Sunday, December 22, 2024 - Advent IV

 Is 29:13-24; Ps 80:1-7; Heb 10:5-10; Lk 1:39-45, (46-55)

"Choir of Singers"  David Arts

This Advent season, I have spent most mornings sitting at my desk watching the sun touch the sky with first light. It has been a beautiful reminder of one of the many ways the kingdom comes: darkness, slowly at first, then splendidly, losing ground. A rescue of sorts.

My thoughts have been hanging on that word rescue. My companions for today's reflection have been like sweets I have been savouring: the lectionary, Malcom Guite and Handel's Messiah, all speaking Kingdom in these days. 

To me, the readings for today, give ascent to the human longing for rescue. The world is unraveled, bent (as CS Lewis would say). Creation and humanity groan for the shalom of God. “How long o Lord” and “Come Lord Jesus” slip across my lips more frequently than in past years.  Perhaps it is age, perhaps it is global media keeping us up to the second on the sorrow of the worlds, regardless, I pray the words often. 

Inserted alongside the prayers I am breathing, is the gift of poetry. Malcom Guite in his beautiful collection of prayers for Advent opened my eyes more widely to the holy work of poets. They groan, in the sacred way the Spirit groans, for the world that needs life after death. The lament of poets is a fist in the air raised against the “not yet” wholeness of the Kingdom of God. I noted in the collection that the cry of the voices was not – when will Christians finally be given power, but a “when will You come in your power Jesus?” The poets of Guite’s text didn’t only raise their fists, they also pointed and exclaimed – here, see! The world is fraught with beauty too! 

Advent (aims) to rescue us from the temptation to want to be only one or the other: an escapist or a theocrat, a sentimentalist about the past or a utopian about the future, a Pollyanna about our world or pessimist… It isn’t easy living in God’s already-not-yet salvific economy. Living as in-between creatures is often painful, exhausting and disorienting business. But it’s not impossible. What are the helps that God offers?...We have the liturgy, the church calendar, we have the witness of faithful saints, and, above all, we have the Holy Spirit. We also have songs.  - David Taylor, theologian

I took in Handel’s Messiah again this year. (I don’t think one can “attend” it, you must receive it, take it in.) This time the proclamation of a very small portion struck me with wonder – “Great was the company of the preachers.” I was marked by the great company that was “preaching” to me that evening. I was reminded once again that God has come. God is coming. God was there.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
To raise our songs with joyful voice,
For to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice!  Rejoice!

                                              - Madeleine L’Engle – First Coming

And so, we preach on.

 

by Pamela Ukrainetz

 

 

Messiah: Part 2 "The Lord gave the word - great was the company of the preachers”

composed by George Frideric Handel

performed by English Chamber Orchestra & Choir  

conducted by Raymond Leppard