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Be Alert! Prepare! Christ Comes!
Advent 1
As you gather.
Light a candle in the centre of the group and hold silence for at least a minute (If you are not used to doing this you will need to time it)
- make or have made Christmas memorable
- we associate with sadness or grief at Christmas
- bring new ideas or happenings to birth any time of the year
Hear the word:
Read I Thessalonians 3: 9-13. Follow this with a prayer of thankfulness for the people who have been important to you around Christmas. You might like to use the following form:
Loving God of new life and new birth, we thank you for those who have made past Christmases memorable for us
Name those people out loud.
We think with sadness and grief of those who come to mind at Christmas and we offer you that burden of pain
Honour this in silence first.
Then some may like to name people out loud.
We thank you for those people who have brought new things into our lives, helped us think in new ways and helped us bring to birth that which was struggling within us
Name those people out loud
Preparing for Christmas, being alert.
Briefly talk about preparations made, or preparation still to be made. (This is not a competition for efficiency!!). Talk about preparations you enjoy making and those which are a chore.
Read Jeremiah 33: 14-16 and Luke 21: 25-36
In the Jerusalem Bible the name of the city given in verse 16 is Yahweh-with-integrity. (NRSV The Lord is our righteousness)
1. If the advent of the Christ were to bring integrity to
New Zealand or to your home town or city in which areas would you most like to see it happening ?
2. Is there any difference in how you see the word
righteousness (NRSV) and the word integrity (Jerusalem Bible) ? What is the difference and why do you think this is so ?
In Luke 21 the sayings which Luke has collected here, he has placed just before Passion week, immediately before the Passover Jesus eats with his disciples in the Upper Room, forerunner of our Communion. These words are in a place of preparation for something quite different from a birth, although Christians can regard death as a birth. Most offer dire predictions. Note the recommended reaction: "Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man."
3. Whenever something dreadful or even just something busy is
about to descend on you what is your first reaction - to procrastinate, to plan, to pray, to panic, to purchase ?
(a) Into which category do you fall ?
(b) How does your initial reaction (i) help (ii) hinder ?
(c) If you pray or if you did pray - what would you pray for this Christmas ?
4. Read silently this passage from Wendy M. Wright's The Vigil and see what of this you could incorporate into your life. Then discuss where the passage struck you with particular energy and freshness. (Avoid discussing practicalities, but honour the sense of stillness )
The Beginning
IT BEGINS IN THE BEGINNING. The vigil we keep has its true beginning long before any of us are born. It begins in the seasons before seasons, before the emergent cosmos exploded into being. It has its beginning in the heart of God. And so we must begin there as well.
The ancient desert dwellers of our early Christian communities tell us that the surest way into the heart of God is to be still. In being still we learn to be attentive to the vast and hidden stillness that permeates all things.
So I invite you to begin by becoming more attentive to that stillness as well. Seek it first in your own home. Go at night into the darkened room of your sleeping child, and breathe with the moist, quick risings of the child's breath. Rise in the thin light of a new day. Do not turn on the lamp or the television or the coffee maker, but stand by an east window and let the dawn's fingers creep up over the fingers of your own hand.
Listen next for stillness as you venture out of doors. Hear it in the splintering of fall leaves [ for us the rustle of newly leaved trees?] as you cross a grassy knoll between paths in the park...
Turn finally to your own heart. The same stillness is there as well. At the core, buried beneath the turbulence of emotions rubbed raw by life's labour, is the same stillness discovered in the slow-moving sap of an autumn tree. In that primordial stillness beats the heart of God.
There is a correspondence between our hearts and God's. They have imprinted on them the same unimaginable hope, sealed with a promise. The hope is for fullness, for completion, for being one with each other. What that will look like is hidden from us. The end and fullness of all things is known only to God. But we have glimpses of it and those glimpses stagger us with their inexpressible beauty. We are tormented with teasing reminders by the restlessness of our desires, by the almost painful depth of our longings, by our ardent seeking for something more.
Our entire lives are a vigil, a keeping watch, for the fulfillment of this hope. All creation holds vigil with us, as it has done since the beginning. All generations before us and those that come after us will hold it as well.
But it is especially in this season of the church year, during Advent and Christmas, the season of the Coming, that we rise up on tiptoe to dance. We open our throats to sing and to proclaim this vigil that we keep.
As we do so we dip down into the ageless vigil being kept by the waters and grasses of the earth. We share the solemn watchfulness observed by granite and limestone. We enter the hearts of one another as, in the stillness, we listen for the divine heartbeat.
We wait for the fullness. We watch for the completion of the promise. We vigil for the coming of the unimaginable fruition of the seed growing from the beginning in the heart of God.
Discuss the passage in the light of question 4.
Finish the session with this prayer or another of your choosing:
God of stillness,
let us hear your heartbeat. Among the noise and cheerful bustle of this Advent season, let us hear the unimaginable, see the inexpressible, feel the ineffable. May we find both the energy and the stillness of heart that we can too rise up on tiptoe and dance the joy
of being alert and prepared for your Coming in us.
AMEN