Ready for Advent II feast
What is the future you want to come home to?
Tom Sine
During the season of Advent I suspect most of us can call up some of our very best memories of coming home to a place of festivity and welcome by those who love us. Unfortunately that is not true for everyone.
I just came back from the bank on a beautiful brisk sunny day. For the first time I sensed that the teller, I will call Tamara, was troubled. She told me today that she is from Syria. Tamara, with evident concern, admitted that she is not sure if her parents are safe or not. I left the bank with a sinking feeling that she has no idea if she will ever come home again or if her parents will survive the ongoing violence.
As we celebrate Advent 2013 there are over 2 million Syrians who are not only refugees but many of them are at risk because of the ongoing war. At least 600,000 Filipinos are homeless this Christmas and countries all over the world are rushing to their aid. 172.000 Haitians are still in temporary shelters after the earthquake that destroyed their homes some time ago. Finally, there are still around 1.5 million Palestinians living in 58 refugee camps on the West Bank, Gaza, Jordon, Lebanon and other countries in the region for decades that have little hope of coming home.
As followers of Jesus how we respond to the urgent needs of our many homeless neighbors will be determined in part by notions of the future we believe Jesus invites us to come home to.
I was not raised in the church. I was converted into an evangelical faith. I was taught that coming home to God’s eternal world was all about my disembodied spirit going up to a non-material world in the clouds. Many people nurtured in this faith are still singing a song that I believe has more to do with the writings of Plato than the teachings of Jesus….”This world is not my home… I am just a passing through.”
Doesn’t popular eschatological literature of escape invite us to imagine going up at the rapture… leaving our clothes behind on airplane seats and leaving all the suffering behind? My first concern with this view of God’s purposes for the human future is that I am convinced it isn’t biblical. My second concern is that people who hold this view often seem to have very little concern for those that are left behind or even for the urgent needs that fill our world today.
Don’t most of the songs that Christians sing about coming home seem to be about us going up instead of Jesus coming down? We urgently need song writers to help us find some new images about coming home to this good world being restored and not destroyed.
In Surprised by Hope NT Wright invites us to re-discover a biblical vision of coming home that is not to a disembodied existence in the clouds. Instead he reminds us that the scripture teaches that that Jesus is coming down, the New Jerusalem is coming down…we are not going up. He argues convincingly from 1st Corinthians 15 that we will come home to a restored creation as a great bodily resurrected intercultural community…real bodies but different bodies just like our risen Leader.
One cannot read the Gospels or the prophets without realizing that God’s loving purposes are not just about changing us spiritually… as important as that is. God in Christ intends to make all things new. I am looking forward to coming home to a future in which the blind see, the deaf hear and lame run. I am looking forward to coming home to a future in which the broken are healed and all the refugees find their way home. I look forward to a future in which justice finally comes for the poor and oppressed and peace comes to the nations. I look forward to coming home to a future in which God’s good creation isn’t destroyed but restored with great celebration.
So Advent for me is always a great celebration of our best memories of coming home. But it is also an anticipatory celebration of the return of Christ when all things are finally made new.
Can I suggest this is not only a season of anticipation and celebration but a season of calling. Aren’t we called during this season of Advent to follow Jesus by making God’s purposes our purposes? Aren’t we called not to seek life but to lose life in service to God and others? Shouldn’t we as followers of Jesus to recommit our lives to God’s loving purposes for a people and a world?
I come to this season looking forward to Christine and I cooking and celebrating with friends old and new. It is my favorite season of the year. I am already planning the meals I plan to prepare.
But this year I feel nudged to find an intentional way to be a bit of God’s good news in my community every week. I made a call before I wrote this blog post to find a place I can make a little difference locally.
How is God inviting you during this season of Advent to not only celebrate the great homecoming but also to give expression to it in your neighborhood or God’s larger world?
Let us hear how you plan to both celebrate God’s great homecoming and seek to more actively advance it where you live.
Have a great celebration of Advent as homecoming with those you love.
