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Advent 3 features Mary – “Christmas Crossroad”
From Bishop Rob Wright, Diocese of Atlanta
This time of the year we turn to Mary for inspiration. The angel seeks her out and shares God’s wild plan for her life. Mary is at a crossroads- faith and the real world have intersected.
Mary answers God in a song that has three parts. She answers based on who she is, whose she is and her purpose as a co-creator with God. The angel calls her “favored.” Meaning she was aware that God had stepped into her life and made a difference. Her remembering that she is “favored” helps her navigate her feelings of confusion and fear.
Her feelings are passing, her status in God is non-negotiable. For Mary, God is a great thing-doer; a rescuer of the cast outs and the filler of empty bellies. At her crossroad, Mary remembered her God is a promise keeper. Now, she can accept and acclaim that God’s purpose for her life is the highest purpose for her life. “May your word be fulfilled with me” was her song at the crossroad of her life. May her song be ours also.
Advent 3 – Joy
This candle reflects the joy that comes through Jesus’ arrival, and through the salvation he has gifted us. During this third week of advent, this Sunday celebrates the passage Philippians 4:4-5, its verses extolling readers to “rejoice” for “indeed the Lord is near.” This Sunday is traditionally known as “Gaudete” or “Rejoice” Sunday, so called because of the heightened excitement in anticipation for the birth of Christ
During a time where depression is at an all-time high and people seem to be in the most despair, this candle offers a bright light during a dark time.
It is also known as the Shepherd Candle to highlight the joy the shepherds experienced when they received the good news about Christ’s birth (Luke 2:8-20). During the middle of the night, the darkest time, the shepherds encountered angels.
The third candle of Advent has an unusual place. In most advent wreaths, it is the one candle that is a different color, pink, than the others. There is something unique, more spontaneous, and celebratory about the theme of the third week of Advent compared to the others.
In contrast to purple, pink or rose represents joy and celebration. One of the ancient church’s popes gave a citizen a pink rose on the third Sunday of Lent, symbolizing the moment of joy amidst Lent’s fasting and penance. Therefore, when Catholic priests modeled Advent celebrations on Lent, they wore rose-colored robes and set the third Sunday of December as the time to remember joy. The pink or rose-colored advent candle is lit on that third Sunday.
It’s also worth noting that more so than the other three Advent themes, joy is something we associate with spontaneous action. Hope, peace, joy, and love are all things that God places in us and should be ongoing attitudes in our lives. However, hope and peace are generally seen as inner qualities that we cultivate by meditating on ideas like God’s provision. Love is something we do, but also something we cultivate and meditate on.
Joy tends to have a more spontaneous effect. Joy can motivate us to celebrate or worship with glorious abandon (like David did when he danced in front of the ark of the covenant). In that light, it’s appropriate that the advent candle representing joy is a different color, highlighting the different nature of joy compared to the other advent themes.
Preparing the Way of the Lord – Perspectives on Advent 2
Looking at Sin, repentance and Judgement – From Ruth Frey- Trinity Episcopal NY
Matthew’s vision of Jesus’s arrival doesn’t mesh well with our conventional view of the coming of Christmas. No angels or songs here. Instead, we get a strangely dressed man in the wilderness talking about sin, repentance, and fire and calling some people vipers. Definitely not a story that fits into the chatter of a typical holiday party. Yet, John the Baptist is the entry point to meeting Jesus, who declares the reign of God.
Sin, repentance, and judgement carry a lot of negative weight for humans living in today’s world with emotions of shame, guilt, and condemnation following close behind. But what if we considered sin as a matter of how we relate to what we have — be it power, resources, or material goods?
What if we saw repentance as the correcting response when we use our power, resources, and material goods in ways that do not benefit, but rather hurt, our neighbor and the earth?
And maybe being called into judgement is a call to see the world as it really is, in all its glory and pain, and to be given another chance to respond to it all with love.
Prepare the Way – Karen Hanson
When I imagine John the Baptist urging people to prepare the way of the Lord, I think of my time as a trauma chaplain in a busy safety-net hospital in Minneapolis. It was important to have a direct path from the ambulance bay to the Stabilization Room so that our critical trauma patients could be quickly transported to life-sustaining help.
