Many people show up for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day services. But what do they get?
In my view, this sermon [see below] delivered by an Episcopalian priest in Aptos, CA could easily put to sleep all children present, teenagers and most adults including myself.
Yes, we as the congregation are there to participate fully in the litergy. How about the clergy delivering a sermon we can remember and or help us to live as Christians? Where is the quality control on sermon standards?
What say you?
Here are his words:
_______________
“The church year begins with “Advent†– a season that makes a blessing of our ambiguous situation, sometimes joy and sometimes anguish, being stretched between incredible promise and having to wait for fulfillment. I don’t know about you, but I resist waiting.
“We live between the immeasurable gift of God’s presence in this world as a human being with all that means for our potential as individuals and as the human race, the maturity and fulfillment that is promised – between all that and the disappointments of the daily grind.
“There is anguish in “between-ness.†We have evidence every day that our society, and all human society, falls far short. The more we desire goodness the more we feel the shortfall. We feel for those who are hurt or disadvantaged whenever someone acts out of fear and greed and thoughtless disregard.
“There is another discomfort in between-ness. We see the world fall so far short of the glory we’ve been shown, and we know that we so often contribute to the shortfall, by our actions or by what we leave undone, by our willfulness or by our lack of vision.
“And yet, it is only between-ness because there is glory. . .
” We have received in Christ a vision of what a restored humanity could be, and we have felt, in ourselves, what forgiveness and promise mean. We’ve been moved to courage we didn’t have before we knew forgiveness was real. We’ve engaged with life, with people, with needs that we wouldn’t have dared to because of the love of Christ that has come to live through us in this world. Hope gets restored here and there. We have intimations of glory that we might have been too cynical to entertain, until Christ became real to us in prayer or in community, in the Scriptures or in Holy Communion, however the Spirit makes that first entry into your life or my life.We are between. Between promise and fulfillment. Embarrassed, yes, but not without hope; and Advent is the season where we cherish that hope and nourish it. The season when we encourage prayer about the fulfillment – the glory – that God intends to bring about for all of creation. We encourage hope, in the form of an attitude of expectancy. “Watch†“Keep awake†“Prepare†are Advent words. We consciously, prayerfully cultivate a space in our lives, a wondering where God will make the next opportunity for us to act in love. We have to be awake enough to notice when we are being loved. Awake enough to notice when God is asking us to do some service, some kindness, some act of hope.
” God sometimes asks great things of us, never doubt that; but most of these moments in which we are needed to serve, to restore community, to restore hope in someone, most of them are a dime a dozen. I use that phrase deliberately, not to say they are unimportant, but to say that they are common. What is common matters. Hope in little actions matters. God doesn’t only call us to great and dramatic things, but in all kinds of little moments. It is when they become a way of life that we are becoming mature. It is when it becomes routine for us to be awake to others that we are awake to the Holy Spirit.
“When hope has been built into our lives, when a strengthening word, a ready hand, an understanding heart, a responsible act, a bit of generosity, a word that invites the cynical heart to trust – when these become routine – Advent is taking root. May God use this season and its disciplines so that Christ can be born in us, and among us, ever more deeply.”
_______________
from the Aptos Psychologist: <strong> Well, did the above wake you up? Assist you to beter uderstand the Birth of Christ which brings new life to you and yours?
When you go out tomorrow to get the newspaper on the driveway give blessings to God for the joy of breath, that you can walk and that you can love neighbor and family.