Tom Sine is research guy at Mustard Seed Associates and hospitality guy at the Mustard Seed house. He has worked for many years as a consultant in futures research and planning for both Christian and secular organizations. His latest book is The New Conspirators
Today’s post is written by Lynne M Baab. Lynne is the author of numerous books on Christian spiritual practices, including Sabbath Keeping,Fasting, and Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation. She teaches pastoral theology in New Zealand. Her website has numerous articles she’s written about spiritual practices, as well as information about her books.
“Home” has been a hugely contested, even painful, term for me. My father was an air force pilot and we moved 12 times in my first 15 years. We spent five of those years in Europe. I’ve never felt at home in the U.S., and I have never really felt at home anywhere. The word “home” has often made me feel uneasy and sad. My husband, who lived in one small town from birth until high school graduation, would often say to me, “Our true home is in heaven.” I can give cognitive assent to that truth, but somehow it never helped me.
All this began to change in early 2011 when I read Crossings and Dwellings: A Theory of Religion. In it, Thomas A. Tweed argues that religion helps us create homes in four arenas: our bodies, the house we live in, our country, and the cosmos. He also says that religion helps us move between these homes.
My first personal response to Tweed’s theory was focused on my body. I’ve struggled with weight all my life and have often felt as if my body betrays me by wanting foods that are not good for me. In recent years my weight has been more stable and closer to normal, and I have become more “at home” in my body. While reading Crossings and Dwellings, I began to see that the first “home” I need to nurture is my own body. And I could see ways I’d done that in recent years, without using that language to describe it.
Advent is a great time to think about feeling at home in our bodies. Of course we know that God made our bodies, but that can feel a bit distant. God, way off in heaven, made this earth and each of us. The coming of Christ tells us that God is not far off in heaven but right here with us. In fact, God is right here with us in Jesus, who lived in a physical body just as we do. The New Testament gives us no hint that Jesus felt estranged from his body in any way. Instead, he seems to have felt at home in his body and this physical world, just as he felt at home in heaven and longed to return there.
The second personal application of Tweed’s theory came later in 2011 when I had a six-month sabbatical from my teaching position in New Zealand. I split that time between Seattle, where I spent 30 years of my adult life, and Europe, where I had spent time in childhood. In those months of moving between past places where I’d lived, I realized that I have several homes, and that’s okay. Seattle will always feel like home in one sense because I lived there longest. But my current hometown Dunedin, New Zealand, is wonderful, and I love many things about my house, my town and my adopted country. Dunedin feels like home now, in a way it didn’t before 2011. And a part of my sense of earthly home will always be in Europe because of my childhood there.
For the first time in my life, in 2011 I felt at home in all these places, rather than feeling at home in none of them. My faith in God, who became flesh and lived on this earth, enables me to move between homes because Jesus through the Holy Spirit is present in all my homes. Because the Holy Spirit dwells inside me, and because my body is the home that I take with me wherever I go, God is present with me in every place creating a home for me. But actually, God is present in those places before I get there and after I leave. I can watch for his fingerprints everywhere I go, and he will enable me to feel at home there.
Immanuel, God with us, who we anticipate throughout Advent and celebrate at Christmas, has changed my life in the past three years by helping me begin to feel at home in my body and by enabling me to experience various places as homes. My husband is right that our true home is in heaven, but in Advent we remember that Jesus brought that true home to earth in his flesh, and we are invited to dwell with him and let him dwell with us, truly at home in him, in our bodies, and in our houses and homelands.
As I write this, the sky outside is getting dark; ominous black clouds gathering, the harbinger of a coming tropical monsoon storm. Parts of my country Malaysia is submersed in the annual floods that plague this country in the monsoon period. The darkness of the gathering storm reflects the darkness of my soul. No, I did not have a bad year. In fact, 2013 will be considered by many to be a very successful year for me. I have received accolades for my medical work and medical teaching. I achieved the pinnacle in my academic development. I have presented a theological paper in an international conference, taught well received courses in theological seminaries, preached numerous sermons and led a couple of retreats. And many have been blessed by these. Yet, I feel empty. I feel a longing for something or someone. I feel homesick. C.S. Lewis has expressed what I am feeling well when he described that feeling he had as if hearing a familiar music from behind a door of a party you have not been invited to. The music invoking a sense of longing, a sense of homesickness of a home you have never seen before.
