Prepare Now for the 7 Weeks of Advent

In 2009, King of Peace took part in an experiment toward a Seven-Week Season of Advent, instead of the typical four Sundays before Christmas. We learned how things could have gone better and I want to share those learnings as I think the experiment is worth widening. I am an evangelist for a 7-week Advent and want to encourage you to consider giving the expanded season a try.

The expansion of Advent is not some out-of-the-blue idea as Advent was once seven weeks long and remains so for the Orthodox Church (Russian and Greek Orthodox, etc.) to this day in an unbroken tradition. The goal is to reclaim the time for preaching and teaching about the second coming as was traditionally part of the season and remains so in truncated form now. I know how how counter-cultural Advent already is and find the expansion back to its historic length to be something worth considering, especially as the Revised Common Lectionary readings fit this without making any change.

How a 7-Week Advent Was Done Last Year
Our liturgy as we ended the Sundays after Pentecost was Rite II Prayer A with chairs which face the front very much as pews would. Green frontal on altar and ambo.

As we moved into Advent, we had no cloth on the ambo and the altar was moved to the center of our worship space with chairs arranged in a circle around it. The 4-foot square altar then has no one-sided frontal, but a blue cloth batiked in white by Anglicans in China. As we have a 36-foot wide Chartes-style labyrinth on the floor, this means the altar was in the center of the labyrinth and the round shape to the chairs feels organic and not forced.

We used Rite II Prayer B Penitential Eucharist. The prayers of the people are changed weekly, adapted from those in Liturgy Training Publication's Intercessions for the People. We used a seasonal blessing for Advent from the Book of Occasional Services. We also used liturgist Bill Petersen's seven Advent collects written for this project.

In previous years, we has an Advent wreath on the way into worship and replaced that with a seven candle stand so to show the same season is lengthened. That stand was on the altar but in retrospect, I would certainly move it off the altar, top a table as one enters the nave.

We do not have a choir and music is by piano except on fourth Sundays when it is guitars, dulcimer and drum. I used O Come, O Come Emmanuel in the spot of a hymn of praising with verses 1 and 2 in week one, verses 1 and 3 in week two and so on.

Preaching reflected seasonal themes found in the texts each week.

Music was a huge challenge, but we made it work. This needs improving over time. Some hymns from the Lutheran Book of Worship helped us expand available music on the fly.

We experienced not one single complaint, but that may be the nature of starting from scratch 10 years ago as much as anything. Positive comments have been few and centered on our beginning the church's anticipation before the craziness of Christmas season got cranked up. Largely I think the 7-week Advent experiment was greeted with an attitude of enjoying it mildly while being mildly indifferent.

What I Would Change
I think that my wife, Victoria, hit on the issue in naming the distinction between Lent and Advent. For Episcopalians, Lent involves some changes to both corporate worship and one's daily life, where Advent involves solely changes in corporate worship. This would need to change in order to transform a congregation's experience of Advent.

In past years, we have pushed materials we created on Celebrating Advent in the Home (see www.kingofpeace.org/advent/ ). As we have a lot of young families, getting them to do a nightly devotion helped cross this divide. I didn't have the time this year to create as a seven-week version, and so did not promote that in-home devotion. A seven-week Advent, needs other ways to encourage a sort of Adventen discipline, hopefully different from Lent. This would take thought and preparation, but could be important. I think suggesting that families take on an Advent discipline specifically designed to counter the rampant concumerism of the season is the direction to go.

What do y'all think? Are you game to gear up for Seven Weeks of anticipation? Why not make Advent even more counter-cultural at a time of year when the message of the culture (Buy More Stuff to Be Happy) most needs to be overturned.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Advent Evangelist

1 Corinthians 13 – a Christmas Version

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I’m just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I’m just another cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home and give all that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir’s cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child. Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband. Love is kind, though harried and tired. Love doesn’t envy another’s home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.

