A new Church year
Bishop Gavin shares an Advent reflection for the latest From the Bishops. Watch his video message on YouTube or read below.
A season of hope
Last Sunday saw the start of the new church year, and the start of the rich and ancient four-week season of Advent.
For most people, Advent passes virtually unnoticed, other than perhaps the morning excitement of opening the next door in your Advent calendar to find - surprise, surprise - another tiny chocolate! Though, actually, I got one of my daughters an Advent calendar last year that had a different flavoured teabag behind every door - some were really intriguing ones, and some sounded more than a bit dubious!
However, this time of Advent offers us an opportunity to dive deeply into a counter-cultural time of quiet reflection, a space of hopeful and patient waiting and discernment about how God's incarnation has meaning and is at work in our world today.
As you come to Advent, what is the focus of your prayers, your concerns, and what you find yourself asking of God?
Where do you find your hope?
Does the thought of Advent and Christmas fill you with expectation, excitement, apprehension, worry, hope, longing, or any other emotion?
One of the great themes of Advent is the theme of hope. I wonder...
- What do you understand by the word 'hope'?
- Where do you see hope as you look around you in your life, in your community, in our nation, in the world?
- Where are the areas of darkness that you’re aware of in the world and in your life, and what signs can you see of God coming into that darkness?
- What are the situations where you need to pray for hope to come, for God’s light to dawn?
Growing anticipation
The lectionary readings for our worship each week of this Advent season help us unpack the idea of our entering a season of hope and fulfilment - as we look ahead in growing anticipation to the coming of God’s promised Messiah. And the readings week by week, from Isaiah, Romans and Matthew, increase the tempo and pace, as they call us to be a people full of urgent hopefulness.
One of the challenges in celebrating Advent is to be faithful to the great Biblical texts the lectionary gives us, with their diverse and deliberately striking images, while working to keep a sense of prayerful engagement in the midst of a hectic time of the year.
The focus of our worship during Advent should reflect both the cosmic dimension of Christ's reign coming in all its fullness, as we proclaimed two weeks ago on Christ the King Sunday, and the immanence of an incarnate God, who is as close to us as our next breath.
And so, we traverse this holy season, in which the secular world around us is so frantic, with strong messages of hope and a call for true awareness and a deepening of faith, hope and love in our lives and in our communities.
A lively and beautiful theology
Throughout the season of Advent, we are given a rich and delightful variety in our set readings. There is a lively and beautiful theological conversation going on between the Old Testament readings, the Epistles and the Gospels, that develops week by week.
A fortnight ago, on Christ the King Sunday, the Gospel presented Jesus nailed to the cross, beneath a sign that read:
“This is the King of the Jews”
In three weeks, the Gospel will portray Jesus as a helpless infant, born in an occupied country. Advent is a complex season in which Scripture offers a number of various understandings of Jesus and the reign that he proclaimed is at hand and is still coming.
Radical renewal
Each Advent Sunday in the Old Testament readings, God speaks to Israel through the prophet Isaiah, promising, and eventually celebrating, a radically new reign of justice, joy and renewal.
Each week in the Epistle, Paul (and James in the reading for next Sunday) offers words and prayers of encouragement to fledging Christian communities, in Rome and scattered throughout the near East.
The Gospels move us from an end-time prophecy (in the first Sunday) to historical narratives around John the Baptist (in the second and third Sundays) and Mary (in the fourth Sunday). Exploring how these different voices speak to each other each week is key to a deeper understanding of the meaning of this season.
So where is the conversation between these readings?
One obvious connection is that all the readings are charging the listener (the Israelites of Isaiah's time, the Jews of Jesus' time, the early church in Rome and, of course, us as we hear these great passages of Scripture today,) to prepare, urgently and passionately, for a future of hopeful fulfilment. We, along with the Israelites, the Jews with John at the Jordan River, and the persecuted Christians in Rome, are the listeners. This is a message for us – a message of urgent hopefulness, here and now.
A proper preparation through the season of Advent will equip us for a proper celebration for the whole season of Christmas which follows. And that, in turn, should equip us with a hope-filled confidence to live throughout the year ahead, walking in sure and certain faith in the light of the “true light” that has come into the world.
May God bless you this Advent season, in the coming Christmas-tide, and in all that then lies ahead.