Advent Altar

Advent 1 – December 1, 2024

Church Is What We Do Next

Happy first Sunday in Advent, the first day of the new church year!  Many of us who are lifelong Episcopalians have been taught all our lives that Advent is the season of hushed expectation, where we wait, filled with hope, for Jesus’ birth.  For many Episcopalians, there’s a kind of almost Puritan abstemiousness about Advent with an overlay of self-denial, almost like a mini-Lent.  Some church communities emphasize this idea by using purple vestments and hangings — the same color we use at Lent — and avoiding any Christmas decorations, music, or even poinsettias until Christmas Day — or at least the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.  In fact, this was Emmanuel’s traditional practice.  While the use of color in vestments and altar hangings is ancient, it’s important to remember that Jesus doesn’t tell us in scripture that we must use blue or purple at Advent.  The mothers and fathers of our faith didn’t write in ancient documents that if we wore red instead, like we do at Pentecost, that our worship won’t sustain our faith.  But our traditional colors are signs for us.  They point to, and remind us, of what is really important about the season.

Change the Furniture

Advent AltarI’ve shared before the words of my Liturgics professor, Patrick Malloy, now the Dean of St. John the Divine in New York:  “If you want to change the liturgy [to see new signs of God’s activity in the world], change the furniture, not the words.”  We’ve changed the furniture quite a bit in the past year as we’ve looked for signs of God among us, and I think it’s helped us see the Holy Spirit at work at Emmanuel.  We took out the front three pews in the Nave to make room for big bridal parties, musicians and instruments, and for dancing.  We used the wood from the pews to make a new moveable altar that our whole community can gather around, as well as Lyndsay’s sound desk and the new table for Jennie’s family crèche.  This is the furniture our Emmanuel family needs to make our home in this space where we all belong.

Last year at this time, the worship committee decided to try out a different but long-standing tradition in the Episcopal Church, that is, blue vestments and hangings during Advent instead of the purple that Emmanuel has used in the past for both Advent and Lent.  This idea came up so fast last year that we pinned the blue fabric in place for the season.  Now we’ve had a chance to finish some of the vestments and hangings, and I hope you’ll see more of these pieces completed and in place over the next four Sundays as signs of God’s presence and activity among us this Advent.

Apocalypse

Our gospel readings over these past weeks have been all about watching for signs of God’s presence so that we are ready to respond when the time comes.  These messages can feel foreboding — even scary — and they’re meant to be.  They’re messages of apocalypse, meaning revelation or disclosure.  Apocalypse is different from the end.  Jesus is talking about signs revealing the beginning of the kingdom of God, which is not how we are now in most cases, but how we become, and how we change.  It’s easy for us to relate to Jesus’ apocalyptic prophecy in Luke’s gospel this morning in our own circumstances today:  Fearsome warnings of coming environmental change.  The loneliness and isolation that can lead to fear of others who are different from us.  The fear of hunger, injustice, and oppression.  Our divided election, where we found out that half of us — right down the middle of every demographic group, community, work place, organization, and even family — think there is a better path forward than the one we’ve been on.  The apocalyptic changes that Jesus is talking about are not catastrophes, but they can sure feel that way because they prompt and even require different responses from us — responses that move us into justice and break every chain of oppression.

Apocalypse is not the end, but the beginning of something new.  The response God wants from us in these times is not to double down on the same old traditions and responses from the past, but the beginning of something new, hopeful, courageous, and even transformational.  Jesus gets that this is not a comfortable or comforting message for us — then or now:

There will be signs in the sun,

the moon, and the stars,

and on the earth distress among nations

confused by the roaring of the sea

and the waves.

People will faint from fear and foreboding

of what is coming upon the world… .

 

Here’s the hope, but we have to be brave:  Jesus says:  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.  It’s all about the signs, Jesus tells them.  The signs tell you something’s coming even though it’s not here yet — like a curve or a bump ahead in the road — and clues you in on how to respond.

            Look at the fig tree and all the trees, Jesus says.

   As soon as they sprout leaves

you can see for yourselves that summer is already near. 

So also,

when you see these things taking place,

you know that the kingdom of God is near.

Hope

Conclave film poster The kingdom of God is not about how we are now, or how we’ve always done things.  As Berkeley Dean Andrew McGowan wrote in his great blog earlier this week, word of the kingdom is always about a hope that challenges and changes, not merely a coded message to help us reflect on what we already know and do.  Our expectation of God’s transforming action in the future changes us now.  The kingdom comes in our midst when we realize our need for God’s future, and work with God in getting there.  This is Jeremiah’s prophecy of a righteous Branch to spring up for David; bringing justice and righteousness in the land.

Jere and I saw the new movie Conclave last week— about the election of a new pope.  We liked it so much we went back again last night to a showing at the Jane Pickens Theater.  I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it and won’t give away the plot twists but will share one nugget that really stuck with me.  One of the cardinals, frustrated by the politicking and ambition of his colleagues after what was likely the sixth ballot in a hotly contested papal election, spoke apocalypse and hope into the Conclave:  The Church is not the past.  It’s what we do next.  How do we respond now to the warning and invitation we read in Luke’s gospel that is spot on in our times — the signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves?  We know that we can’t keep doing the same things, clinging with everything we’ve got to the way things have always been.  As Cardinal Benitez says in Conclave, Church is what we do next.  We look for the signs of God’s presence, and we respond by yearning — actively reaching and striving— for God’s future.  Amen