Love doesn’t yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way. Love doesn’t give only to those who are able to give in return but rejoices in giving to those who can’t.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, but giving the gift of love will endure.

~anonymous, from email

Advent Conspiracy

The Coming of the Light

…Christmas celebrates the dawn of the Light of the World. The powers of darkness are overcome by his coming to share our life. The long reign of sin is ended and grace has been poured out upon the earth. The Sun of Justice has arisen, and evil is vanquished.

Perhaps the hardest thing to remember about Christmas is this. "It celebrates the incarnation, not just the nativity. The incarnation is an on-going process of salvation, while the nativity is the once-for-all-historical event of Bethlehem. We do not really celebrate Christ’s ‘birthday,’ remembering something that happened long ago. We celebrate the stupendous fact of the incarnation, God entering our world so thoroughly that nothing has been the same since. And God continues to take flesh in our midst, in the men and women and children who form his body today. And the birth we celebrate is not just the past historical event but Christ’s continuing birth in his members, accomplished by the power of the Spirit through the waters of baptism.

…What we celebrate is our redemption in Christ and the transformation of all creation by the presence of the divine in our midst.

—from Sourcebook, 1996, Liturgy Training Publications

Advent Examination

Advent is the perfect time to clear and prepare the Way. Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace. By reflection and prayer, by reading and meditation, we can make our hearts a place where a blessing of peace would desire to abide and where the birth of the Prince of Peace might take place.

Daily we can make an Advent examination. Are there any feelings of discrimination toward race, sex, or religion? Is there a lingering resentment, an unforgiven injury living in our hearts? Do we look down upon others of lesser social standing or educational achievement? Are we generous with the gifts that have been given to us, seeing ourselves as their stewards and not their owners? Are we reverent of others, their ideas and needs, and of creation? These and other questions become Advent lights by which we may search the deep, dark corners of our hearts.

—Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac

Advent Virus

WARNING……WARNING: ADVENT VIRUS

Be on the alert for symptoms of inner Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to this virus and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

Some signs and symptoms of The Advent Virus:

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
• A loss of interest in judging other people.
• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict.
• A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
• Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
• Frequent attacks of smiling.
• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

Please send this warning out to all your friends. This virus can and has affected many systems. Some systems have been completely cleaned out because of it.

Incarnate for Us

Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time.

—Fire of Advent, from Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac


King of Peace's Advent materials are online here: Advent Resources and we also have a very popular PDF file in our archives: Celebrating Advent in the Home which includes a simple Advent wreath service for use each evenign between now and Christmas.

Advent Starts Sunday at King of Peace

Yes, I know that Sunday is November 8 and that means we have seven Sundays to go before Christmas. And yes, I know that expanding Advent seems more like what store owners might do than what a Christian church should do. But bear with me just a moment.

I shared a PDF here some weeks back that I have been reflecting on in the meantime: Anticipated Returns: The Advent project in which liturgist Bill Peterson shares the idea of expanding Advent back to its historic seven weeks as still practiced by Orthodox churches.

As we have a website visited by thousands each year for our Advent information and thousands more for our booklet Celebrating Advent in the Home which tout a four-week Advent, we will be practicing something other than what we preach. But at least we will be doing more, not less, than advertised.

This Sunday, we will begin the anticipation of Advent earlier than ever. We will see how this goes, reflect, report back to the project and decide what to do in future years.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Liturgical Experimentor

O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
who orderest all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Seven Weeks of Advent?

Liturgist Bill Peterson proposes that we expand the tradition four weeks of Advent which lead into Christmas to be a seven-week season. Click on the artwork here to read a journal article making this proposal. This is not some out-of-the-blue idea as Advent was once seven weeks long and remains so for the Orthodox Church (Russian and Greek Orthodox, etc.).

