Advent Readings Week 2

Prayer for the Second Week of Advent:

“Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness…Be my brother, Thou Holy God…Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle…make me holy and pure, despite my sin...” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer                                       

Readings for the Second Week:

“In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.”                             -Mother Teresa

“It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.”                                                                                             –Bono

“The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but entitled beggars at the door of God’s mercy!”                     -Brennan Manning

“Confession propels the community to imagine a world beyond their current state of sinful existence. Lament that recognizes the reality of brokenness allows the community to express confession in its proper context. Confession acknowledges the need for God and opens the door for God’s intervention. Confession in lament relies on God’s work for redemption.” * -Soong-Chan Rah

“Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord.  Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.” -Thomas Merton

Hymn of Bethlehem

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child.  Holy infant so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight. Glories stream from heaven afar, heavenly hosts sing, “Alleluia!” Christ the Savior is born. Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love’s pure light. Radiant beams from thy holy face. With the dawn of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.”

Dec 9: Light the purple candle of Love or Bethlehem. Read Luke 2:1-7

The Savior of the World is born in a Manger; love incarnate has come!

Dec 10 Matthew 1:18-25

Dec 11 John 1:1-18

Dec 12 Luke 1:11-38

Dec 13 Luke 1:39-56

Dec 14 Luke 1:57-79

Dec 15 Luke 2:1-7

Advent Readings Week 1

During the season of Advent, each essay will consist of daily Scripture Readings and a weekly prayer, hymn and reading. I pray this guides your time as you recognize your own longing for wholeness and anticipate the coming of Christ. I will post each week’s scriptures to the website on Sundays, so visit there if you do not want to wait for Tuesday’s emails. Merry Christmas!

Advent 2018

For many imitators of Christ, who try to bear witness to the life he lived and lives in the way we function in the world, Advent is the name we give to the Christmas season. The Latin roots mean “to come toward” or “coming,” and Advent offers some space to reflect on the coming of Christ, the coming of hope, the coming of joy, and the coming of Christmas. This year the readings remind us of the context that the Messiah came out of and into; Christ is the fulfillment of God’s covenant with us; He is the manifestation of the Word—the prophecies and scriptures—that came before Him. We begin at the beginning, and move toward the coming hope of the Messiah, waiting expectantly with creation for the final story that becomes our new beginning. For people dependent on Jesus, we must contextualize our love of work and independence with a deeper loyalty to merciful rest and interdependency. We need a God who never leaves us, and we need people to hope with and around us.

This year, I have been reminded again and again that healing and hope come in the middle of pain, not when it ends. We become healers when we see and hold our own vulnerabilities. Part of waiting on God, part of actively hoping for Him, begins with my honest lament over all the brokenness in and around my life. It is not unfaithful to be scared or disappointed or angry or brokenhearted—these are conditions of humanity. During Advent, we celebrate the One who “comes toward” us, not just as a baby—the Son of God—2000 years ago, but also as the redeeming One who will come to make “all things new”, and, importantly, as One who offers healing and wholeness right now. As you approach Advent, can you first realize the places in your own heart, relationships, city and world that need the healing and wholeness Christ will bring?  Advent is a season to remember what it means to hope in our own hard places, and to expectantly wait for Immanuel to be “God with us.”

My prayer for all who read these words:

Like Mary, patiently wait for God to bring new life into broken places. 

Like the Wise Men, study the Scripture and learn to look for Christ, especially in unexpected spaces in your family or town that have little hope. 

Like the Shepherds, wait expectantly for the Glory of God to visit your ordinary lives, and then actively follow Christ by moving toward humble others. 

Thank you for being a God who comes, who moves with us, who refuses to leave us alone. Give us a rhythm of confessing our need for you as we feel the longing for your presence. Thank you for the crazy mystery of Christmas, for knowing our worst but seeing our best. Teach us what it means to know you come toward us in the year to come.

A note on the structure

There are daily scriptures, divided into weekly themes (Each theme has a prayer, a hymn, and other readings). Each day, read the prayer and daily scripture listed (bottom of page). You can use the optional readings once per day, all together, or not at all. If your tradition uses an Advent wreath then each Sunday, light the candle, read the scripture, and sing or listen to the hymn listed for that week.

