Advent - but what does it mean?

The first of four Sundays before Christmas Day marks the start of the ecclesiastical or liturgical year. We call the season Advent and the most common take on it is that it is a time of preparation for the celebration of Christmas.



My wife and I joined 12 others on a retreat at New Norcia this weekend to mark the beginning of the season, and the retreat director commented at our first discussion that while we give ourselves four weeks to get ready for Christmas, the retail sector of our community has been calling us all into readiness since the day after Father's Day - the first Sunday in September.

"A time of expectant waiting" is a common definition, and some years the selected Scripture readings have a strong emphasis on the Christian anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus some time in the future.

Our retreat director drew our attention to the many speeches that make up the narrative of the period leading up to and shortly after the birth of Jesus. This made an interesting approach - a new perspective because we were focussed on what people said rather than the narrative of events.

Thus we considered the texts of the Benedictus - Zechariah's response to the birth of John the Baptist - the Magnificant - Mary's response to the realisation that both she and Elizabeth, her cousin, were pregnant by divine intervention - and the Nunc Dimittus - the response of the old temple prophet Simeon to seeing the baby Jesus when he was brought to the Temple for Circumcision. In these texts we found a wonderful linkage between the old and the new, the Hebrew Salvation History and the newly emerging Christian Salvation History. It was a feast of ideas enriched by great works of art , ancient and modern, that depict the events.

One gesture of anticipation and getting ready that is part of our household tradition is the raising our of our Christmas Tree and generally bestowing on the whole house the feel of Christmas. All sorts of Christmas decore has been collected over the years and these are arranged around the house, scattered in unexpected nooks, ready to surprise a guest who thought they had taken in all the Christmas stuff we had.



Right at the end of our retreat, Dom Michael, who was not leading the retreat, but who was present for all our sessions, was reminded of a statement from an 13th Century German philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart who said that unless Christ was born in us today, what happened in Bethlehem was irrelevant. I think this is the little gem that will stay with me this advent, and to think it was almost a throw-away line right at the end of the retreat.

Hope you have a good one.

Hagiography

One of my blog-readers asked me what my thoughts were about St Mary of the Cross - "What is the Anglican view of saints?" she asked.

Well Hagiography was never my strong suit, and coming from little non-conformist Christian group into the Anglican church only a few years ago, I perhaps am not really qualified to speak about the topic.

The Roman Catholic Church clearly has everything to do with Saints very much under control. They are quite happy for all believers generally to be referred to as saints as made clear in the Bible, and when referring to the Communion of Saints understand that all those we love who have gone before us belong there and that we will one day join them.

They also allow for the possibility that those who die for their faith - as martyrs - will be immediately elevated into the highest place of presence with God and so are Saints and most valuable intercessors on our behalf to Almighty God.

There are some heroes of the faith in particular geographical areas who lives have been so significant that the are declared to be Blessed and as such a "local saints" for that region. For some time Mary MacKillop was referred to as the Blessed Mary - she had been Beatified and was Australia's local saint.



But a special next step was required for her to become a specifically honoured Saint for the whole of the Church. On the basis of the verification of two miracles of healing that were the result of requests in prayer to Mary to intercede with God to bring about healing, Mary was not only Beatified, but also Canonised and made a saint for all the church. These healing miracles demonstrated the power of Mary's intercessions and indicated her closeness to the Almighty. So now she is to be referred to as St Mary of the Cross.

I know that many protestants have difficulty with many aspects of this business and some even dismiss it as "Popeish" thereby relegating it to irrelevancy at best or heresy at worst. One of the biggist sticking points is praying to the Saints asking them to intercede for us. "We only pray in Jesus' Name. Going directly to him avoids the need for the intercession of Saints."

When I joined the Anglican Church some 15 years a dear priest friend helped out with the idea of praying to saints with a very simple analogy as well as clear theological reasoning. “What happens when you die?” he asked. Well, I suppose you go to be with God. “You believe in life after death?” he asked. Yes of course. “so when someone dies they are still alive, with God?” That’s right. “So, when you are worried about something, do you ask your friends to pray for you?” Of course, silly! “Why not ask your friends who have gone before you to God – died, that is – to pray for you as well?” That was all I needed.

So it is that Anglicans include prayers of thanks for those who have gone before us in their weekly intercessions, sometimes asking them to pray for us.