At that time the paramedics had a few corners to turn and occasionally an obstacle that had to be removed in order to get the patient where they needed to go. Years later, a redesign of the Emergency Department created a beeline straight to the Stabilization Room. It’s almost as if the planners took that Isaiah passage echoed by the Baptist literally: remove the obstacles, make the path straight, and the rough smooth so that people might be delivered from death and set on a healing path.
Christians think too small in Advent. It’s not primarily individual work that needs doing. It is not a time of exclusively private reflection. The coming of the Lord is always happening and requires lots of heavy lifting. As forgiven and free people of God in Christ, Christians are called to do the work of removing obstacles that keep people from the full, liberating deliverance of God. They are to level the hills and fill in the valleys so that everyone is on an equal footing. They are to remove any system, stumbling stone, or barrier that hinders the return. This is what it means to prepare the way of the Lord.
Contemporary Christians who seek to follow this Lord have strayed from the way of Christ if they only feed the hungry and house the homeless. These acts may save lives but they don’t transform. The way of the Lord changed the captives into the homeward bound. Jesus’ good news to the poor was intended to upend the systems of oppression that the rich have always exacted on the lowly, among them the behemoth of advanced capitalism in our present day. Preparing the way of the Lord is not just a private, individual matter. It is world-changing and rallies everyone to be involved. As Mary proclaims in the Magnificat, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52).
Preparing the way of the Lord is urgent work for Christians here and now, for there are many wounded, lowly, grieving, dying, and exiled people that need a level path to get the help they need. Preparing the way of the Lord isn’t a past event; it is ongoing. The Way is made as people walk it together.
Prepare the Way
Looking at Sin by Debie Thomas
John’s gaunt austerity is the only gateway we have to the swaddling clothes, angel’s wings, and fleecy lambs we hold dear each December. As baffling as it may seem, the holy drama of the season depends on the disheveled baptizer’s opening act. So again, why the wilderness?
For starters, because the wilderness is a place of vulnerability, risk, and powerlessness. In the wilderness, we have no safety net. To locate ourselves at the outskirts of security and power is to confess our neediness in the starkest terms. In the wilderness, we have no choice but to wait and watch as if our lives depend on God showing up. Because they do. And it’s into such an environment — an environment so far removed from safety as to make safety laughable — that the word of God comes.
“Sin.” We associate it with shame, guilt, and condemnation.
Advent begins with an honest, wilderness-style reckoning with sin. We can’t get to the manger unless we go through John, and John is all about repentance. Is it possible that this might become an occasion for relief? Maybe, if we can get past our baggage and follow John out into the wilderness, we will find comfort in the fact that something more profound is at stake in our souls than, “I make mistakes sometimes,” or “I’ve got a few issues.” What ails is something deeper, grimmer, and far more consequential.
Sin, at its heart, is a refusal to become fully human. It’s anything that interferes with the opening up of our whole hearts to God, to others, to creation, and to ourselves. Sin is estrangement, disconnection, sterility, disharmony. It’s the sludge that slows us down, that says, “Quit. Stop trying. Give up. Change is impossible.”
Sin is apathy. Care-less-ness. A frightened resistance to an engaged life. Sin is the opposite of creativity, the opposite of abundance, the opposite of flourishing. Sin is a walking death. And it is easier to spot, name, and confess a walking death in the wilderness than it is anywhere else.
John underscores his message of repentance with a harrowing description of the coming Messiah
I wonder if we squirm because we misconstrue the meaning of judgment. I tend to equate judgment with condemnation, but in fact, to judge something is to see it clearly — to know it as it truly is. In my dictionary, synonyms for judgment include discernment, acuity, sharpness, and perception.
What if John is saying that the Messiah who is coming really sees us? That he knows us at our very core? Maybe the winnowing fork is an instrument of deep love, patiently wielded by the One who discerns in us rich harvests still hidden by chaff. Maybe it’s in offering God every particular of our lives that we give Him permission to “clear” us — to separate all that’s destructive from all that is good, beautiful, and worthy.
