Sunday , the First Week of Advent

Love

John 3:16-17 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

We begin with love because we believe that that’s where everything begins. The entire universe, space/time and everything in it: galaxies, stars, planets, moons, light and dark, gravity and motion; all these things, taken together, are one great act of love. And you and I also began in love; if not necessarily that between a man and woman, still the love of God. And, regardless of the circumstances of conception, every child who lives does so because of someone’s care, nurture, devotion, or at least minimal attention; someone’s love.

The Apostle John goes so far as to say that God is love. (1 John 4:16) But this is not just a theological mantra. It’s the driving reality of all that is. And the story he is about to tell in his gospel, his “good news”, is the unfolding of love.

As John begins he understands that most of us are a bit nervous, if not terrified, around this much love. We are aware of our unloveliness and the unloveliness of others. We see the violence, selfishness, hatred and abuse, that characterize the world in which we live, and we’re not sure we really want a loving God to show up. Will he not come in judgment, “a consuming fire” as the prophets warned? Will we not be consumed by such a love?

Well, yes and no. He comes to enter in, to own the world and love it. He comes to claim everything that is his own; everyone who belongs to him. He comes like a shepherd for the strays, a doctor for the sick, a father or mother for the rebellious children. He comes to Bethlehem that has no time or space for him; to simple shepherds and mysterious magi who will make time and space; to Mary and Joseph who will love and cherish him, and King Herod who will fear and hate him. He comes to you and me, not to condemn, but to save. He comes to consume, yes, but not to destroy; to change us, the world, the universe; to bring it all to consummation.

But we don’t want to change. We don’t know how to change. We’re afraid to change. So we do not begin with change, we begin with love because we believe that that’s where everything, even change, begins.

Take a moment and think about someone you love. What does it mean to love her or him? How does it feel? What does it do? Perhaps it would be a good idea to visit, call or write, just to say "I love you".

Put the sound up or your earphones on and click here.

Preparing to Prepare

The Advent Wreath is a great little Christmas tradition but, like most traditions, it varies from one community to another. All things mutate as they’re copied and, as in biology, the mutations that work in a given context survive. My version is a simple evergreen wreath with three purple candles and a pink:

· Purple, a sombre colour, reminds us that waiting for God is a solemn, dark time – not pitch dark, however, as God is always with us in a transcendent way, but that deep purple, sunshine’s-not-quite-gone-forever dark.

· Pink, the third candle we light, is the hope of dawn that never quite leaves us.

· The evergreen base is everlasting life, God-life, the source of all life.

Some people add a white candle in the centre representing Jesus, and some use different colours that stand for different things. In fact, in the churches I’ve pastored, we’ve done the wreath in so many different ways from year to year that I finally came up with The Advent Rule just to stop all the bickering: “Whatever way we are doing it this year is the way we’ve always done it.”

Our themes this year, as in all previous years, will be: love, peace, hope and joy. We will begin on Sunday, November 29^th, but first I want to address a little crankiness that pops up every December in one form or another. For a while it was, Why don’t they play religious carols in the mall anymore?; before that, Why can’t we have a manger scene at city hall?; and this year it’s, Why are they trying to keep us from saying Merry Christmas?

I think this generally comes from the States where Christendom is still hanging on, and Christians still imagine they should be in charge. Losing your place as the established religion is a bit like going bankrupt I suppose. At first you’re disoriented, but as you recover your senses you find that the first to return is your sense of humour, which is, of course, your sense of proportion. Our American cousins are not quite there yet, but they’re coming along.

A friend sent me a link to It’s Called Christmas, a song by Go Fish. It’s got a bit of an edge, but it’s actually a little more fun than cranky. You can hear the humour sneaking into the conversation, and that’s the beginning of the end. Before they know it they’ll be developing a fondness for this post modern Babylon. And who knows where that might lead?

Click on the title, give it a listen, and tell me what you think.

THE HOLY KISS

Greet one another with a holy kiss. Romans 16:16

O my goodness! it’s almost Christmas. Didn’t we just have Halloween? No, wait a minute, Halloween was almost a month ago; we just had Remembrance Day. And Grey Cup Sunday’s next weekend. Life’s getting way too full. The add key works, but nothing ever gets subtracted. I need a hole is the wall of my life, kinda like a garbage chute, where I can just dispose of all the things that have been added without my permission each year. Ya, that’s the idea; a release valve for all the stupid add-ons. An “ADD VENT”. What a concept!

Please forgive the cheesy pun. I think it might be stress.

