First Friday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Jeremiah’s Call and First Visions4 The Lord gave me this message: 5 “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.” 6 “O Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I can’t speak for you! I’m too young!” 7 The Lord replied, “Don’t say, ‘I’m too young,’ for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. 8 And don’t be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and will protect you. I, the Lord, have spoken!” 9 Then the Lord reached out and touched my mouth and said, “Look, I have put my words in your mouth! 10 Today I appoint you to stand up against nations and kingdoms. Some you must uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow. Others you must build up and plant.”
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
For the choir director: A psalm of the descendants of Korah.1 Lord, you poured out blessings on your land! You restored the fortunes of Israel. 2 You forgave the guilt of your people— yes, you covered all their sins. Interlude 8 I listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people. But let them not return to their foolish ways. 9 Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, so our land will be filled with his glory. 10 Unfailing love and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed! 11 Truth springs up from the earth, and righteousness smiles down from heaven. 12 Yes, the Lord pours down his blessings. Our land will yield its bountiful harvest. 13 Righteousness goes as a herald before him, preparing the way for his steps.
Acts 11:19-26
The Church in Antioch of Syria19 Meanwhile, the believers who had been scattered during the persecution after Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the word of God, but only to Jews. 20 However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene began preaching to the Gentiles about the Lord Jesus. 21 The power of the Lord was with them, and a large number of these Gentiles believed and turned to the Lord. 22 When the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he arrived and saw this evidence of God’s blessing, he was filled with joy, and he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord. 24 Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. And many people were brought to the Lord. 25 Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to look for Saul. 26 When he found him, he brought him back to Antioch. Both of them stayed there with the church for a full year, teaching large crowds of people. (It was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.)
NLT
“No Justice, No Peace”: The Posture of Lament in Anticipating Restoration
by Xenia Chan
Xenia Chan Ling-Yee 陳靈兒 is a Ph.D. Candidate (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) at Regis-St. Michael's College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. As a former pastor, her scholarly work is informed by the present condition of the Canadian evangelical church, particularly the churches within the Sinophone revivalist tradition in Canada. Her work at present deals with Jeremiah's Confessions.
When the news of the national security bill had indeed been passed in Hong Kong, my stomach dropped through the floor. The last few months had already had me on tenterhooks, a low thrum of tension and scraped nerves—through the protests and the violence and the thought of home in such utter crisis. Was I seeing double—was I still truly in 2020 or had it somehow already become July 1, 2047?
On this side of the Pacific, as we entered into Canada Day, there seemed to be fewer things to celebrate. The pandemic has illuminated disparity and ills in our society on multiple levels, and the question of life has become sharply obvious an ethical question: whose lives matter? Are others truly our responsibility? Am I my brother’s keeper?
Peace, peace, they cry out.
The tragedy is that our mutual proximity to disaster and trauma has not, in fact, unified us. The divisions casually brushed over—with Canadian politeness or misguided churched values of “peace” and harmony—have never been so amply clear. This summer, the blood of our black and Indigenous brothers and sisters continues to cry out from the ground, how long, O LORD?
But there is no peace.
*****
I feel deeply uncomfortable with the level of outrage that experiencing and seeing injustice provokes within me. Yet, as New Testament scholar Esau McCaulley notes,“the demand to be calm and measured when dealing with matters of life and death runs against the prophetic grain” of our scriptures.[1] This demand, in part, arises from reading the scriptures with solely Western eyes—the notions of civility, rationality, and the disdain for emotionality. The hegemonic reach of Christendom is such that no evangelical community is untouched by Western-isms. This, in turn, has made our understanding of the scriptures and its transformational task in our lives and our communities anemic at best, and at worst, violated. The heresy of divorcing the Second Testament from the First has not helped, either.
In my own diaspora community, the tendency is to bury disagreement and conflict under guise of the urgency of the gospel: that somehow anything unpleasant brought to the light might discredit the witness of the gospel and prevent the salvation of lost souls. Historically this has happened again and again. The tensions created in the aftermath of the unrest in Hong Kong collided with anti-Chinese (now broadly, anti-Asian) sentiments: simmering towards full boil. We do not understand what justice has to do with peace—or with the gospel.