The goal is to reclaim the time for preaching and teaching about the second coming as was traditionally part of the season and remains so in truncated form now. I am intrigued by the suggestion. I know how how counter-cultural Advent already is and find the expansion back to its historic length to be something worth considering, especially as the Revised Common Lectionary readings fit this without making any change. Take a look at the article and let me know what you think.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Advent Online

There are a number of well thought out resources offered online to enhance your journey through Advent. Here are four you might want to visit:

Trinity Wall Street's calendar
That most monied of parishes continues its largesse online with a well done Advent calendar here: The Light Shines in the Darkness

Bokamaso Calendar
The Episcopal Diocese of Washington (D.C.) has an Advent calendar with a South African twist here: EDOW Advent Calendar with daily meditations from Episcopal Café and interviews with the young people at the Bokamoso Youth Program in Winterveldt, South Africa.

Eco-Advent Calendar
The Diocese of Connecticut is offering an Eco-Advent Calendar in PDF format to print.

Church of England
The CofE is offering the website Why We Are Waiting with daily offerings in Advent including a lovely fire going in the fireplace.

Advent

With that we are faced with the shocking reality: Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality. He asks you for help in the form of a beggar, in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing. He confronts you in every person that you meet. Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands. That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. He lives in the form of the person in our midst. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?

Christ is still knocking. It is not yet Christmas. But it is also not the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent – that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: “On earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.” Learn to wait, because he has promised to come. “I stand at the door…” We however call to him: “Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Keep Awake!

What is in question is not the coming of Christ,
but my own response. Am I ready?
—Thomas Merton
In tomorrow's Gospel reading, Jesus speaks of his second coming, telling his followers,

Keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.

The United Methodidts' General Board of Discipleship carry these thoughts on beginning Advent with apocalyptic writings:

The Christian Year begins at the endings. The good news of God's incarnation and reign in Jesus is only understandable as good news in that it marks the breakdown and end of the claim of every other reign. What the biblical writers knew, and we still know, is that every human reign is disordered, sinful, full of injustice and oppression. Those who hold the reins of power find ways to legitimate their way, to make it seem normal or even good. But those against or in spite of whom that power is exercised, often the silent or silenced ones (the poor, the sick, the dying, the outcast, the hungry, the persecuted, among others), know in their bodies and can carry in their psyches for generations the wounds and scars of these powers.

Advent tunes us into their voices. Advent reminds us that the good news we seek, indeed the only really good news there is, is precisely for them, and for us in their redemption. Advent lays before us starkly their usually silenced voices, the voices of prophets who speak to them from God, and the assurance that indeed the worlds that try to keep them silenced for their own benefit have only one future—utter destruction and replacement by God's reign.

As such, Advent can—if we let it—disorient us from the dominant culture's experience and expression of "Christmastime" and its thorough domestication of the wild prophet, God's own Son, Jesus, loudspeaker and embodiment of this world's end and God's reign coming upon us.

King of Peace's website has some resources for how to better use the four weeks leading up to Christmas. This season of Advent runs counter to the shopping-driven message of Christmas, to ground this time of year once again in expectation of God's presence in our lives. We have our Advent page, and an Advent Wreath service, as well as a PDF file Celebrating Advent in the Home.Finally, our archives contain the reflection Prepare for a Meaningful Christmas.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Celebrate Advent

Advent begins this coming Sunday, December 2. Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning "coming" and is the four Sundays before Christmas and the days in between. The season of Advent has been set aside as a time of preparation for Christmas since at least the last half of the 6th century. Advent is a time for self-examination and asking for forgiveness as the church is preparing for Christ’s Second Coming even as it prepares for Christmas.

To assist in observing this season, King of Peace provides a free booklet, Celebrating Advent in the Home available in print form at the church and online: .PDF format here. Included is a nightly Advent Wreath service as well as other practical suggestions for marking the four weeks leading up to Christmas.

We also offer web pages with information on the season here: Celebrate Advent.

One more way to share the joy of Christmas is to send a note of thanks to a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine serving overseas this year. There is a program by Xerox to help you do just this: Just Say Thanks.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church