13 December 2009

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Isaiah 12:2-6 (the First Song of Isaiah)
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

06 December 2009

Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 1:68-79 (the Benedictus)
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

This Sunday’s texts have set up in my mind a concert of sorts this past week that I’ve not been able to silence. It began with the words of the Malachi reading – which seems to have given permission to a full-throated contralto to begin singing from Handel’s Messiah: “For he is l-uh-uh-ike a refuh-uh-uh-iner’s fuh-uh-ire.” And Anne Sofie von Otter would not let my brain alone until Maestro Trevor Pinnock signaled: that’s enough now, it’s time to hear from someone else. And so the chamber choir takes lightly over, “And he shall purify, and he shall purify, the sons, the sons of Levi . . .” A gentle purification though, this refiner’s fire not an inferno. “And he shall purify,” little tongues of flame dancing between, around, through, and upon the singers: “that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness, in righteousness.”

29 November 2009

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

Today we begin the first season of the New Church Year, the season of Advent. Advent – a word that comes to us from Latin meaning, coming toward, coming near. Advent: the season when we await, when we prepare for our annual celebration of God coming toward us, of God coming near to us in Jesus, the One born of Mary. Note well please: this annual celebration for which we prepare in Advent isn’t about US coming toward God, of US coming near to God. It’s all about God’s approach to us. It’s about God making God’s self intimately near to us – and never about your cozying up to God. And because we are people who by our Baptism already live in eternal life – that is to say – who live beyond the boundaries of time and space – in this season we joyously mess up and blur the distinctions between past, present, and future. We remember something in the past while making it something in the present, and at the same time, we look to a future when Christ will come again. (And not so incidentally, in Scripture, there is no mention of any sort of second coming of Christ – but instead a promise that Christ will come again.) And on this Advent Sunday, the appointed Gospel seems to direct our present thoughts to some off-in-the-future return of Christ. Or does it?