SO, WHAT IS ADVENT?

The season of Advent begins four Sundays prior to Christmas Day and is a maximum of four weeks long. (This year it's November 29 to December 24) The word "advent" means “coming”, and designates a period of time dedicated to preparation for the celebration of the coming of Christ.

Some suggest that, in the modern world, Advent is old fashioned and impractical. December is too full of celebration to accommodate spiritual reflection. But it has always been the practice of the saints to swim against the stream, especially when contemplation and spiritual growth are at stake. So I persist in encouraging everyone to set aside time to ensure that Christmas is given its proper place.

HOW CAN WE OBSERVE ADVENT?

The first principle of Advent is simplicity. December is a very busy time of year, and it’s certainly foolhardy to ignore that fact. We will accomplish little if we bite off more than we can chew – a common danger of the holiday season – and so I suggest we remember the KISS maxim; Keep It Simply Simple.

Kibosh- Go through your December calendar and ruthlessly eliminate unnecessary commitments. Save as much of your partying as possible for the Christmas/New Year time slot.

Initiate- Do your Christmas shopping, baking, etc. as early as possible.

Share - Sit down with your family and those close to you and plan one evening a week when you can share a Christmas video, decorate the tree, go for a walk in the snow, etc.

Scripture- Set a regular, daily time when you can sit down alone, and quietly read a few verses of the Christmas story. About 7 verses a day would take you through the entire birth story of Jesus. (Matthew 1:1-2:23 and Luke 1:5-2:40)

And follow the blog. I’ll be doing it again this year, though not like last year when I almost killed myself doing a post every day. I’ll try for two or three a week.

And let’s all have a great Christmas.

The Hockey Sweater

The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating-rink – but our real life was on the skating-rink....

I attended a church planting conference last week in Calgary. Its focus was on many of the new things happening in church work, and particularly some of the new ways church is engaging the “post modern” world. It was great.

At one point the emcee, Cam Roxburgh, shared the above quotation. It’s from The Hockey Sweater, by Roch Carrier and is printed on the five dollar bill. – I was convinced he was pretending to read it, but when I got home I discovered that my wife actually can read it, but only with her glasses off. Go figure. – If you have not read The Hockey Sweater you owe it to yourself to do so. By clicking on the title you can watch a neat little National Film Board short in which a slightly edited version is read by the author. It’s a Canadian classic.

At any rate, the statement by Carrier is profound, and something all teachers and pastors should understand. School and church are places of retreat from “real” life. They are extremely important, to be sure, but places apart nonetheless. If school doesn’t introduce us to the market place and church doesn’t lead us to the street, what good are they?

When Jesus came, as he said, “that we might have life”, he came to a stable, not to a church, and taught in the market place, not in a school. And so it is with us. When we come to life, we come to the world, that great skating rink. For, as Roch Carrier continues:

...Real battles were won on the skating-rink. Real strength appeared on the skating-rink. The real leaders showed themselves on the skating-rink. School was a sort of punishment. Parents always want to punish children and school is their most natural way of punishing us. However, school was also a quiet place where we could prepare for the next hockey game, lay out our strategies. As for church, we found there the tranquillity of God: there we forgot school and dreamed about the next hockey game. Through our daydreams it might happen that we would recite a prayer: we would ask God to help us play as well as Maurice Richard.

Preparing for Advent: Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-22 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times ?"

Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times , but seventy-seven times.

It has always intrigued me that schools put so much emphasis on games and sports. This is partly because kids need to work off energy, and exercise is necessary for healthy physical development. But it’s also because the playing field is a microcosm of the real world. Fair play, loyalty, endurance, and coping with victory and defeat are concepts encountered and appropriated in the heat of athletic competition.

But, as far as I’m concerned, there is one concept from the playing field that outshines all the rest; the venerable, time honoured, compassionate and merciful “Mulligan”. I know there are rules about even this great leniency (only one per game, in clearly defined circumstances), but it is still a chance to undo a mistake. It is a great mercy.

In life there are some things done, of course, that cannot be undone. But sometimes even we can let an offence go by, forgive a debt, or overlook bad judgment. And sometimes God forgives, restores, renews, and lets us just start over, because he is the Compassionate, the Merciful.

And so we come to him and one another, as children and as sister/brother, caught up in webs of error and deceit, to seek a “Mulligan”, forgiveness and a chance to start again. And we trust that he and we will grant it, just this once, as he and we have done so many times before, and undoubtedly will do again.

God is good to us, and so must we be good to one another.