Advent, the season which leads to Christmas offers me this opportunity to express my homesickness. Christmas is the day we celebrate the birth of the Christ, God incarnate who took on human flesh. The almighty that became vulnerable as a newborn baby in Mary’s arms. The Messiah has come to take on the sins of the world so that all may be reconcile to the Holy Father. The Christ event has made possible my ticket home. This ticket was offered to me free by God’s loving grace. Like a person with amnesia, I may not remember what this home is like but I know that it will be a good place. This home will be where there is space for me to be me; with no pretensions or deceptions. Where I am loved for who I am, not what I do. Home is a space where I feel wanted and am comfortable in. Not an alien resident or squatter in a foreign land. This space is where I belong and am being part of. Coming to this home will be like I have never left. While I am here in this world, this home is still in me and will always be part of me.
Advent and Christmas promise new beginnings. Being at the end of December it is the closing of the year and a new year beckons. Many new journeys begin from home. We strike out from our safe comfortable homes on new quests of discoveries. Advent is coming back to base, rest and equip for another year ahead. Advent is homecoming. Christmas is home base. Then living forward to another quest; another year ahead of discovering the transcendent and immanent God in our daily lives.
Finally, Advent is coming home to another Christ event, that of His second coming. The return of the king will bring to an end the tremendous suffering of this groaning creation, and the billions of human souls on it. It will be an end to pain, suffering, loneliness and loss. The shalom of the Garden of Eden, the original perfect creation will be restored. And we will all come home, only to discover as T.S Eliot notes, it is where we all have began from.
Bio
Alex Tang lives in Malaysia, He is a paediatrician, associate professor of Paediatrics, practical theologian, and spiritual director. Please visit his website Kairos Spiritual Formation www.kairos2.com
The following is an excerpt from a post that I wrote for Shelovesmagazine.com The topic for the month is joy which is of course what the season is meant to be all about.
Tis the season of joy, or is it? As we move towards Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s coming, most of us are anything but joyful. One of my friends told me recently that she hates Christmas because she always eats too much, spends too much and commits to too much.
My friend is not alone.
The Christmas consumer frenzy focuses us away from the things that really matter and strips us of our joy. What we as individuals have come to see as important – individualism, status, and competition – diminishes rather than improves our happiness.
Consumption, not relationship, is the goal of society. Wealth, not happiness, is the measure of success.
Wait. Hope. See.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in God’s word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning
more than those who watch for the morning.
—Psalm 130:5-6
Advent. The season of waiting and preparing for the birth of Christ. But it’s not just about Baby Jesus, sweet and mild. Certainly we wait for Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s birth in history past, but we also wait for the risen Christ to come again.
In fact, the Gospel passage for the first Sunday of Advent—the first Sunday of the church year— is not the story of Jesus’ birth, not the story of the Annunciation or of Mary’s response to the angel’s startling proclamation, nor the story of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem. Rather, it is part of Jesus’ speech about the signs of the end of the age, when we will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27).
The Church’s choice of this passage speaks of the larger significance of Advent. Yes, Advent is a time of waiting and preparation leading up to Christmas—the celebration of Jesus’ birth in history—but ultimately, we are not waiting for Christmas; we are waiting for Christ’s return.
In English, the word “wait” tends to imply passivity, maybe even boredom. But this is not the implication that Jesus would have had in mind when he spoke of his disciples waiting for his return. In Hebrew, the word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.” Thus translators can render “Wait for the Lord” as “Hope in the Lord” with equal accuracy.
This linguistic equation of “wait” with “hope” means that for Jesus, immersed as he was in the language of the Hebrew Bible, there is no conceptual differentiation between waiting and hoping. They are one and the same activity. This melding is especially apropos during Advent, when we wait in hopeful expectation for the return of Christ. Henri Nouwen calls this “active waiting.”