However, while Anglicans seem to have no problem with the great company of those who have been "Sainted" by the church over nearly 2000 years, honouring them on set dates each year as in both Catholic and Orthodox traditions, Anglicans seem only involved in the recognition of local Saints, and this being done on a Diocesan or Provincial basis. Here in Western Australia the Rev'd John Wollaston was promulgated in 1984 by the Bishops of Bunbury and North West Australia as well as the Archbishop of Perth as our Provincial local saint.

I don't know why they don't go in for Canonisation, but I am happy to raise my misgivings about the process. The most significant concern I have about the processes by which the Roman Catholic Church determines if a dead Godly person should be venerated as a saint is their very narrow definition of a miracle. It seems, and I might be wrong, that they are only concerned with miracles of healing. If I were to pray to St Mary of the Cross to alleviate my anxiety over my work situation, for example, and if, as a result of her intercession to God on my behalf, I could say that I was much less troubled than I had been before I asked her to pray for me, would that not be just as much a miracle? Or If I had asked her to intercede with God on my behalf so that I might obtain a certain thing or position, and it came about, would that not also be a miracle? The miracle of medical healing may be definitively verifiable, but I think they have simply made it too hard for themselves.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, Canonisation is a double statement – about the life of the person and also about the faith of the people who are alive at this moment. They are as much a part of the canonisation as the person who is being recognised.

When declaring a saint the Church looks at:
1.The life of a person. It looks at what the person did, how she reacted to the events of life, what people wrote and said about her, what she wrote or said herself. For a martyr the Church looks at the death of a person and considers the reason for the death and the circumstances surrounding the death.

2.The question of continuing devotion. When the person died did the people keep the memory alive? Is the person still alive in the faith of the people? Is her life continuing in the people?

I think all of these things can be ascertained without reference to a miracle of healing. What is important is the dynamic of the person’s remembered life in the community of believers today.

I am very glad to honour that saints of the church as dictated by our calendar. I am also inspired by particular saints to whom I pray – St Barnabas is my hero saint because of his nick name “Son of Encouragement” a nick name I aspire to be worthy of myself.

The Gospel according to Harry Potter

What stories do you know that try to explain what happened at Easter?

One of the truly greats is CS Lewis’ children’s story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There are many elements to it, but the one idea that grabbed me the most was that while the White Witch thought she could defeat Aslan the lion by killing him. But the resurrected Aslan explained to Susan and Lucy “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there was a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only until the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”



This reflects very strongly the Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement that is evident in some of our Thanksgiving Prayers; but the idea that grabs me about this explanation is the thought that “Death itself would start working backwards.”

This creates a beautiful image of the way that when we become a Christian, when we are “born again”, then the effects of sin in our lives are turned backwards as we walk with Jesus becoming more like him every day.

Another story that gives some insight into what is happening at Easter is, believe it or not, the final of the Harry Potter stories – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows¬ – has a great Christological theme to it.

Death and immortality have been constant themes throughout the stories. Harry Potter’s parents are killed by Voldemort and Voldemort is obsessed with a quest to gain immortality. This is the ultimate threat to life as we know it, so as the series of stories draw to a close Harry Potter discovers that there is only one way to actually and finally kill Voldemort, and rid the world of his evil power – but that task would inevitably lead to Harry’s own death; he was to allow Voldemort to kill him, to not defend himself, but that in this event Voldemort’s power would be extinguished forever.



There was a deeper law that even Voldemort did not understand that meant that Harry’s ability to love others overcame all of his power to kill, and that in giving his life for those he loved, he found life.

This was not a Substitutionary sacrifice as Aslan’s was, but it resonates with a deep truth we understand about Jesus and his death. Jesus said long before he died that we would only find true life if we were willing to give it up. Dying to self means rising to new life – and it is in this new life that we find ourselves increasingly possessed by the mind of Christ that our will, our purpose becomes indistinguishable from Christ’s – Christ lives in us!

I think I failed!!!

Unusually, I went in to the city for church today. A friend is "director of music" for a CBD Uniting Church and today they wove their liturgy around the music of his jazz trio. The music was fantastic - and what was most delightful was to see the foot-tapping and sheer joy on the faces of old people as they sang traditional hymns with a swing.

