Dear Friends,
The season of Advent is probably one of the least understood elements of the life of the church, as well as possibly one of the least fully-observed. The season is marked on the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day and is designed to promote reflection and devotional meditation on the impending coming of Jesus. This includes the Nativity at Bethlehem and the coming for which we all await now, the time to be united with Christ for all eternity (that is mostly marked on the first Sunday of Advent). Scriptures for the season also point us to the foretelling of the prophets in Hebrew scripture, the work of John, Jesus’s cousin, crying out in the wilderness, and the angel’s announcement to Mary of what was to come.
It’s common for the Sundays of Advent to be marked by a particular theme around which the scriptures and hymns and prayers for the day can be loosely organized. For this season the themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love are identified with the four Sundays of the season. It may be that, in a time when those properties seem especially lacking in the world around us, deliberate reflection on those ideas might be the best possible way to prepare for the coming of the Messiah in the birth of a child.
December 24 becomes a particularly active day when the calendar for Advent falls this way. The morning’s service will mark the fourth Sunday of Advent and then the Christmas Eve service at 5:00 that afternoon will bring in the season of Christmas with a lot of music and scripture, among other things, in a Service of Lessons and Carols. The following Sunday, December 31 (also known as the seventh day of Christmas) will feature possibly even more singing of music for Christmas, even if the rest of the world has moved on from Christmas by then.
One added feature this year will be a special service and lunch here at the church on Saturday, January 6 at 11:00 a.m. in observance of Epiphany, the festival marking the visit of the Magi to the child Jesus. The service marks the official end of the season of Christmas. A simple soup-and-sandwich lunch will follow, and at long last the decorations that went up on November 26 will be taken down.
I hope you will make extra effort to join in this season of preparation and celebration in the worshiping life of the church.
Charles