Active waiting, he says, “means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.”
One of the traditions I find most helpful in cultivating this attitude of mindful—and hopeful—attention during Advent is our family’s nightly lighting of the Advent wreath.
Each week during Advent, we light an additional candle, proclaiming as we do so, “Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, the Light no darkness can overcome.”
The progressive lighting of the candles reminds us to wait with attentiveness through the darkness of December, because the Light who is coming into the world already shines in the darkness—if only we will watch and see.
I invite you to pay attention this Advent as you wait with hope for Christ to come—because the truth is, Christ has already come. We are waiting for something that has already happened! Jesus Christ is the Light of the world—right here, right now—the light no darkness can overcome.
So look up, look around: where is the light of Christ breaking through the darkness of the world?
And, please, do share a few of those God-sightings with others (maybe in the comments?). Let’s help one another see the light as we wait for the Light.
—an edited excerpt from The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year
Bio
Today’s post is by Kimberlee Conway Ireton. Kimberlee is the mother of four children, an avid reader, and the author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year and a recently released memoir, Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis. She and her family worship at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Seattle.
Advent is a season of waiting for the coming of Christ. Last week in my post Stable, Inn or Welcoming Home – Where Was Jesus Born and What Does It Matter? I talked about the first coming for which we wait, the remembrance of Jesus coming in the flesh, an infant whose birth captivates our hearts yet makes few, if any demands on our souls.
The second coming to which Advent calls our attention is the coming of the presence of God which makes Jesus present in our own lives today. Once more I wonder if we have relegated his existence to a stable rather than inviting him to share our homes. Are our hearts truly open to the coming of Christ to the full extent that he wants them to be? Are we willing to invite him into the innermost places of our lives where our broken, selfish natures reside recognizing our deep, deep need of his compassion, healing and forgiveness? Are we willing to surrender these places to his love so that they can be transformed and he can feel comfortable living there.
A couple of days ago, my scripture readings included the letter from Jude to the early church. It is possible that this letter was written by one of Jesus’ brothers. It is probable however that Jude did not come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God until after Jesus rose from the dead. If this is the case, Jude grew up residing in the same home as Jesus but did not allow Jesus to find a home in his heart and life until he recognized who Jesus really was. However once Jude invited Jesus into his heart, his life purpose was totally transformed. He opens his letter with the words: Kindness, peace and love – may they never stop blooming in you and from you. (Jude 2 the Voice)
Inviting Jesus to make his home in our hearts means we too need to truly recognize who Jesus is, trust his design for our lives and commit passionately and totally to his purposes for us. We need to allow his abiding presence to completely transform our lives so that we love what he loves and commit our time, resources and talents to what he wants to see happen in the world. Allowing Jesus to take up residence in our hearts is more then a cursory acknowledgement of his lordship and a prayer for him to respond to our words of repentance. Justice, healing, peace, freedom from oppression, concern for the poor and the marginalized, love, kindness and generosity. These are just some of the fruit of a heart in which Jesus has taken up residence.
As we enter this second week of Advent I ask you to take time to consider how much of your heart you allow Jesus to reside in. Are there rooms marked private Jesus keep out? Set aside time to rethink your priorities. How much of your time and resource is committed to Jesus’ passions for justice, healing and liberation? How much of it revolves around deepening your relationship to God? When you get busy is prayer the first thing you jettison?
How does your commitment to Jesus alter the way you use your time, talent and resources? More than at any other season of the year the pressures of the secular culture drag us away from God’s purposes. Times of reflection and renewal are marginalized by the lure of the malls and parties. Quasi religious rituals of spending and consuming take over.
So I challenge you from the life of Jude. May you refocus your life so that Jesus can indeed feel at home in your heart.
