Is it time to “do” advent?



When asked about how I choose the passages that I preach on, I often say that I gave up on the Lectionary years ago.
The lectionary is a three year cycle of Bible passages for reading during Sunday worship. Preachers who use the lectionary generally confine their preaching to one or more of the passages listed for the day.
There are a number of reasons why I gave up. I grew tired of the it. After the first couple of times through the cycle, I certainly found it repetitive. I also have a rather perverse liking for Bible passages that are obscure and often forgotten and would not want to be denied the opportunity to preach on them just because they weren't in the lectionary.
But, in many ways, my biggest beef was Advent. The season of Advent is the season immediately before Christmas – starting 4 Sundays before the big day.  My problem with Advent is that the themes of the season in Christian tradition and in the lectionary are all about the end of the world. All of the readings have to do with the second coming of Christ and apocalyptic visions of the end times.
Now, I don’t have any problems with preaching about such things. They are very important Christian themes and I believe that they still have much to teach us in these modern and often troubling times.  I am just not sure that the month of December is the best time to talk about these things.  During that season, our society is often in an orgy of overconsumption and spending and cultural clashes often come to the fore. I believe that these issues need to be addressed in the church. I don’t want to miss them because I’m busy talking about the end of the world. So, for several years now, I have not really preached advent and have used the time of the year to talk about other pressing issues.
But I’m wondering if this is the year to finally preach advent during advent. Why? Well because this year the end of the world might just be on everyone’s mind because it has apparently been scheduled yet again. As you’ve probably heard, the Mayan Calendar runs out this year on the winter solstice – December 21. Some have interpreted this to mean that the Mayans predicted the end of the world at that time and have gone on to make connections to other “signs of the times.”
Surely this will be all over the media and thus on everyone’s minds this December. Well Christians can talk about the end of the world as well as any Mayans so surely this is as good a time as any to present our perspective. So, yes, I am tempted to actually preach Advent this year. Whether I use the lectionary passages to do so, I have not decided, but it is definitely time to dust of these important themes in our tradition.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Hymn for Canada Day

Image
At St. Andrew's Hespeler this Sunday (which is Canada Day) we are planning to sing the following as a hymn (not an act of patriotism but an act of prayer within worship). This was not conceived of as an addition to Canada's National Anthem but as a way of lifting up our nation in prayer and being open to acknowledge the contribution of those who went before. 1. O Canada, our home and native land, true patriot love in all of us command. With glowing hearts, we see thee rise, the true north, strong and free; from far and wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. God keep our land glorious and free; O Canada, we stand on guard for thee; O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. 2. We, as we stand, acknowledge those who knew This place before and from its waters drew. They honour the Creator and, with drum and sacred song, They find the Divine Presence in the herbs and winds so strong. Let us, with them, make hope increase. Keep Kanata*
Read more

Honoured to have been in the room where it happened

Image
As I left the meeting of the General Assembly today there were many of the beautiful hymns and songs that we sang during Assembly still ringing in my ears and in my heart. But I also found myself singing another song to myself – one from the musical Hamilton: Now, in the musical, Aaron Burr is not singing about the exact experience that I feel that I had over the last few days. In his song he is actually lamenting the fact that he is shut out of the room where a significant decision was made and also the obscurity of what happened and the mystery of the give-and-take negotiations. That is not what I experienced at assembly. But I think I did experience the power of being part of a significant event where significant decisions are being made. I have blogged on each of the meeting days when we have discussed matters of human sexuality and would suggest that, if you haven't read those posts first, you could read my previous posts before this one before reading this one.
Read more

Why we really need to stop harmonizing the two stories of the birth of Jesus.

Image
Copyright © 2013 by W. Scott McAndless       The Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew have a great deal in common. They share much of the same material on the life and sayings of Jesus though they organize it somewhat differently. As far as we can understand from a study of the two texts, both Gospels were written independently (with neither making any reference to, nor apparently even having any knowledge of, the other) towards the end of the first century ce or perhaps even later.       Both gospels were written anonymously—with no names attached. It didn’t take the church very long to decide that they must have been written respectively by Matthew, one of Jesus’s twelve apostles, and Luke, an associate of Paul. But that is just tradition. The truth of the matter is that we really have no idea who might have written these books. All we have to help us to understand the interests, concerns and theological agendas of these two authors is what we find in the words they wr
Read more