Annual Letter to Advent

To the saints of Advent,

I’m excited.  We have a chance to do a new thing.  Thanks to the good work and undefended hearts of so many: our Bishop, his Canons Schuster-Weltner and Thompson-Quartey, vestry members -- both current and those rotating off -- parishioners and non-parishioners we can look ahead without fear but with confidence and hope.

Our recent past has been hard and it has changed us.  Changed and blessed us with a vestry of 6 careful, spiritually mature people who believe that God loves us and abides with us in all that we do in faith. 

Even in the face of challenge we are blessed, repeatedly and constantly.

I am grateful beyond measure for the blessing of the strong institutional sense and active leadership of Terry Blum as our Senior Warden.  At every step with our Bishop’s Canons and consultants she was informed and ready to forward their work to its best result. 

Our blessings are constant even as they include the closing of Alicia Ramfos’ and Rick Crown’s terms of service on our vestry.  Their commitment is exemplary and their gifts will be hard to replace.  

One surprise blessing has been in the service of Debbie Permar as she joined the vestry through appointment and is continuing to serve by finishing the terms of two who resigned.  Debbie has also stepped up to continue the work of our much beloved and greatly missed Ginger Kroeber as registrar. 

Another blessing was the “future charting” gift of “The Madisonian.”  The clear donation of Vicki Mooney’s beautifully renovated and restored property has added an unexpected dimension to our lives in community.  

Let me not fail to mention the careful and conscientious work lead by Terry and our newly formed Financial Advancement Committee that helped us to incorporate this addition.  The process has reminded us of the value of all those offering opportunities beyond our pledges and volunteerism. 

As the new Rectory indicates a future we are just learning to consider let me mention a few other items on the chart of what’s ahead. 

Tim Pridgen and others have been keeping before us the question of how we will best be “Aging in Place.”  The conversation is expanding and new connections and possibilities make the coming year an exciting consideration. 

OJ Booker has adopted our website and is expanding it to provide better communication between each of us and to the world around us.  Thanks to Dan Jubelt for his years of support in the past.

Holly Schreiner has stepped up to follow Sue Baldwin as treasurer.  Thanks to Sue for caring so deeply for our fiscal operation in the interim.

And those are just the highlights of this life of blessing and opportunity.  There are immeasurable ways in which each member has added to our lives through our guilds and through individual volunteering.  Just think bread, grass, flowers, food, worship . . . etc.

All of these blessings and opportunities come by way of God’s abiding love of us, are reflected in our care for each other and will be sustained in a love that is spilling out each day we work for the sake of others.

That’s why I’m excited.  There is still love and God continues to bless us in it. 

Song of Simeon's Reprise

I've been thinking about the "songs of Luke's gospel."  Most of them have become canticles we chant more regularly in Morning and Evening Prayer and frequently but less so in our Sunday celebrations of Holy Eucharist.

For the Sunday after Epiphany we will sing with Simeon, his nunc dimittis.  I have already written about how this song has more to it than we'd expect from it's fixture in Compline.  In short, there's much more to it than going to rest peacefully.

It can be understood as celebrating the "next day" of enlightened living with "the nations and . . . your people Israel."  So, not just a happy ending but a glorious beginning is ours now that God has set us free in the person of Jesus, son of Mary.

This is another reminder that to God our lives matter now, and enough that he would be with us as much as possible.  Indeed, there is no higher compliment that God can pay us. It is greater and includes the glory of his having a "chosen people."

Simeon wanted Israel's dream to come true and he did all he could to survive until that assurance was real.  He expected God's love of Israel to be good for the world.  And it was.

He also expected to see a Messiah who would elevate Israel to the high calling of being a blessing that blesses.  Granted Simeon wasn't alone in his expectation.  Many if not most of the Hebrew people were obsessed with the idea, the dream of, the hunger for a champion to set things right.  Sadly, too many of them wanted that "right setting Messiah" to be exclusive, as exclusive as a holiness code or a genealogy.

But Simeon's song is bigger than that.  It sings of more than vengeance and zeal, more than final solutions.  Simeon's freedom and shalom and vision and inclusivity and hope and glory is exactly what God wants for Israel AND the nations, for the whole world.

I've been reading Compline every night since Christmas.  But the dream come true that is Simeon's is as exciting as it is comforting, as inspiring as it is restful.  Some nights it's hard to go to sleep.  But what better way to find rest than in the confidence of the morning already having what it needs?

Set Free: The Song of Simeon

I'm still attending to the songs that Luke's narrative includes to focus and accent the story of Jesus being born and the world's response to that good news.  Mary and Joseph abided by the jewish law and 40 days after the birth of her firstborn son brought Jesus to the temple to be officially "presented" and from that point counted among the chosen people.  Kind of like our parents present their infant children for Holy Baptism. 

It happens that an old, faithful Jew named Simeon is also there that day and has his dream of meeting the Messiah fulfilled.   His song is a standard that capitalizes Luke's early chapters and allows for the story to shift farther into Jesus' life as an adolescent, which is the last of those moments that Mary "cherishes and ponders" what she has been called to do and become, theotokos - "God bearer."

