the Third Saturday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Isaiah 66:7-11
7 “Before she goes into labor, she gives birth; before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son. 8 Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children. 9 Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the Lord. “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God. 10 “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice greatly with her, all you who mourn over her. 11 For you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts; you will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance.”
Psalm 80:1-7
For the director of music. To the tune of “The Lilies of the Covenant.” Of Asaph. A psalm.1 Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth 2 before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh. Awaken your might; come and save us. 3 Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved. 4 How long, Lord God Almighty, will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? 5 You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful. 6 You have made us an object of derision to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us. 7 Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
Luke 13:31-35
31 At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! 34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
NIV
Gather us unto your Nourishing Breast
by Jenn Burnett
Jenn Burnett is a Resonate Local Mission Leader for Western Canada and has received her doctorate from Portland Seminary. She longs to see the body of Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit and contending for unity across difference. She also loves rugby, the outdoors, the colour orange and the chaos that goes with raising 4 kids.
Growing up, Christmas was a relatively quiet experience. My mom often worked through the holidays, and living on a hobby farm meant we weren’t going far if we were to go anyway. The one day I’d look forward to was the one day my aunt, uncle and cousin would come to visit. I loved having extra people in the house! By the time I was a teen however, I began to sneak extra people into our quiet family celebrations. If a friend would otherwise be alone, I’d insist they come to my house. Once I had my own house, my instincts expanded to gathering people in. I love when there are too many people to have matching dishes and it seems just right when the people are different enough to keep it awkward. When I added little ones to the mix, I still had an eclectic collection of folks willing to step into the chaos to seek pastoral input or to simply join in for a celebration. It warmed my mother’s heart to watch friends from all walks of life play Lego on the floor or get sucked into the latest Mario video game alongside my kids. These are the moments I long for at Christmas.
Advent is a time of gathering from the darkness towards the light. Of aching and yearning for that slip of light to expand and fill me, pushing back the fear and isolation. The last two years have been overtaken with an expanding dark, like a tumour overtaking a body. Pressing more urgently on vital organs; cutting off life-sustaining arteries. The cancerous fear has disrupted relationships and gatherings, all the while decreasing the appeal of communal life—the usual veins where the Spirit might flow through.
In isolation, people have been reduced to dichotomous positions over so many issues that it is nearly impossible to find relationships to feel secure in. Fear of the other has been nurtured and perpetuated through news and social media. Complexity and nuance have been erased and with it, the texture, smell and taste of diversity. We have become a dispersed people.
The Pharisees knew how to scatter the people through fear tactics as well. They hoped it would work on Jesus. Herod will kill you, they warned. The government wants you to die. Stop what you are doing. Run away and scatter.
Instead Jesus insisted on gathering. Driving out demons and healing people. Casting out the principalities that promoted fear and replacing them with miracles that gestured to heavenly hope. The impossible made possible by divine presence. Light, expanding into the darkness. The scattered, drawn to the light.
In our Lukan passage, Jesus is rejecting intimidation strategies by persisting in caring for the vulnerable. It’s as if he says “No, I will undermine your tough-guy tactics by tending to the pain of those on the margins and releasing them from the torment of demon possession.” The Pharisees and demons are disarmed by Jesus gathering the burdened one-by-one.
But there is a tension when gathering the scattered, awkward, less socially-adept: they aren’t uniform. The thing about those on the margins is that, often, all we have in common is that we are not the centre. Around Jesus, some would have been ill, others people with disabilities. The demon-possessed may have been violent. Or perhaps attached to exploitative owners. Some might have been experiencing addiction as a balm for their pain. Others, experiencing mental illness and choosing isolation. In fact it is quite likely that this disparate group had often competed against one another for the leftovers from the majority; division due to trauma, disagreement, scattered by fear.
Jerusalem has treated the vulnerable with contempt, instilling fear. Yet Jesus’ nurturing heart longs to draw them back together. Is there a house to draw them back to? Has the church too become a place so filled with fear that we have lost the place to regather?
My mothering instincts are kicking in again. I long to gather all who are isolated into the fold, like a mother hen who gathers her chicks. But my family feels much more fragile than it did before: my husband is a front-line health worker and people have not always been kind. He continues to watch the most vulnerable suffer and die. My youngest is not yet able to be vaccinated. These are the ones that must first be nourished and cared for; this family is my first responsibility to nourish back to wholeness. But this year, I could bring one more home. Maybe two. Light slips back in. Even Jesus healed one at a time, and gathered one-by-one. One mismatched plate set. One more player for Super Mario something-or-other. One less left alone.
Nurturing Creator,
We confess we have allowed fear to scatter us.
We have sought scapegoats to blame for our hardship rather than taking collective responsibility.
We have allowed seeds of suspicion to grow into choking weeds of division,
And we have paid the price with ever-increasing anxiety and a toxic kind of individualism.
Have mercy on us and move us once more toward flourishing.
Draw us under your wing, and as you draw us, let us draw another.
Draw us to your nourishing breast, and as you draw us, let us draw another.
Draw us into your fold of misfits, and as you draw us, let us draw another.
And as we do, we celebrate the gift of awkward community.
We praise you Jesus, the one who gathers us unto life.
Amen
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Read previous Advent Reader posts:
As the scene opens, in Luke 2, there are no indications that tonight would be unlike any other night. The ones keeping watch are not an elite military unit or a secretive spy agency. Just an ordinary group of shepherds pulling another night shift.
I cannot remember a time in my life where I have heard the word peace more often than I have in the last few years. It seems everyone everywhere is longing and calling for peace.