Finally, Matthew suggests that the wilderness is a place where we can see the landscape whole, and participate in God’s great work of leveling inequality and oppression.
Unless we’re in the wilderness, it’s hard to see our own privilege, and even harder to imagine giving it up. No one standing on a mountaintop wants the mountain flattened. But when we’re wandering in the wilderness, and immense, barren landscapes stretch out before us in every direction, we’re able to see what privileged locations obscure. Suddenly, we feel the rough places beneath our feet. We experience what it’s like to struggle down twisty, crooked paths. We glimpse arrogance in the mountains and desolation in the valleys, and we begin to dream God’s dream of a wholly reimagined landscape. A landscape so smooth and straight, it enables “all flesh” to see the salvation of God.
Where are you located during this Advent season? How close are you to security and power, and how open are you to risking the wilderness to hear a word from God? What might repentance look like for you, here and now? Where is God leveling the ground you stand on, and what will it take for you to participate in that uncomfortable but essential work?
Debie Thomas: The Voice of One Crying
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2470-the-voice-of-one-crying
Sunday links for Dec. 4, 2022
Service, Advent 1, Nov. 27, 2022
Coming up!
Dec. 4, 11:00am – Advent 2
Dec. 4, Christmas Play on Second Advent
Dec. 4, St. Nicholas coffee hour after church
Dec. 4, Bethlehem Walk trip, leave after Church
Dec. 9, Greening of the Church, 10AM – Alice Hughes
Dec. 11, Deadline for Easter gifts to the Episcopal Church Men (ECM)
Dec. 18, Deadline for General Endowment Fund donations
Sermon, Nov. 27 – Advent 1 – Be prepared for the unexpected day by seeking to do good
The signs of ending are all around us now. Thanksgiving has come and gone, the sweet sounds and smells and sights of the Christmas season have arrived. Before you know it, 2022 will be history, and we’ll wake up to a new year.
But all is not ending.
Yes, in so many ways our lives reflect “end times,” but we Christians know that the end times point us toward new beginnings, and that even in the endings, God is making all things new.
And that is what the season of Advent is all about. As we stand in the debris of the old year, we seek out the hope, and look deep into the future with eyes of faith, knowing that “Christ will come again.”
That’s one of the most mysterious, powerful and life giving things about Jesus—he died, but death did not destroy him. He is risen, and in his risen life, is with us at all times and in all places, if only our hearts are open to him. But best of all, and this is the looking into the future part, Jesus will come again.
Jesus will come again, not only to the quiet welcoming places that we prepare for him in our hearts, but Jesus will come again in glory, to make all things on this earth right at last, to bring God’s just and peaceful reign to replace the messes we have made. Heaven will come on this earth.
So we Christians look for the completion of God’s rule here on earth, and we prepare not only our hearts, but we also work to prepare the world around us as well, in the ways that we can. Like those who farm, we do what we can to prepare the earth for the new growth and life that is on the way when spring comes once more.
So this season is full of joyful expectation. And in gratitude, each Sunday we offer to God our gifts of bread and wine, which God in turn offers back to us, filled with God.
And with great thanks and praise, as we take the bread and wine, we offer our own God filled lives back to God, imperfect as our lives are, and will continue to be.
Today’s psalmist lived many centuries before Jesus, but the psalmist knows the same joy that we feel when we come into God’s presence and offer ourselves to God.
“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”
Pilgrimages to Jerusalem were marked with great joy. Even as the people headed for Mt Zion, they knew that all would not be perfect when they got there. But–even as they were jostled, even in the noise of people gathered in a city, even in the dust and dirt of the streets, the people could see beyond what was true at the moment about their surroundings to what could and would someday be.
They knew that Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself…. So the pilgrims prayed for its prosperity, prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, for peace within its walls, and quietness within its towers.
Peace has always been in short supply, and prosperity comes and goes, BUT we too know that someday, God’s peace will reign, not just in Jerusalem, but over all the earth.