Simeon's song, known to us by the Latin title, Nunc dimittis, is song at the close of that precious night-time prayer office known as Compline.  I'm reading compline EVERY night on my own throughout this ordinary time after the Epiphany.  You can read/pray it too.  It starts on page 127 in the Book of Common Prayer.  It's brief and can be completed in just a few minutes. 

The liturgical custom is to read Compline while standing in those minutes before one might climb the stairs to bed.  That's embedded in the name: Compline completes the day's prayers. 

Simeon's song works beautifully to speak a comforting release from the previous day's troubles that leads to freedom and peace because we know that Jesus is with us. 

Lord, you now have set your servant free * 

to go in peace as you have promised;

For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, * 

whom you have prepared for all the world to see:

A Light to enlighten the nations, * 

and the glory of your people Israel.

And with our candle clutched we go to our night's rest in silence so as not to disturb the ease of which we were just assured.  (The rubrics could prescribe a "sigh-like exhalation with a gently descending intonation" and it would seem automatic for many of us.)

But there's something that Luke's narrative also means to indicate to us.  Jesus' arrival is as much the start of something as it is the close.  Simeon is saying now the nations are caught up in the light of the Messiah's presence and the purpose of God's chosen people has been fulfilled and Israel can share in that glory.  

So let us do close our days with that sweet release and sigh that is a "day is done," "let it be," "resting in Jesus" spirit.  But let us also think ahead to how we might greet the morning with a similar comfort and confidence.  That's world for whom God's "light of Christ" is born.  That's world into which we have been set free.  

Magi: Three Kings?

Caspar, Balthasar, Melchior. These “three kings of Orient are” found, complete with crowns and camels, in nearly every nativity scene. Yet if you look closely at the gospel account of the Magi (Mat 2:1-12), you won’t find these names. 

Actually there is no mention of how many Magi there were or that they were kings riding camel-back. This is a testimony to something some Bible Christians would like to deny: that all who read a text of Scripture do so in the light of some tradition, through some lens. If it is the right lens, it magnifies the text and allows us to get at its true meaning. If it is the wrong lens, we get a distorted image.

As modern celebrants of the "ongoing-ness" of the incarnation we have to hold these things gently and understand how faithfulness has found different expressions year after year, century after century.

I know early christians hungered for a way to tell the story of Jesus' birth so that the world was implicated. Paul's constant accommodation of gentile inclusion in his fledgling church is evidence of it.

That even a "worldly" wisdom was capable of understanding God's signs says a whole bunch about exactly that the incarnation was for us all.

 So we sing anyway and we celebrate our inclusion:

We three kings of orient are,  

Bearing gifts we traverse afar 

Field and fountain, moor and mountain, 

Following yonder star. 

Oh, star of wonder, star of night,  

Star with royal beauty bright. 

Westward leading, still proceeding, 

Guide with thy perfect light.

Magnificat!

As are many of you, I'm still "basking in the glow" of this past Sunday's worship with our Bishop Wright.  However the unusual day's beginning with doubly troubled cars had its effect what transpired once the church was full and we were singing was already a remarkable moment.  And it kept on happening as a beautiful combination of prayer book order and spiritual spontaneity unfolded before us all.  It was a unique gift for each of us to be party to Sunday's events.  

Lots of thank you's to go around:

• The members of the vestry who waited anxiously to recognize with the bishop the gift of the rectory and prayed together in gratitude and blessing for the property and its donor.
• The members of our Altar Guild and Flower Guild who staged our church for the multi-faceted orchestration that was 2 baptisms, 3 confirmations, 3 anticipated reaffirmations and 6 others who responded to the bishop's invitation to present themselves for reaffirmation. 
• The parishioners and others -- those present and those who could not be -- for giving in multiple ways to make this special "joint" service possible.  Evidenced not only by the healthy representation of "8 o'clock-ers" but those who joined us via comments on Facebook and email messages.
• To those who pooled together, set-up, food donations and clean-up for the reception. Especially the clean-up that happened before the reception, and the flowers again!  
• Thanks to the Eastons, Bucks, Cronics, to Nancy Bush who prepared so conscientiously for this important day for Brennan, Poppy Grace, Camden and Cade, and Nancy herself, who each gave us a glimpse of God's image we will not forget.  
• To Faith Roman, Paul Roman, Flossie Dodge, Rick Crown, Avery Jackson, and Jeffrey Hagy who showed us even more of what a life renewed by God can look like.
• To Daisy Jane Buck for FaceTiming her grandmother so she could join us while recovering from back surgery.
• To our Bishop Wright for his preaching, his persistence, his presence of mind and heart, his spontaneity and generosity, his invitation to a new evangelism and his sharing for our diocese and our Episcopal church.  

There are more, so please do not hesitate to remind me of my omissions.  We'll probably still be "basking" some next week and can share those thank you's, then.  

There's a connection with the songs in Luke's gospel to the events of this past Sunday and the days ahead.  It is perhaps the most important song, sung by Mary herself.  The Magnificat is her answer to God's calling her to a necessary and unique responsibility that will take from innocence,  to challenge, to struggle, to endurance, to heartbreak and ultimately to the highest blessing and beatification.