So, where does this leave us? If the charges directed at us are as dire as I have laid out, then what can be done to rectify what has been already done? What hope do we have?
*****
Our second passage today is Psalm 85. The psalmist and her congregation are perhaps in circumstances not unlike where we find ourselves today, and she responds by leading the congregation in a communal lament.
There are a few things to note here. First is the idea of God’s covenant and that the covenant is dependent on the character of God—his steadfast loyal love and his constant orientation towards relationship with his people and creation. Second is that though the covenant remains, relationship between God and his people have been ruptured. Yet, the psalmist is confident that God’s character is such that he will deliver and restore his people; she calls her congregation to that same confidence that God will speak shalom over them.
But what does it mean to be the people of God?
Verses 8-11 speak of a people who demonstrate God’s steadfast, loyal love, who live in God’s communal righteousness, and who live out God’s shalom. All of this is in context to relationship with God, our neighbours, and creation. Only then will we flourish; this, in essence, is what justice is.
Put another way, we cannot truly understand righteousness without considering the welfare of our neighbour.
We cannot say that we truly demonstrate love until we begin to understand the sort of commitment and loyalty with which God loves us.
We cannot truly proclaim peace without understanding our structures and systems, and whether they move us towards flourishing, or not.
As Old Testament scholar Walther Zimmerli reminds us, it is “never blind Justitia. [Justice] is always understood as an aspect of open-eyed compassion… divine demand for compassion towards the weak and the poor.” As a whole, the yearning for justice points our gaze to the plight of those who have been oppressed and speaks life into those experience. Paying attention and acting accordingly—as God does—recalls us to the flourishing that God intends for all of creation.
*****
If our communities ought to be places defined by justice, then how might we respond individually and as the Church? What does it mean to live in the hope that God’s intention for the restoration of creation is being and will be realized?
Like the prophet Jeremiah, we who know the Word have it as a burning fire shut up in our bones (Jer. 20:9). God’s character, his attributes, and his orientation towards right relationship ought to be so pressing within us that we cannot hold it in. Our relationship with the living God both grounds us in his restorative Presence (Jer. 1:8) but also radically compels us to look seriously at our neighbours’ grievances and the ways in which the world is not right (v.10). This moves us to lament with God, recognizing our potential to be intermittently oppressor and oppressed and wrestling in earnest with God at the state of affairs in our world. In our recognition, we begin to make room for the restorative Presence of God because we come to know how much we too need to be delivered and restored.
Our place in this time and space is no accident. God knows us intimately, and also knows what he is calling us towards (vv.7-10). We who have the Word are called to proclaim it, and to announce the restoring Presence of God—the Incarnation—is once again among us. The Good News takes seriously both the reality of our current circumstances and also proclaims that eschatological hope is even now being realized, just as it is still to come. From recognition of what the Good News is and how the Presence of God is moving among us, we begin to understand how it is we are to emulate the Incarnation—in our neighbourhoods, towns, villages, cities, and our world.
Personally, I have been convicted by the entanglement between lament and hope. The temptation is to remain in despair (or conversely, to try to fix things myself), but the act of lament pushes me to look beyond myself and settling for the status quo. In recognizing where we have lost the plot of things, what grounds me is the knowledge that Jesus is ever at work and is, by his Spirit, restoring all things, including his Bride. There is space for us to grieve and rage, even as we hope together for deliverance and restoration and partner with the Spirit in the work of creating communities of shalom.
This Advent season may feel strange, but in the greater narrative of the Christian story, perhaps we are just coming back to where we ought to have been all along. As we begin to prepare to celebrate the coming of Jesus, it is lament which makes hope evident—to understand why precisely we need the Incarnation.
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[1] Esau McCaulley, November 2, 2020, 2:34PM https://twitter.com/esaumccaulley/status/1322985323052388355?s=19
Read previous Advent Reader posts:
Joy to the world!
It might be a cold and broken hallelujah, but it's a hallelujah nonetheless.