 With big love from a heart often breaking and hoping,

Brandi

Prayer for the First Week of Advent:

“Lord, may you now let us this year once more approach the light, celebration, and joy of Christmas Day that brings us face to face with the greatest thing there is: your love. What could we possibly bring and give to you? So much darkness in our human relationships and in our own hearts! So much over which you cannot rejoice, that separates us from one another and certainly cannot help us! So much that runs directly against the message of Christmas! What should you possibly do with such gifts? But all of this is precisely what you want to receive from us and take from us at Christmas—the whole pile of rubbish and ourselves, just as we are—in order to give us in return Jesus, our Savior, and in him a new heaven and a new earth, new hearts and a new desire, new clarity and a new hope for us and for all people. Be among us as we once again…prepare to receive him as your gift. Amen.”                                     -Karl Barth

Readings for the First Week:

“The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come…Not all can wait—certainly not those who are satisfied, contented, and feel that they live in the best of all possible worlds! Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfillment. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God the child in the manger. God comes, the Lord Jesus comes, Christmas comes.”                                                                                                     -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“In the biblical world, hope does not emerge from the self-aggrandizing act of recounting our successes. It is the desperate plea for God’s intervention that arises out of lament that reveals a flickering glimpse of hope. What about us? Even after tasting God’s fury and wrath, do we still have hope? Do we still have the ability to worship even as our faith is being tested?”                                                                                    -Soong-Chan Rah

“We are not elevated above God or even above God’s creation. We do not stand in the place of Christ, able to incarnate ourselves into another community as if we could operate as the Messiah. Our only hope for meaning and worth is in the fullness of Christ as God’s created beings. Lament recognizes our frailty as created beings and the need to acknowledge this shortcoming before God.”                                                                                 -Soong-Chan Rah

Hymn of Prophecy

“For unto us a child is born, unto us, a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world, is become. The Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. King of kings, and Lord of Lords.  Hallelujah.”    -Handel’s Messiah

Daily Readings: Week 1

Dec 2: Light the purple candle of Hope or Prophecy Read Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7

Christ is the Hoped For One, the fulfillment of prophecies and the law.

Dec 3 Deut 18:18; Psalm 45:6-7      

Dec 4 Gen 3:19-21; 9:4-12

Dec 5 2 Sam 7:11-16; I Chron 17:11-14

Dec 6 Gen 15:1-6, 22:1-18

Dec 7 Exo 3:13-15

Dec 8 Isaiah 7:14, 9:6-7

speaking up (even around turkeys)

I am an infuriating parent (Yes, I am sometimes also infuriated, but that’s a discussion for another day). I find phrases that apply to multiple situations, that might hold true over decades, and then I repeat them ad nauseum until my children want to file for emancipation. When they were in the early stages of language acquisition, I heard parents absentmindedly remind their whining children to “use your words.” I understand where this phrase is coming from, and what it is supposed to accomplish. I’m not a fan.

Despite the fact that I don’t tell my kids to use their words, we have to teach children to articulate their perception of their needs, wants and opinions. In our house we use, “speak up.” I say it to them when they are 2 and can’t get the right sounds out, when they are 5 and whining, when they are 9 and punching someone, and when they are 15 and moodily brooding. “Speak up,” I say! Articulate how you feel and what you need. It is crucial in relationships to speak up when you feel uncomfortable, wounded or treated badly.

I suppose we learn to use our words, but many adults don’t know how to speak up. Some of us don’t feel worthy, or are uncomfortable with discomfort, or struggle to find the right words at the right time. There is another reason though. Increasingly, our cultural norms teach us to stay quiet. Norms can be subtle, hard to acknowledge or even recognize, but they hold great power. Lately I have observed the power of norms to help people betray their own stated values. In the cultural context of Nashville, we are taught it is bad manners to disagree. It is rude to argue publicly. It is “getting political” to express concern over dehumanizing policies or speech from an elected official. For many Christians, it is “losing sight of Jesus” to speak up against oppression. It is causing trouble to defend a peer when they are treated unfairly.