Now to the One who can keep you upright and plant you firmly in his presence – clean unmarked and joyful in the light of his glory – to the one and only God, our Saviour, through Jesus the Anointed our Lord, be glory and greatness and might and authority; just as it has been since before he created time, mat it continue now and into eternity. Amen (Jude 24-25 The Voice)
This post is also a contribution to the synchroblog Coming Home. Here are the links of other bloggers writing on this theme. Christine Sine – Is There Room for Jesus to Find a Home In Your Heart?
- Jeremy Myers – It Sounds Like Christmas
- Nathan Kitchen – Coming Home
- Michelle at Moments with Michelle – Home
- Mallory Pickering – I’m Kind of Homesick
- Bobi Ann Allen – Coming Home
- J.A. Carter – Going Home
- Glenn Hager – Where the Adventure Begins
- Marta Layton – Can You Ever Come Home Again?
- Peggy at Abisomeone – Abi Has Finally Come Home For Christmas
- Amy Hetland – Coming Home
- Coffeesnob – Home
- Carol Kuniholm – Advent Three: Redefining Home
- Liz Dyer – Advent 2013 The Way Home
- Harriet Long – The Body and the Sacred: Coming Home
- Edwin Pastor Fedex Aldrich – Who I Was Made to Be
- Emkay Anderson – Homemaking
- Anita Coleman – At Home in the Kingdom of God
- Kathy Escobar – Mobile Homes (Not That Kind)
- Jennifer Clark Tinker – My Itinerant Home
- Doreen Mannion – Heart is Where the Home is
Story by Jim and Donna Mathwig
Music by Aaron Strumpel, In Mansions and Church of the Beloved
Reflection by Dr. Dwight Friesen
Story by Jim and Donna Mathwig
Music by Aaron Strumpel, In Mansions and Church of the Beloved
Reflection by Dr. Dwight Friesen, Seattle School of Theology and Psychology Seattle WA
Meditation by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates taken from the Advent devotional Waiting for the Light
Produced by Ryan Marsh, Church of the Beloved
Listen to Donna and Jim share their grief as they lose their home in the recession, enjoy Aaron Strumpel’s music and ponder Dwight Friesen’s profound reflections on Advent and the need to knock on the doors of injustice and anticipate where Christ might be born.
Or right click this link and save to your computer – Advent Podcast Week Two
Join us each day this week as we continue to reflect on the theme Coming Home
Ponder with us: Where would you like to see Christ born in your neighbourhood and in your life this week?
This is the second of four Advent podcasts produced by Ryan Marsh of Church of the Beloved for the Godspace blog.
If you missed the first podcast from last week you can listen to it here.
You may also like to check out this Advent Mediation Video Coming Home to the Story of God
And if you would like to reflect on the daily posts from this first week of Advent you can do so here:
- Stable, Inn or Welcoming Home, Where Was Jesus Born and Why Does it Matter?
- Peace Dancing by Esther Hizsa
- Mary and Mindfulness by Kristin Carroccino
- Advent is All About Light by Kate Kennington Steer
- A Summertime Advent by David Bayne
- Pancha Rathas by Amanda Geers
And don’t forget our other Mustard Seed resources including these beautiful prayer cards that we have put together. Your purchase of these resources is one way to help support the Godspace blog and the ministry of Mustard Seed Associates.
We hope that you will join us next week and the following for our last two podcasts.
Week Three of Coming Home
- Story by Mary September
- Music by Tracie Whisperly, In Mansions and Church of the Beloved
- Reflection by Rev. Karen Ward, All Souls Episcopal Church, Portland, OR
- Meditation by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
- Produced by Ryan Marsh, Church of the Beloved, Edmonds WA
Week Four of Coming Home
- Story by Mustard Seed House
- Music by Lacey Brown, In Mansions and Church of the Beloved
- Reflection by Tom Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
- Meditation by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
- Produced by Ryan Marsh, Church of the Beloved, Edmonds WA
- heseattleschool.edu/”>Seattle School of Theology and Psychology Seattle WA
- Meditation by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates taken from the Advent devotional Waiting for the Light
- Produced by Ryan Marsh, Church of the Beloved
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