and this is a tough time of the year for many folks. Homicide, suicide, bank robbery, and death in general are all up at holiday times. Cops, firefighters, nurses and Marines don't get the day off. And Christ, and we as Christ's hands and feet on this earth, now, in the time of this mortal life, must be there with them.

I read recently that in December 1972, in his last Advent as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton, John McCain was given a Bible but for 5 minutes only. He used the time to copy the Christmas story from Luke. Not a bad choice.

God love you all, and I do too.

Amen.

Written by Jim Craven
www.stlukesdurham.org

"4GIVN"

Taken at the nationwide office in woodcraft shopping center 

For those of us that enjoy the privilege of driving, we are all aware of the requirement to have insurance.

Having an insurance policy allows us to form a contract with a representative that will pay for our vehicular sins when we commit them.

In fact, I was recently walking past an insurance broker’s window with an advertisement in it.  In the ad, there was a man holding a personalized license plate that said, “4GIVN.”  I thought, WOW!!!!  I sure hope this insurance company has enough money.

That sign really got me thinking about Jesus’ role during this Advent.  Jesus is coming to the world as our contract and as the fulfillment of our contract.  He’s our representative that promises to reconcile our sins, and is the payment in full for all our sins against the Father.

If we can trust that an insurance company will forgive us of our accidents because it is in a contract, then why do we sometimes have a hard time believing that Jesus Christ paid for all (and I mean ALL!) our inequities?  Isn’t it written in God’s contract with us - the Holy Bible?

Rather than living under all this burden of sin with lives full of guilt, shame, and despair, Jesus is coming to alleviate us of this burden.  He gives us the same promise that he gave the woman caught in the act of adultery, “neither do I condemn you: go, and sin no more.”

The Jesus that I celebrate during this Advent period is the one who takes my contract and changes it into a covenant; a contract of law exchanged for a covenant of grace.

Thanks be to God.

John Carpenter
www.stlukesdurham.org

There's an ad for that. #KeepingAdvent

image source

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus warns us: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life…” (Luke 21:34, NRSV) “Dissipation” is not a word that we hear much anymore outside of the Bible, and many of us, I imagine, only know it as half of a rhetorical pair with “drunkenness” – a word whose meaning we are far more certain of!

Dissipation is a noun which is kin to the verb “to dissipate,” which we are probably more familiar with – a word which means to disappear, often through scattering, dilution, or diffusion. But as a noun, dissipation carries the connotation of disappearance through negligence – squandering. To waste one’s time, one’s mental energies, one’s money or posessions, usually by indulging one’s own desire for ease
or luxury – this is dissipation. Or perhaps I might just as well say, this is American leisure class culture.

A good Anglican, John Wesley, the reluctant founder of Methodism, was ever watchful against dissipation in himself and his flock. He could be very stern with himself about time spent in “unprofitable conversation.” I can only imagine what he would have made of prime time television.

Ironically, it is through a television program – Mad Men – that many more Americans have become aware of the aims and reach of the advertising that underwrites and drives the majority of our entertainment today. From magazines to movies to catalogs to billboards on the highway to television advertisements, the worries of our lives are exploited. Whether we are worried about whether we
are attractive or good parents or smart or thrifty – whatever it is that we can worry about, there’s an ad for that.

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The aim of advertisement is to get us to buy, but the dirty little secret is that we don’t actually need that much stuff. So how can the Ad Men drive us to dissipation? Turns out, fear is a pretty good motivator when getting people to act against their best interests – whether voting for a particular candidate or buying one more product that will gather dust in the back of the medicine cabinet. When we are overwhelmed by the worries of this life, we are driven to drunkenness – to the desire to escape our fears. We numb ourselves with television programs that are interspersed with ads carefully calculated to amplify the very worries we were trying to escape with the show we were watching.

And now the advertisements come right into our e-mail boxes. In this season, we are bombarded with subject lines that scream “Flash Sale! BOGO!!!” and “Free Shipping, Today only!!” Each carries the warning, explicit or implicit, of “Don’t miss this opportunity!” These e-mails play on our fear of squandering, in an ironic bid to lure us into squandering our time and our money acquiring more things we don’t need.

Squandering. There are so many things I could write about – so many things each of us have squandered as individuals (time, opportunities, money), so many things we have squandered as a society (natural resources, goodwill, innovation).

But of all of this squandering was only made possible by squandering our inheritance as children of God. Jesus died for us so that we might have eternal life, but we fear that we will die alone and unnoticed. Through Christ we can do all things, but we fear that we are incapable of anything. We are made for community, but we fear anyone we do not readily understand. We are each one of us precious, but we fear that we are insubstantial.

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We are loved, but we fear that we are unloved and unlovable.

In the words of Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn:
“Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;
from our sins and fears release us, let us find our rest in thee…”

May you – lovable you – find your rest in Jesus in this Advent season.

Written by Sarah McGiverin
Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahMcGiverin
Read more posts by Sarah @ http://jerusalemtojericho.com/

"The Sound of Silence" #KeepingAdvent

When I was a teenager, the only record store in town was near my father’s office.  From time to time, I could give him my saved-up money, the name of the new 45 I wanted, and he would bring it home for me.  When Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” was my request, he jumped at the chance to buy it, sure that it would be a relief from the crazy rock ‘n’ roll I normally listened to.  “The Sound of Silence,” he teased, “what a great concept.  Two and a half minutes of silence coming from your record player!”

My advent calendar for today says, “Is there a quiet place in your life? Try to find one and go there for awhile.”  Since I am the only one living in my house, there are numerous quiet places there. In fact, in any room I can find total – sometimes deafening—silence.  But finding a quiet place and being quiet are very different things. 

We are constantly bombarded by noise – music in stores, iThings, toys, traffic, music while on hold with the cable company, other people’s cell phone conversations, leaf blowers, the ice maker, ‘white noise’ to cover the other noises…. One friend often says, “I don’t really watch TV; I just turn it on for the noise.”  My students complain, “It’s too quiet in here; I can’t think.”  So we need posters and calendars (and blogs) to remind us to slow down, be quiet, listen.

 It’s hard to be quiet during Advent or any other time of the year.  More so, why is it important to be quiet during Advent?

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.  God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...We need silence to be able to touch souls.” - Mother Theresa

“Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.”  - Thomas Keating

Thomas Merton, monk, poet, and spiritual writer whose life and work our church recognizes today, wrote, “This then is what it means to seek God perfectly: to withdraw from illusion and pleasure, from worldly anxieties and desires… to entertain silence in my heart and listen for the voice of God; … to receive the secret contact of God in obscure love; to love all men as myself...”

I need the sound of silence to still my heart, to breathe, to rest, to be open to whatever God has for me.  Without the silence, my heart and mind are so full of other things that I’m afraid I won’t have room for the amazing gift of Jesus that I know is coming.  I need the quiet time to open a special place deep in my core so that Jesus can live in me and I in him.

Again the words of Thomas Merton, “Let me rest in Your will and be silent.  Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory.  This is what I live for. Amen, amen.”

Written by Jan Lamb
www.stlukesdurham.org
Follow St. Luke's on Twitter @stlukesdurham