What she sings we should sing because God not only visits us in unique and stirring moments but because God calls each one of us.  Like her singing it will work for us to keep ourselves mindful and to do our own glorifying our own magnifying of God.  That is what will sustain us and forward God's purpose in visiting us in the first place.

There's a world that needs God's lifting and leveling, that needs God's enriching and balancing, that needs God's restoration and renewing.  We can bask AND we can sing:

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord!  My spirit rejoices in God, my savior. . . ."

Once in Royal David's City

It was when I was serving in Augusta, Ga. as Assistant Rector for the Church of the Good Shepherd that I first coined the phrase, "taking Halloween back from Wal-Mart."  It was in response to our having adopted the outline from Gretchen Wolff Pritchard's Offering the Gospel to Children of an All Saints' Day event.  Tricia Dodge, Infant and Childrens' Minister needed the youth which were in the program for which I had oversight to help. 

It was an incredible adaptation away from a "theologically sanitized" and more typical halloween carnival to a rich telling the story of how we could better understand sainthood as biblical people and by way of that understanding re-adopt Halloween -- All Hallow's Eve -- and "take it back" from the over-commercialized gluttonous affair it had become. 

We managed a couple of years of doing it here with the help of students from the Episcopal Center @ UGA.  I remember when someone's hayride trailer stopped and unloaded 20+ unexpected young guests we were going to run out of our more modest treats.  It was worth it. The lessons we taught and learned were invaluable. 

Advent presents a similar opportunity to teach and learn an alternative understanding of God at work in the world through a child born in Bethlehem that in many ways begins taking back Christmas from it's own over-commercialization. 

Our readings on the Sundays of Advent: prophets forecasting a vision of Israel's return and restoration, Paul, exuberant and glowing as he thanks God for the faith of the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Philippians. And mostly Luke's songs and narrative of those months before Mary gives birth. 

They are all preparatory, all about the work of redemption and Judgement that Jesus, the Christ WILL accomplish, about what God WILL do as the early church grows, how God WILL keep his covenant and continue to choose the jewish people to be his blessing of the world. 

We do our own preparation by the way we withhold gratification, not yet singing the songs and carols that radios and streaming devices have already made present, at least ambient is one the toughest lessons to learn. 

But . . . , I confess.  I need help!  Whenever we are planning our service of Lessons & Carols I always slip ahead and give into the impulse to sing at least one of those dreamy, pastorally sedative standards.  This year we will sing Once in Royal David's City.  That's the piece that traditionally begins the Christmas Eve -- no longer Advent -- service from King's College Chapel aired by BBC and NPR Every year! 

So please forgive me.  I'm still teaching and still learning and I love this hymn!

Once in royal Davids city,

Stood a lowly cattle shed,

Where a mother laid her Baby,

In a manger for His bed:

Mary was that mother mild,

Jesus Christ, her little Child.

He came down to earth from heaven,

Who is God and Lord of all,

And His shelter was a stable,

And His cradle was a stall:

With the poor, and mean, and lowly,

Lived on earth our Saviour holy.

For He is our childhood's pattern;

Day by day, like us, He grew;

He was little, weak, and helpless,

Tears and smiles, like us He knew;

And He cares when we are sad,

And he shares when we are glad.

And our eyes at last shall see Him,

Through His own redeeming love;

For that Child so dear and gentle,

Is our Lord in heaven above:

And He leads His children on,

To the place where He is gone.

The Songs of Luke's Gospel

There so many songs associated with our Advent observance.  The human response to God's presence as Redeemer and Judge elicits praise, thanksgiving, relief, confidence, commitment, and hope.  Even what we read in scripture in the story of God's coming into our world and the difference that makes is rendered in song after song.

This Sunday we'll substitute the Song of Zechariah for the psalm at the Gradual.  Zechariah's song was unique and was so by his being made mute until his son, John -- the baptizer -- was born.  He and his wife Elizabeth were like Abraham and Sarah, advanced in age and without a son.  When he questioned the angel Gabriel's announcing Elizabeth's pregnancy this is what happened:

Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” Luke 1:18-20

So when John is born, Zechariah's voice is restored and he gets to sing his song. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them! . . . "

There's lots of other singing in Luke's gospel.  Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, Simeon each take a turn rejoicing, praising, giving thanks, sighing relief, stirring confidence, making commitments, and proclaiming hope.

Off of the bad news that the world is falling apart at the seams -- remember what Jesus said last Sunday -- this good news that God is coming into our world totally releases so much that is muted within us; things we're afraid to mention, things about which we have little if any confidence, things of sadness, pain, and separation.

The songs -- some are carols -- of this season are honest about the darkness but without fail call forth the light.  There's lots of singing in Luke's gospel.  There's lots of Luke's gospel in our world, today.  We too can sing!

Hark a thrilling voice is sounding:

"Christ is nigh," it seems to say; 

"Cast away the works of darkness, 

O ye children of the day!"