We made it.
Despite the backdrop of injustice, the broken, decay, unlikely and at times discouraging spaces the people find themselves in, the prophets echo the sentiment of Isaiah 9 more often than we may recall: “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness a light will shine.”
A pandemic is an interesting time to have health care workers in your life, as I do. In normal times, I expect to hear stories of sick people and families struggling with loved ones’ illnesses. But what I did not expect during this time are the constant stories of stress and anxiety. Working in health care is always stressful. But this year’s pandemic has accentuated many of these stresses..
Sometimes the most profound truths come to us from humble teachers. A few years ago, after a particularly difficult day at work, I bought myself a small potted plant as a pick-me-up (I know, I know - emotional spending, but never mind that now)..
Two thousand years of patriarchy have undoubtedly diminished the powerful words of the two women in our readings. Today we will centre one, a voice that comes to us in the form of a song…
When I hear the word home, I find myself flooded with memory and meaning. I see the familiarity of shoes scattered over mats in the garage of my childhood, smell buns baking on busy Saturday mornings, feel the pulls and aches of being misunderstood and simultaneously cherished…
When people talk about “biblical manhood” I think of Samson, the manly man. There he is, rolling out from under a Camaro, wrench in his teeth, sweat on his brow, oil stain on his bicep and, of course, glistens of divine approval on his mullet of biblical proportions. He is awesome…
For the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of being a part of the New Leaf Network Design Shop, the online edition. While moving the event online had some limitations, it did allow us to have English-to-French translation provided in realtime for our Francophone participants. It was a sight to behold watching our skilled translators work so hard to keep up, and by all accounts, they did an excellent job…
Advent. Waiting for God to come close. Our passages today remind us that our God is an intimate God. He likes close proximity to us…
Three hundred hand-folded origami butterflies, tenderly wrapped in torn sheet cocoons, threaded onto fishing line and hung across our sanctuary. An art installation to kick off lent, a reminder that in the darkness, in our proverbial piles of goo, in the waiting, God cocoons us in his hands, transforming us with her grace. The big reveal was to come Easter Sunday morning. Our church family would enter the sanctuary and be met with the bright colourfulness of 300 butterflies soaring above them. The waiting over, the tattered cocoons lying at their feet, the transformation complete. But that day has yet to come.
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. Lord hear my voice…”
The psalmist pens a cry universal to our experience. Perhaps, the deep longing strikes a more poignant and universal chord during this year of pandemic disruption and, often unwelcome, change…
I am a neighbourhood pastor. Some days I am not sure what that means. Pastors who see their pulpit as their home base have a focus for their week. They know what to get on about. Other pastors who see their programs and leadership as their passion have their work before them…
When the news of the national security bill had indeed been passed in Hong Kong, my stomach dropped through the floor. The last few months had already had me on tenterhooks, a low thrum of tension and scraped nerves—through the protests and the violence and the thought of home in such utter crisis…
Not long ago, I was asked to do a devotional for a group of young people just coming off a year-long intensive mission program. What to say? I remember that kind of transition in my own life as a student, and how hard it was to switch from mission life to “normal” life. And my mind went to a conversation I once had with my wife about Lord of the Rings…
“YHWH, do something!” Habakkuk does not mince his words when he presents his complaints before God. As he watches Judah implode from injustice and immorality, he cries out to God with urgency and desperation…
I was standing in a church basement on a cold winter day in Edmonton when I received one of the most honest compliments of my life. “Overall, you’re not an a**hole." I mean, does it get any better than that?
The subtle invitation of the readings for this second Tuesday of Advent is to “listen.” But, to listen on a Tuesday? Tuesday is a day of the week that finds us in full activity. It is not Monday when we start the week and plan for the days to come. It is not a Wednesday or Thursday when we are in the middle of the week to see how we are doing. Finally, it is not a Saturday or a Sunday where we evaluate the week, we give thanks, and we recover. It is simply a Tuesday. In any event, today's readings invite us to “listen.”