Maybe you've heard it in the cries of Canadian protestors who took to the streets over police brutality, racism, and the uncovering of the unmarked graves of Indigenous children. "No justice, no peace"…
As I write this Advent devotional, my heart is heavy. Heavy with the weight and tension of 2021. Heavy with pandemic tensions, the tensions of racial unrest, family tensions, health concerns. This year, my roads have been barricaded, my finances eroded, my relationships damaged, and my children hurt…
Christmas 1914—it was only five months into the First World War. Cultural memory remembers this war as senseless and wasteful, ending an era of stability for the West. I was taught in school that this was the war that disabused the West of their own civility in war—with the introduction of chemical warfare, machine guns, and far more powerful artillery than the world had seen up to this point…
I am not sure when I first became aware of the way my subconscious converses with my conscious self through song. But in the same way you begin to see the same car you just purchased, around every corner, I notice it happening all the time now…
We live in a world that can easily consume us with its catastrophes, commercials and cacophonies. These come at us from our larger world, or our smaller worlds; there is noise from every side vying for our attention, trying to prop up some image of what an ideal world or life should be…
“Mary was a total bada**!” she blurted out, and then almost immediately covered her mouth. This spontaneous (and hilarious) outburst happened one Sunday morning while our community was walking through Mary’s Song, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-53)…
Growing up, Christmas was a relatively quiet experience. My mom often worked through the holidays, and living on a hobby farm meant we weren’t going far if we were to go anyway. The one day I’d look forward to was the one day my aunt, uncle and cousin would come to visit…
The past few months have been a particular season of stillness and readiness in Advent for my wife Bonnie and I. This has been one of the hardest years I can remember, encompassing family losses, pandemic social collapse and isolation, health failures, and surgery…
I have found that seasons of waiting tend to come and go in intensity and I’m coming out of one of the tougher ones for me right now. During this past June and July, the time from Monday to Friday seemed to take extra long…
A little over a year ago, I sat in a park, bundled up with a small group of people trying to safely do church in the midst of a global pandemic. Beside me sat a man about my age, whom I hadn’t seen since well before the start of the pandemic…
Today’s text from Isaiah brings to mind the many tree stumps dotting the perimeter of our home. When we moved here our single acre of land was ringed with overgrown box elder, or Manitoba maple. These trees grow like weeds but have a short lifespan. Wind storms have felled a number of them; the stumps are what remain after we clean up the fallen trees…
I’m gonna just say this flat out: I felt a leetle bit of excitement when I read the first reading from Numbers today.
I know that doesn’t make me look good. I know that this is one of those stories that we are supposed to struggle with in Scripture, and I promise that I do…
I grew up singing and have always loved to sing. We sang together as a family during evening devotions. My first memories of singing are from when I was 4 years old and my sister was 3….
“If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.” That’s been my favorite bumper sticker, and I just found it on a t-shirt for sale this Christmas.There’s a lot in this world and in myself to be outraged about this year; anger has been a great fuel to get out there, right some wrongs and feel a little more self-righteous along the way…
I went to bible school way back in the 1990s. This was before the fancy technology of today. My computer was a word processer with a 4-inch screen. We made calls on the communal dorm payphone shared by thirty students. Cellphones were not around quite yet, so people communicated by writing notes to each other instead of texting…
In mid-September, I started a 100-Day Dress Challenge, which means I have worn the very same dress every day for two and a half months. Sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? Maybe it is, but it has also been freeing; decision fatigue is a real thing, and I experience less of it when I have fewer decisions in the morning related to what I wear…
For most (all?) of us, the past year and a half has shifted our understanding and experiences of time. I can no longer remember whether the pandemic started in 2020 or 2019. If you ask me when I last went to a sports game or a concert, it simultaneously feels like six months and six years ago…
For what do you most deeply long?
For the people to whom Isaiah spoke,
the people who were in exile,
their longing was clear:
a safe way through the wilderness,
and a path home again.
Here’s the Infinitum Christmas Plan take on the old discipline of ‘divine reading’.
First Movement: Peruse. Peruse means ‘read (something), typically in a thorough or careful way. Before you start, ask the Lord to open the eyes of your heart for this exercise and then read slowly, curiously, and aggressively…
Some things in life cannot be rushed.
Hasn’t our experience with COVID and all its associated uncertainties taught us that? We’ve been tentatively trudging our way out of isolations, shut-downs, and cancellations for a while now, and we still don’t know if COVID is over.
Because some things in life cannot be rushed…
When I first saw this painting, I was struck by the contrast between the image’s cold setting and its warm colour tones. I could feel heat radiating from the crowd on the left and the chilled air being breathed in by the workers in the field and by children at play…
“An evil generation demands a sign,” Jesus says.
I’m always looking for signs. A running transcript of my prayers might read something like this:
God, please show me what to do.
God, should I speak up? Should I stay quiet?
Is it time to start something new? Is it time to call it quits? To press pause?
Should I give that person a call, God? A text maybe? Or let them have some space?
Is now the time? Or, God, are you saying to wait?
God, please just show me what to do…
Growing up, my sisters and I built gingerbread houses and decorated them so thoroughly that the powdered sugar dust lingered in the curtains for weeks. We built palaces of icing and cookie sheets. But then the horrible reality set in almost immediately as we recalled The Great Law of Advent…
Advent is a season of expectation. We look back to the birth of Jesus and contemplate all that this event means for our lives. However, is it possible to gain a similar perspective from an event that has not yet occurred…
Thank you for joining us for the 2021 New Leaf Advent Reader. I am excited to share this collection of reflections from writers across Canada during the Advent Season. The authors are pastors and poets; historians and theologians; laypeople and church leaders. And they all come together to wrestle with the tensions of the Advent season…
Explore last year’s Advent Reader:
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.