Tag: Christmas

January 2018

On: By: Rev. G. Michael Rose

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” Mark 1:9-11

 

Dear Redeemer Family:

When most of you receive this, we will be well into the middle of the Season of Christmas. You know the carol? The Twelve Days of Christmas? It is a short season, and its purpose really is to prepare us for what is coming next, Epiphany, God’s light breaking into the world. Epiphany begins, in the lessons, with the arrival of the three magi. It takes place on January 6th, thirteen days after Christmas. It is then, that I like to tell people, that they may open their Christmas presents. Remember, it is the magi who bring the gifts. For some reason, children don’t usually like that waiting for the magi to arrive. What is really important about the Day of Epiphany is that illuminated in the gospel lesson of the day, God’s promise shines bright in the night as magi follow a star to honor a new king. Strangers from a faraway land, they welcome the long-awaited Messiah of Israel.

 

The time after Epiphany is really an extended invitation of Baptism. And it is kind of filled with ironies. Mark’s gospel reports the story of Jesus’ baptism with some irony: the one on whom the Spirit descends is himself the one who will baptize others with the Holy Spirit. Think about it! John the Baptist doesn’t want to baptize Jesus. Rather he thinks that Jesus should be baptizing him! Again, think about it. The words that we hear coming from heaven at Jesus’ baptism are repeated again, at His Transfiguration at the end of the Season of Epiphany. Again, something to think about!

 

This theme of an invitation runs really through the whole time of Epiphany. In the Gospel lessons of this time, Jesus goes out and calls His disciples with the words, “Follow me,” an invitation. Philip will invite Nathanael to meet Jesus with, “come and see,” an invitation.

 

The themes of Epiphany encourages all disciples, that includes us, to go fishing for people, to have intentional conversations with others inside and outside of the Church about their faith, and to invite those who have not yet been baptized to “come and see” what these waters are all about. The waters of baptism tell the truth, that we live in a world of competing values and conflicting loyalties. To follow Jesus is to turn away from other ways of living and being in the world. This is highlighted in the Baptismal Rite itself in the structure of the renunciations and the profession of faith. “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God? Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God? Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?” And then, we proclaim our faith in the Baptismal Creed, the Apostles’. “We believe in God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.” This too is an invitation for all now to “Come and see.”

 

In Christ,

Pastor Rose

December 2017

On: By: Rev. G. Michael Rose

“Let you face shine upon us, and we shall be saved.” Ps. 80:7

 

Dear Redeemer Family:

In two days, it will be Thanksgiving. Three days later, it will be Christ the King Sunday, and the completion of yet another Church Year. For the following Sunday will be the First Sunday in Advent. My how the time has flown by! But, a year is a cycle. Each season has its own themes and emphases. Advent is both a wonderful and a challenging season. We begin a new Church Year while the world is busy finishing a calendar year – and the month is filled with shopping, pageants, and parties beyond what our energy and time can handle. But while society urges us to hurry and spend; scripture and tradition beckon us to slow down and wait. The hard part of this time of year is to focus and wait.

 

Enter the wheel. Author, theologian, and artist Gertrud Mueller Nelson doesn’t tire in her enthusiasm for the Advent wreath as the season’s most powerful symbol. She wrote about its significance in her book, To Dance with God, and now in her eighties speaks of it with the same passion. The wreath can be traced to the Romans’ ancient rite of waiting in the darkness for the return of the sun, and for the Feast of the Sun on December 25. The ancients, Nelson says, took a wheel off their wagons and fastened torches to it to see them through the darkness. The only thing alive in the winter, evergreen, was brought inside and fastened to the wheel. To those huddled in darkness, it was a sign of vegetation and springtime. More than three hundred years ago, German Christians fashioned the same elements into the Advent wreath – the greens a sign of hoper and eternity. What was once a Feast of the Sun has become for us the Feast of the Son.

 

Today our Advent wreaths are often purchased, as are Advent calendars. Even the local secular bookstores have those (sometimes filled with chocolate). Both are symbols and tools of what Advent urges us to do: mark the passage of time as we wait. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Advent is about the art of waiting. But holiday decorations have been on some store shelves since well before Halloween (I can think of one place that had them up in August!), and the world declares virtually everything after Thanksgiving Day the “Christmas season.”

 

Thou all of us are tempted to ace otherwise, now is the time for slowing down and leaning together. As with the ancients, we gather in darkness to wait for the light. If our ancestors removed a wagon wheel for torchlight, consider what it would be like for us to take a wheel off our car, truck, or minivan. Instead of rushing to the stores or a mall, we would stay home but also gather with friends to sing ancient hymns and hear readings of prophecy and promise.

 

This season of Advent, slow down and wait. Slow down, or you may miss the importance of the season. Wait, wait for the coming of the light. For it comes to us shining in the face of the child in Bethlehem.

In Christ,

Pastor Rose