Just not in our lifetimes, we say resignedly, and that’s why we need this season of Advent.
Because yes! God’s peace can and will reign in our lives, and in the world around us. Advent reminds us first of all that we believe that this promise is true, and second, that as people of faith, we are to be on the lookout for God’s love breaking into this world yet again, and over and over again, a never ending gift.
The Apostle Paul, who expected the return of Jesus sooner rather than later, has some great advice for us as we wait.
Paul wants us to be prepared. So here’s some advice he has for those in the Roman church, and for us too.
Don’t sit around in your pajamas, as tempting as that might be.
Get up and get dressed, and don’t put on just any old thing—
Paul says to put on the Armor of Light.
The Armor of Light has both inward and outward properties.
Wearing the Armor of Light means that we can see more clearly within ourselves. The shadowy places in our lives, the places that need some work, get lit up. We can see, all too clearly, the areas that need attention, the dust in the corners, the repairs that need to be made in our lives, the interior work that we need to do to prepare for God’s fuller presence in our lives.
And second, the Armor of Light pushes away the darkness out in the world around us. When we are feeling overwhelmed by news of the latest mass shooting, or the intransigence of war, or even just aggravated by the little annoyances of life, the Armor of Light shines a ray of hope into all that darkness. We wear those bright rays of hope. People who look at us can see light, and be encouraged, and find some hope in the darkness.
Last Thursday in its Thanksgiving edition, The Washington Post published a section called “Inspired Life,” Section F of that day’s paper. The section consisted of various inspiring stories that the editors felt illustrate the best of us.
To me, one of the most inspiring of all the stories was the one called “Costumed strangers make Halloween wish come true for boy with cancer,” originally published September 22, 2022.
Can Halloween costumes become Armor of Light? Yes!
So here’s the story, which takes place in Hamilton, Ontario. Alexandros Hurdakis was one year old when he was diagnosed with brain cancer, and now, at age five, the doctors could do nothing else to save the child.
His parents asked Alex what he still wanted to experience in the time he had left. He said that he wanted to see monsters on Halloween, because he remembered the fun he’d had visiting a haunted house a few years ago. But he was too sick to travel.
So a neighbor decided to build a haunted house in Alex’s back yard, and then she got on Facebook invited neighbors to show up in costume. The post exploded with people offering to help make a special day for this little boy.
On September 14, the day of the event, close to 1000 people showed up, parading through the streets dressed in spooky costumes. Inflatable decorations lined the streets, and the police officers and fire trucks showed up too.
Alex loved it all.
No one put that day into these terms, in any of the articles I read, but this verse from Isaiah fits what happened that day. “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” That’s what all of the people did who came out to bring joy to a little boy and his parents. They were walking in the light of the Lord.
Alex’s father said that “at the most painful point in his life, he and his family are feeling gratitude for all of the support. We’re very blessed to live in a community like this.” And Arian Clark, who lost her daughter at age three to cancer, said that “it’s humbling and heartbreaking to witness this community come together every single time to support families like ours. I had chills, I cried a lot, I smiled a lot. This place, I swear, there is nothing like it.”
Halloween costumes pushing away the darkness of death, people taking time and energy to bring joy to a devasted family, that’s a whole community putting on the Armor of Light and bringing into reality, if only for a short time, the reign of God that is to be on this earth.
In today’s gospel, when Jesus is talking with the disciples before his death, he speaks of the time when he will return, a time that not even he knows. He makes it clear that in this world, life goes on from day to day, some days more memorable than others. We go about our ordinary activities and forget that nothing about our lives is ordinary!
And then, something happens—that something could be a blinding revelation, or the quiet advent of unexpected grace, maybe the sudden awareness you haven’t had in a while of the beauty of the late afternoon golden light turning everything to fire and light as the sun sets.
So this is the season to be prepared—for the things that we count on happening, our days coming and going—our family times of celebration, our care for the people around us, our putting on the Armor of Light in the ways unique to each of us.
But this is also our season to be prepared for the completely unexpected, for in a split second our lives can be changed beyond recognition, or even ended.