However, as we were going into the church via a wide stepped entry from the street front, I noticed a young man sitting on the steps beside a sign that said "homeless, anything you can spare will help". I didn't stop to see what his story was. I didn't offer him a feed from what we would all be eating soon for morning tea. But then neither did any of the locals.

I have been haunted by this for a few hours - sadly, I am sure this will pass - but it is sad to think of all those good church-people walking right past someone who is asking for help. He wasn't threatening in any way. He wasn't particularly grubby or noisy. But we, none of us, could take a little detour on our way to church and see what was his story. I think Jesus said something about this once in a parable - "When did we see you hungry or thirsty..."

Prayer - Bridging the Gap

Last night I led a small group of members of The Australian Association of Religious Education in a prayer service that was designed to be inclusive of diverse religious traditions.

The AARE has its major constituency among Christian religious educators, which is to be expected, but it has among its members people from the Jewish and Muslim faiths as well.

It occured to me as I was preparing for this service that prayer was a common element of all religious traditions and that in many respects prayer is at the heart of our understanding of how to bridge the gap between humanity and the divine.

When you look at the sacred writings of all religious traditions there are numerous exaples of written accounts of prayer as well as instructions about how to pray. The writings of the religious mystics of all traditions also centre on bridging that gap.

The thing that struck me was that there seem to be basically two appraoches to prayer that are common to all.

Firstly, there are word-based prayers that are usually petitionary - asking the divine to intervene in the affairs of humanity so as to create a particular outcome. Jews and Christians find numerous examples of this within the Psalter where some even cringe at the punishments God is invited to visit upon the wicked. Word-based prayers also function to make an intellectual connection to the act of praise and adoration to the Divine. In a geographic sense this form of prayer is about us sending messages to God.

The second approach to prayer goes beyond words - it is meditative or contemplative - and seeks to create a space in which the human-divine encounter can take place. For some this means contemplation in silence. For some it involves the repetition of a mantra. For some it involves physical activity. The objective here, though, is to see what God might want to say or reveal to us.

Both these approaches are, I think, vital to a healthy prayer life and relationship with God, regardless of your religious tradition. What do you think?

The Church is not a family business

American televangelists have been fair game for critics and cynics over the years, but there has been one stand-out, squeakie-clean example that seems to have survived the scandals - Robert Schuller of "The Hour of Power" fame.



Sent by his denomination to start a new work in southern California over 50 years ago, he began in a most unorthodox way, establishing a church in an old disused drive-in cinema in Garden Grove. One innovation led to another and the reach of his church grew beyond the local community in which it was situated. His ministry reached into my life some 30 years ago through "The Hour of Power", offering encouragement and hope through what were some very dark times in my work for the church.



Last month, the legal entity of the Crystal Cathedral filed for bankruptcy because they were not able to satisfy their creditors of their ability to meet their financial obligations to them. What went wrong?

In essence, I think just two things were ultimately enough to cause the momentum for this ministry to stumble. Most recently, the impact of the Global Financial Crisis has reduced all-purpose revenue for the ministry by 27% from 2008-2009, from $30m to $22m. While $22m seems a lot for a church to manage its affairs on, long-standing commitments have been predicated on higher levels of income.

However, I think the most crucial factor in the demise of this ministry was a failure in succession-planning by the founding minister Robert Schuller. Robert Schuller intended that his son, Robert (jr) should succeed him, but even though there were signs of disquiet as the younger Robert was being groomed for this role the plan was implemented and Robert Schuller (snr) retired. Not surprisingly, however, trouble fermented within the congregation and in 2008 - almost coincident with the GFC - the younger Robert resigned his position as a result of that conflict.

This kind of conflict saps the energy of any community and the decline in momentum always takes significant time to recover from. I feel very sad for the holders of the vision of that ministry but have equal confidence that they will come through this time - the challenge is to take from it the things that need to be learned.

Rev'd, the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, AC, MLC, formerly a Churches of Christ minister and then Superintendant of the Wesley Mission in Sydney, offers some observations about what went wrong, too - some of his comments are, in my view bordering on self-agrandisement, but they are worthy of consideration.

Having said all that,bankruptcy will not close the church. It will continue to exist and offer services in Garden Grove and around the world for many years to come. But hopefully this experience will enrich their wisdom about how to go forward.