Tag Archives: Advent

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

The Apocalypse of John the Baptizer’s Community

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You may have noticed that for a few weeks now, the titles of my weekly reflections have had mention of Apocalypse in them. You may be thinking that I am starting to sound like one of those Hellfire and Brimstone types. Maybe that is true. However, unlike in the movies, Apocalypse biblically carries a different definition than just the end of the world. Apocalypse comes from the Greek meaning ‘uncovering’ or ‘revealing.’ Apocalyptic literature speaks to the revealing of God’s plan or designs for the world or God’s intention to make right. This lands at the heart of created existence, where this ‘making right’ is contested or in a state of conflict. The Apocalypse or revealing is where God’s Kingdom coming to make the world righteous is in conflict with the powers of sin, death and the devil – forces that we experience in this world that are in opposition to God’s great love for us. 

Phew…

With that understanding of Apocalypse, we pick up with John the Baptist. Who is speaking to the crowds who have come out into the wilderness to hear him and be baptized for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. This follows with the long history of Israel seeking out prophets sent by God in times of crisis and seeking to repent of the ways in which God’s people have turned away from God. John is standing in a role they know and can identify from the Scriptures, and they are seeking to repent just as good people of faith should. 

Yet, they don’t quite get there. John isn’t just preaching repentance like the prophets of old. He is also preaching the coming of another, a Messiah. 

The crowd responds peculiarly. They ask John, “What then should we do?”

They ask this three times: “What should we do?”

In a time of crisis, when the world feels like everything is falling down around them, when the powers are threatening to crush them, when the future feels terribly uncertain, they want to know what they can do. Each of John’s answers is unsatisfying. 

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

In a time of great uncovering and revealing the deep and uncomfortable truths at the heart of our existence, the apocalyptic conflict between God’s making right and the powers of sin, death and the devil that we can feel palpable in our world… the answers to our wonderings of, “what should we do?” have proven equally unsatisfying.

Maybe that is the point. It seems to be John’s point. Maybe what we need to do isn’t the chief issue. In this moment of Apocalypse, what we do just might be secondary to our salvation. The uncovering of what is really happening to us as God’s people is still in process, still being made known to us. But as we turn to the second half of Advent, I am sure it has something to do with the One we are waiting for, the One who is coming. 

The Messiah is on the way. 

Pastor Thoughts, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Apocalypse is waiting

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This week, we have stepped fully into Advent, the season that begins each liturgical year with waiting and watching for Messiah. Advent is the favourite season of most pastors and deacons, and I know more than a few lay folks who love Advent as well. There is something about those shades of blue that captures the essence of the night sky in this season of darkness. The Advent hymns of hope and longing speak deeply to the reality of our world. Advent doesn’t rush us to the good part of the story… rather, it takes its time unfolding. We are just starting this season now in the Church, whereas many in the world have been celebrating Christmas since November 1st. 

I think this love and connection to Advent is precisely because of the contrast it offers to the expectations of Christmas that begin ramping up in November with Christmas parties, concerts, baking, decorating, Hallmark movies and holiday muzak playing on radios everywhere. Our calendars fill up; we have to summon the energy to be social, to be good guests and hosts, and to be present physically, mentally, and emotionally at events with family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. It can be delightful, difficult, busy, tiring, fun or all of those things at once.

Conversely, Advent is about preparation and anticipation. Not in the frantic getting-the-house-ready-for-company kind of way, but in the quiet-stillness-of- your-own-thoughts-and-a-hot-cup-of-coffee-at-dawn kind of way. Advent calls us to slow down, to be present in our own minds and thoughts, in our bodies and hearts. Advent calls us to watch and listen for God, to prepare our hearts for Messiah, to attend to pregnant possibilities of divine activity in our world. 

In the four weeks of Advent, we journey from big to small. In the first week, we begin in the cosmic and apocalyptic realm, where Jesus calls us to pay attention. God is at work bringing the Kingdom of God to confront the kingdoms of sin, death and the devil. 

In the second week, we hear John the Baptist preach about the Kingdom of Israel, of empires and rulers, of politics and nations. 

In the third week, we keep shrinking down: John addresses the crowds before him on the River Jordan. 