Instead, we are taught to stay loyal, even through silent support. Stay loyal to the power in charge, loyal to your tribe, loyal to the status quo. We are primarily committed to our hive, not our convictions. We easily get the two confused, and our cultural norms reinforce the idea that speaking up is not a good idea. I understand these impulses, but as a person trying to imitate the convictions and habits of Jesus, I can’t follow them.

The life of Jesus, as recorded in the Biblical text, is a tale of speaking up. When he publicly announced he was the Messiah, Jesus claimed that he was the One the prophets spoke about. In the early days of the Kingdom of Israel, and later of Judah, the people had a king, but God also gave them a prophet. Prophets spoke up. They reminded the people they had a loving God, and they reminded them God cared about how they treated each other. They challenged kings who led with corrupt power or who led the people to care more about idols than about doing justice and loving mercy. Jesus indeed came to fulfill those prophecies, preaching good news to the poor, and challenging news to the powerful. Over and over he spoke up to defend the vulnerable, to challenge the greedy, to address brokenness. He enraged people with his willingness to rock the boat. He was murdered for speaking up.

And yet, I see the community of folks calling themselves Christians around me rejecting that life altogether. I hear pastors warning against those who speak up, as if they are an example of those who have lost sight of the Gospel. I see the discomfort at lunch if a person utters concern about the policies or bigotry of a “Christian politician.” If the hive says support that person, then an individual in the hive better not speak up in a way that might undermine them, even as an act of faithful obedience to the teaching of Christ. Having lost the will, and atrophied our ability to speak up, we keep our heads down and remain silent when the people who represent us behave and speak badly.

I recently heard about an elementary school in Tennessee where the kids are celebrating Thanksgiving with costumes and a play. The handout told parents their kids could choose to be an Indian or a Pilgrim, and should dress as such. In addition to using a word to describe American First Peoples that they themselves have described as offensive, the assignment contained no suggestion of intercultural awareness, humility or curiosity. I understand why a parent wouldn’t want to speak up. No one wants to be “that parent.” A parent might not feel like they know enough about history to speak up, or might not have time to get involved. What if you did though? What if we could speak up in a way that created new possibilities and offered a way forward for the teacher?

I know one parent who felt uncomfortable but did not speak up. Another taught me how to imagine speaking up in this context. She read the assignment and then asked if she could meet with the teacher. She spoke up with solutions, not accusations, with honesty, not blame. It went something like, “When I read the assignment I was very excited the kids get to celebrate this holiday. I was sad when I saw the word Indians instead of Native Americans. I think this simple change teaches our kids culturally competent language, and helps all kids feel welcome in our classroom. I wanted to offer a few ideas on how we could honor the legacy of First Peoples that we celebrate at Thanksgiving, since our history together is much more complicated than a shared harvest meal. I also totally understand that it might be too late to change for this year, and if we can’t I wanted to let you know I’ll keep my daughter home that day. I want her to understand that pilgrims learned a lot from Native people, and they also abused their trust and treated them badly. With a little tweaking this lesson could teach us to celebrate our good moments and learn from our mistakes.” This is a lot! I get it. But our kids and their teachers deserve parents willing to speak up to improve learning. Remaining silent in this instance teaches a class full of kids false history and to use a word hurtful to other Americans. When is the dignity of other people worth risking your comfort and capitol for? In what situation would you be willing to speak up?

Speaking up is seen as a threat to the status quo because it is a threat to the status quo! Importantly, speaking up does not have to be denouncing. It can be an invitation to reflect, to align one’s actions and behaviors, to be a part of a larger community. Speaking up can start a conversation that never ends where we share the work of making meaning together. Speaking up can inform, creating space for curiosity and examination. This week if you find yourself sharing a large table with a group of people from various hives, can you find courage to speak up when hurtful words are spoken? This Thanksgiving, instead of stuffing down your wounds or discomfort, try to speak up, and see where the conversations leads.