Over the summer, my wife and I decided to have our kitchen renovated. The old kitchen had been around for over 3 decades (which actually meant it was older than my wife!) and it was in huge need of a makeover…
Twice a year, spring and fall, in most parts of our country, we change our clocks one hour either ahead or back depending on the time of year. Sometimes regardless of the reminders from friends, the media, we forget. Several years ago, when I had just moved to Fort Frances I was on the schedule to lead the early worship service at 9:00 am…
In the Advent season, we remember that Jesus came from Heaven to live on earth, and we anticipate his imminent return. But what we should also do is reflect on what Jesus’ coming has to do with our lives today. Do we know who Jesus is and what He is doing among us? How can we faithfully participate in His work on earth?
When the news of the national security bill had indeed been passed in Hong Kong, my stomach dropped through the floor. The last few months had already had me on tenterhooks, a low thrum of tension and scraped nerves—through the protests and the violence and the thought of home in such utter crisis…
As I write this we have a big appointment for someone in my house tomorrow. It’s a medical appointment that we’ve been waiting on for more than a year and a half. There’s a lot riding on it, and there’s no way to know whether it will be helpful or unhelpful….
Last year I burned out. Before the world hit a pandemic pause, my own world halted. Looking back, I can see now that disruption was a gift to me. But at the time I only felt exhausted.
I’ve always been a little afraid of the second coming of Christ. There’s a lot of good things in the world and there were so many things I wanted to experience before we were all “whisked away to that spirit in the sky.”
As I approach Christmas this year it is with a certain resignation. I want to plan. I want to be scrolling through advent liturgies for the kids to read Sunday mornings as our tiny church family joins to light the candles on the advent wreath.
Isaiah's very powerful and poignant plea to God to split the sky, shake the earth, and settle the score is such an earthy and familiar request.
I’ve been there. Often.
Welcome to the third annual New Leaf Advent Reader. We are so glad you are here with us to journey through Advent while reflecting on change and disruption.
Explore last year’s Advent Reader:
Dear Advent readers,
Thank you so much for going on this Advent journey through scripture and reflections with us…..
I lost hope this Christmas season.
I didn’t mean to, in fact, I’m not even sure where exactly I lost it.
But lo and behold, somewhere between the eggnog and the garland, I slowed down enough to realize my trusty sense of “all manner of things shall be well” had gone missing. Had I misplaced it? Did it disappear forever?…
At the conclusion of this Advent season, I wonder how many times you have thought of Christmas as the opportunity to live free from idols?…
Our second son was born mid-January, and the December before he arrived was a Christmas season like no other. I grew up familiar with the contours of the Christmas Story: the stable, angels, shepherds and wisemen. I’ve heard (and preached) many sermons about the miracle and wonder of it all, God-with-us!
But that Christmas was something special.
My children are heavy in my lap, three and six years old, cozy on our couch watching televised British people bake. These children snuggle into me. Their heads smell of shampoo and the faint sweaty sweetness of outdoor play in toques….
The strong was made vulnerable, made helpless, made refugee, and made all with the authority and the backing of the God of the universe. The King is coming, and sometimes the hope of the coming King catches my breath and all time around me stops….
Christmas was perhaps one of the more magical times of year when I was young. It was particularly special for my mom. Every year she would decorate the house inside & out like she was from the Griswold family….
In the early morning hours post-election of the now famed, Donald Trump, I held my then 8-month-old in distress. What kind of world had I brought a child into?…
Have you ever had something you needed to say, but your body refused to say it?
When I think about silence and speech in the Christmas story, I remember the priest Zechariah, whose ability to speak was removed by the angel Gabriel until after his son, John the Baptist, was born. How ironic,…
Today’s reflection is based on Jude, that tiny one-chapter letter in the New Testament we mostly skip over to get to the metaphorical circus of Revelation. This is fitting, however, because Jude was a Holy Fool.…
If you grew up in pretty much any part of the church in the 1980s or after, you probably have memories of the almost-acceptably-cheesy praise song “As The Deer” which is based on one of our readings for today – Psalm 42..…
Today, as I read Isaiah 35, I thought of a few things. I found myself remembering the actions of an old Sunday School song we used to sing using the words of these verses – miming putting a crown on our heads, making motions of sweeping as we talked about sadness and joy fleeing away, and giggling as we would sweep our hands towards the friends around us, turning the song into a game...…
In the past, when Advent approached, it was a mix of Christmas songs, carols, Santa Claus parades, Christmas card exchanges, workplace dinners, and gift exchanges. Along with volunteering with The Salvation Army, Christmas light drives at night, church musical outreaches, and children’s school holiday concerts. I’m already tired just thinking about it.