Finally, in the fourth week, we witness an intimate conversation between Elizabeth and her cousin Mary, two women pregnant with miraculous babies. 

In Advent, divine activity is revealed in all the levels of our existence, from the cosmic, to the political, to the communal, down to the intimate. And yet, divine activity begins in this final and special place—in the wombs of our mothers. In this most intimate and closest of relationships we can have as human beings, God enters into creation in order to meet us in Christ. From this smallest and closest of beginnings, Christ proceeds to encounter the fullness of creation, joining God once again in divine fullness to every part of our existence. From incarnation and birth to crucifixion and death, Christ becomes one with us. And then, in the Resurrection, Christ’s apocalyptic renewal and reordering of our world in a new creation, we become one in Christ. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Don’t let the Christmas notalgia make us forget Advent – Pastor Thoughts

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We are through Advent and awaiting the big night to celebrate the birth of the Messiah. We have waited and watched, we have prepared. But we have also heard again the promises of God given in Advent stories. Advent stories that give context to the Messiah who is about to come, stories that help us to understand just what it means for Messiah to come into our world. 

Then something odd happens after the fourth Sunday in Advent and Christmas Eve, between our hearing of the promises and news given to Mary about just who she will bear in her body for the sake of the world. 

Some kind of switch flips in our brains, and all the Advent preparation and context is pushed aside in favour of the deep-set memories and nostalgia for Christmas. 

Maybe it is hearing more voices than on a usual Sunday stand together and sing, “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

Maybe it is when the lights are dimmed, and the introduction to “Silent Night” begins, as a flame is passed from person to person bringing a warm glow to faces gathered in darkness.

Maybe it is when the reader moves to the ambo and begins to read, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

There are all kinds of moments in the Christmas Eve service that catch our attention and bring us back to cherished Christmas memories. 

Memories that have the power to push our readiness for Messiah out of the way, and make Chrismas all about those powerful feelings that orient us to the past. Because for many of us, Christmas holds an outsized place in our hearts and minds.

It makes for an odd transition from Advent to Christmas, an odd experience of thoroughly preparing our hearts to hear a story with care and attention. Then, only when it comes time to hear that story, can we shift our focus to re-creating Christmas moments and memories from the past. 

Of course, I don’t think God is one bit surprised by this. In fact, I think this is all part of the Christmas story. We aren’t the first people to get wrapped up in our own things at Christmas and we almost miss the point. 

God is born into the world among a community that has little space or time for  Messiah. A world where the only available parents were two Israelites living in poverty. A world with no room for a baby to be born. And a world where social inferiors like Shepherds were the only ones to hear the Angelical announcement of Messiah’s birth. 

But God has chosen to join humanity in our mess, and that includes a messiness that has little room for Messiah. God chooses to come near anyway. God chooses to fulfill the Advent promises even as humanity is too busy with other things. 

I won’t tell anyone to try to hold back the Christmas memories in order to listen to the incarnation story more carefully and deeply… it is just too hard not to be transported back to Christmases of old when “Silent Night” starts playing on the organ. 

Instead, know that Messiah indeed has come. Messiah has come to fulfill the promises of God, right here amongst us. 

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Dying with Mary at the end of Advent? – Pastor Thoughts

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The end of Advent is coming into view

The fourth week of Advent turns the story of waiting and watching for Messiah to Mary, to a familiar story that we more closely associate with the Christmas – The Annunciation.  The Angel Gabriel appears to Mary telling her that she will bear a child. 

It is a part of the Nativity story that we tend to gloss over pretty quickly. Yet, it speaks deeply to our experience as people of faith and our current circumstances. The biblical narrative moves pretty quickly from the news delivered by the angel to Mary going off to live out her pregnancy with her cousin Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptizer). Joseph and Mary pick up the story right before the birth. 

Of course, anyone who has had to be pregnant knows that it is by no means quick and easy experience. 

Years ago, as the “decline” of Christianity in North America was just starting to be noticed by church leadership, I read an article by a clergyperson trying to describe and diagnose the church’s condition. She wrote that as a church we have begun to tire and slow down, that as a body we are transforming into something we don’t recognize and it feels like we are no longer in control of what is happening to us, we are headed towards something that we know will change us forever. Some would diagnose this as the symptoms of dying. However, the author of the article noted that these are also the symptoms of pregnancy. 