But when we have prepared for that unexpected day, by seeking to do good, we can accept whatever comes with peace and in praise and in gratitude for all that has been, for it’s all from God.
We can give thanks for all that is, and yes, give thanks even now for the unknown things yet still to come, for Jesus will be part of it all.
Giving Tuesday, Nov. 29
Why are we pushing Giving Tuesday, Nov. 29 in support of our Village Harvest food distribution ?
1. There is a need.
In a sermon on September 22, 2019 Catherine wrote “I have had people who come to the distribution tell me that they wouldn’t have had enough food to get through the month without the food we provide.”
The Free Lance-Star reported in Aug., 2018, “about 31,000 residents of Fredericksburg and the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford consistently lack enough food to maintain a healthy, active life. They’re considered food insecure by the United States.” Department of Agriculture.
We are called to do like Jesus – and he fed people both physically and spiritually. Witness the stories of the Feeding of the 4,000 and 5,000.
2. There is a cost to recover.
We are averaging $170(average 10 months) or over $2,000 a year. Help us recover the cost and even add to our resources to do more.
3. The ministry has been successful.
8 years later we have served over 6,800 clients over 64,500 pounds of food. This year the average pounds of food per person is over 12 which at $6 a pound is worth $72. It is clearly one of our more visible and valuable outreach expressions from our church.
4. We have goals and a way for you to help.
Our goal in #Giving Tuesday is to raise 3 months support or $500.
• A $10 donation feeds 6 people, 12 pounds each. It provides 72 pounds of food and $430 in total value!
• A $20 donation feeds 12 people, 12 pounds each. It provides 144 pounds of food and $860 in total value!
Help us on Giving Tuesday, Nov 29
Two ways to donate:
1. On or before Nov 29 make out a check to St. Peter’s with “Giving Tuesday” in the memo line. Send to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, P. O. Box 399 Port Royal, Virginia 22535
Thank you for your support!
Liturgical Year
1. (From A Pilgrim People: Learning through the Church Year, by John Westerhoff)
•Advent
Advent is a time for hope, for dreaming of new possibilities, a time set aside to rethink the ways in which we choose to live our lives. Advent is a time of anticipation, of watching and waiting, and of transformation.
•Christmas
During Christmas, we celebrate God’s coming to be with us here, to share our human nature. We celebrate because Jesus has come to live as one of us, to lead us into a new life. Jesus will also experience suffering and death as each one of us will. It is in the context of Jesus’ death and resurrection that we celebrate the miracle of his incarnation.
•Epiphany
Epiphany opens with the Feast of the Three Kings, and so we begin our season of journeying, as the wise men did. Epiphany is the season of the longings of the human heart, the invitation to go on a journey led by God, a journey full of mystery, a journey over which we have no control, a journey which we cannot fully comprehend. Epiphany is the season of revelation, as we become more and more aware of the true identity of Jesus, the Son of God. Our faith is deepened and strengthened.
•Lent
During Lent we take on risks, journeying through death toward life, entering a wilderness where both God and the evil one are present. We open ourselves to suffering. Lent is a time of growing into our true identities, as we accept ourselves, with all of our weaknesses and shortcomings and examine our consciences. Through penance we open ourselves to becoming whole again, and we make amends for the damage we have done to ourselves, to others, and to creation itself.
•Holy Week and Easter
The story of Easter is the story of God’s victory, a time of consummation, when now and not yet come together through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. All of creation becomes new, God transforms us, and redeems the whole world. We see that, through God’s redeeming love, we have been made saints. God’s reign is here, is still in the process of becoming, and has yet to be. God is always in the process of making all things new.
• Ordinary Time
After Easter, Jesus’s ascension into heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit to us at Pentecost, we accept responsibility for being and becoming Christ’s body in the world. We are called by Jesus to live in community, our lives together guided not only by the example of Jesus, but by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we live our lives in the Spirit, we “explore the implications of Easter and endeavor to live into our baptisms” (John Westerhoff, A Pilgrim People: Learning through the Church Year)
2. Church Liturgical Year Table