It’s always the fire, isn’t it? As a young lad, I would spend an hour every week stuck in a church pew without a kids program or snack bag to comfort me. Perhaps it was here that I first heard…
The Christmas Eve candlelight service is about to begin. After a day of unsuccessfully trying to avoid meltdowns from over-excited kids, running to the store for one last bag of milk, and racking your brain to remember where on earth you stashed those gifts you bought back in August, you sink wearily into the pew.
Reading Scripture can be tricky. I think we often fall into a trap when we read about the lives of our spiritual fore-parents. We sit in our comfortable armchairs with our leather-bound book filled with crisp, white pages and wonder to ourselves how “they” could be so foolish and unfaithful. Of course, if we could put ourselves in their places we would know how gritty and difficult their faith journeys actually were.
When we scroll through social media for the 18th time, or listen to the latest news events, it’s often draining. The world sounds like a mess with no end in sight and we–WE–are a part of it. The messy part.
When we scroll through social media for the 18th time, or listen to the latest news events, it’s often draining. The world sounds like a mess with no end in sight and we–WE–are a part of it. The messy part.
I grew up in a congregation with a deep love of choral music. For many years, I joined the men’s choir to sing at the Christmas Eve Candlelight service because I always looked forward to singing Es ist ein Ros’ entsprugen (Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming) in four-part male harmony.
The first theologian who introduced me to the concept of Advent being something other than an effervescent, sparkling, anticipation-filled countdown to Christmas, was the Rev. Fleming Rutledge. As I watched a recording of her declaring ”The significance of the birth of Jesus Christ will forever elude us if we are unable to take an inventory of the gravity of the human condition”, something in me said a quiet yes.
I hadn’t been home for Christmas in five years.
It was December 23, 2008, and I vibrated with excitement as we exited our car in the Orlando Airport parking garage. My husband was wrestling luggage from the trunk as I unstrapped our toddler from his car seat. In just a few short hours, this little guy would be spending Christmas with his grandparents for the very first time.
The liturgical season of Advent is a space where the mixed emotions of longing and grief are given space to sit in tension. In contrast to the “Christmas season” filled with Christmas parties, one more gift exchange to buy a gift for, hunting for the most desired gift on a child’s wishlist and preparing far more food than is good for many of us. Creating space for the tension between what we long for and the struggles that are immediately before us is a delicate task.
In the Christian tradition, Advent is a season of great hope and possibility. God has come to dwell among human beings, setting in motion something new and mysterious – the kingdom of heaven emerging in our earthly dimension.
“I don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep,” I hear these words spoken from the backstage, where I stand, waiting in the wings for my next cue. I watch Marie, who is playing Scout Finch lean her head against Atticus, and I see the shine of tears in the eyes of the audience in the first row. Tonight, as with each previous performance, we all weep. The story doesn’t end as we expect; it’s all gone terribly wrong.
In the sparkly season of Christmas, I often feel out of sync when life is stressful or dark or just full of emotions. I know that Christmas can be full of happiness for many people, but sometimes I just feel the pressure to do Christmas “right” when I can’t muster up the requisite joy on my own.
Today’s reading in Isaiah is such a clear picture of a world I want to be a part of. Isaiah invites us to imagine a future in which God’s reign is at the centre of our world. A future where God’s judgment, true and just, begins to settle the disputes of many peoples.
Tomorrow is the beginning of Advent. Here on the New Leaf Blog, we are going to be journeying through Advent together with writers from across Canada. The New Leaf Network is a Canadian network spread across this northern country.