I cannot help but think about the birth of my son. As I walked with my wife through her pregnancy, every step made it clear that this was a thing happening to her. There is not a lot of control over one’s body and even less help to offer as a partner beyond foot massages and late-night snack runs. But when the due date came and went, we went to the hospital for a routine ultrasound before being induced. We were planning for lunch and the movies afterward. But the doctor told us that because there wasn’t enough fluid around the baby, it was time to be admitted to the hospital. Two days earlier than we expected… at the wrong hospital… with none of the bags or supplies that we packed for the birth. What followed were 48 long hours of not knowing when and how this child would arrive. 

The pop songs and nativity scenes do not do justice to the experience of waiting for a child that is coming on its own terms. You cannot help but carry feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, worry, confusion and frustration. You know, all the feelings that go along with Christmas, right?

The story of Mary’s pregnancy, the final story of Advent isn’t the Hallmark Holiday movie that we usually imagine the Christmas story to be. Still, it is a story that speaks to our real lives more than we like to admit. 

Those feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, worry, confusion and frustration are not just reserved for the last hours of pregnancy. They are the same feelings we have been carrying for years as a church, feelings exacerbated by the pandemic and an unstable world. Yet even as we think we just might be dying, this Advent story calls us to ask the question: Is the church dying or is the church pregnant and awaiting the arrival of new life among us that will change everything?

I am pretty convinced it is the latter, and that God is about to do something new with the church. It is just that we still have to endure the hardest parts of change and transformation first – things that we have little control over and that happen to us.

But once that new thing finally makes itself known to us – it will then be clear that God is transforming us and the world with light and life. 

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Questioning our identity in Advent – Pastor Thoughts

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Every so often, I find myself in a situation where someone is trying to figure out who I am and what I do. Maybe at a funeral, or a community event, sometimes when meeting other clergy from other denominations. One particular conversation stands out for me when I was serving at Messiah in Camrose, Alberta as the Senior Pastor of a large congregation. Upon meeting another minister in the community our conversation went as follows:

“Nice to meet you, Erik. So what do you at Messiah?”

“I am the pastor.”

“Oh? Is this your first call, just newly ordained?”

“Nope, this is my second call.”

“Oh, okay! So do you have a specific portfolio, like youth pastor?”

“Nope, I am the Senior Pastor”

“Oh wow really, the SENIOR Pastor! Really? Like in-charge-of-the-whole-congregation SENIOR Pastor?”

“Yup, that’s me. The SENIOR Pastor”

Now, fortunately, these types of conversations don’t happen all that often to me (ask my wife how often she is asked whether she is the daughter or granddaughter of a patient at the hospital, even while she is in a clerical collar). I don’t know if it is that I look young, or unsuitable to be a pastor to some folks. But it can be an odd feeling to encounter someone who cannot fathom that you are filling the role that you do. 

I imagine that people in all kinds of occupations encounter similar kinds of situations, yet I do know that if I were 20 years older, my beard grey and my tattoos covered up, I would fit the expected image of what a pastor looks like. 

The jobs we do, the professions we practice, and the vocations we bear are often such an integral part of our identity that it is more than just amusing or an annoyance for the folks around us to see us differently than we understand ourselves. It is questioning who we are at the core of our being, which can bring all kinds of discomfort and uncertainty. 

In this 3rd week in Advent, John the Baptizer is questioned in this way. The other religious leaders around him want to know how he fits into their world.  

As he is questioned about who he is, presumably so that the priests and Levites might control him or condemn him, John defers to the identity – the calling – given to him by God. 

John makes it look easy; but finding that grounding to root our sense of self is difficult. Those of us who aren’t called to be desert prophets live in worlds of community where our identities are constantly being refined against the perceptions of the people we interact with each day. Who we are can often depend on how the people around us treat us – on whom our family, friends, colleagues, and neighbours tell us we are. 

As we come to this middle portion of Advent, we shift from questions of cosmic meaning to finding refuge in the wilderness to wondering just who we are in this world. It is not an easy journey, but it is a path that is leading us to incarnation.  This path is leading us to Messiah, the one who is coming into our world in order to be close enough to look us in the eye and remind us again of who we are – God’s beloved.