The Season of Advent Begins

Advent begins December 1!

Advent is a time the church concentrates on preparing for Christmas. 

Although the commercial culture in which we live begins the “Christmas” season right after Halloween these days, the church traditionally celebrates twelve days of Christmas beginning Christmas Day, December 25, and ending with what is called The Epiphany, January 6.

And so, this time before Christmas, this time of Advent,
is a time for us to prepare ourselves for Christmas. 

Christmas is so important to our faith. 
It is so basic to our understanding of God and Jesus. 
Without Christmas – and the stories that are told about it –
the rest of our faith would be nonsense. 

I really like Advent and Christmas and Epiphany. 
It gives us a chance to get down to the raw basics and to hear stories that impact our faith and how it gets expressed in our lives.

The Christmas stories are stories of theophanies – encounters with the holy – culminating in the ultimate theophany: Emmanuel! –
the incarnation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
the Creator of all that is,
the great Jehovah, 
into our very lives.
The Christmas stores are stories of cracks that occurred in the cosmic egg that traditionally separates the holy from the mundane –
cracks through which people were able to glimpse the divine,
cracks through which people encountered the holy. 

During this Advent season let us purposefully focus on these encounters with the holy from days gone by – through the stories we hear and the stories we tell.

Through our telling and hearing these stores again, this Christmas, maybe, just maybe, you and I can encounter the Holy.

Oh, I am convinced that we do encounter the holy just as we hear they did in days of yore. 
It’s just that usually, we don’t recognize it when it happens. 
Even when the very skies open and the celestial voices sing, we are prone to ignore it –
perhaps because we are so preoccupied with enhancing our own display.

The stories of our faith are good stories. 
And, they have lasted through the years because they speak of truth – truth that ring to the heart of all who hear them.

But, if we let them remain as stories of people of another time, of days gone by, we do them – and we do us – a disservice. 
For, they are true. 
And they speak to our reality.

This year I invite you on a quest to encounter the holy. 
I am convinced that we can.
I know that we do. 
Let us take this time before Christmas to sharpen our senses and to hone our skills so that, like the people in our Christmas stories, we can point to times the holy breaks through in our lives,
to recognize it when it happens,
and to celebrate when it does.

So, in church each week look for the breakthroughs in the stories of our faith and in the days of our lives.

Pay attention to the messengers of the Lord that come to us – is they did to Zechariah, Mary, Joseph and the Shepherds.
 
Be alert to our dreams and heed them as Joseph and Simeon and the Magi did.

Listen for the celestial song – the music of the spheres – as the shepherds heard.

See what happens when hospitality is practiced – remembering  the Innkeeper and the Table of The Lord.

And, we will learn to celebrate the incarnation – Emmanuel! – Christmas Day and every day.

This Christmas we are on a quest to encounter the holy. 

That's what Advent means to me.
A time to prepare for Christmas - an event you don't want to miss - but, alas, most folks will.

Clyde E. Griffith, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Editor@NewCelebrations.com

All Saints Day - Part 3

This Sunday, Christian Chuches all over the world  remembers the saints who have touched our lives.


I have long advocated that every preacher should read John Irving's book, A Prayer For Owen Meany.  

The book begins with these words:
     "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – 
      not because of his voice,
      or because he was the smallest person I ever knew...
      but because he is the reason I believe in God; 
      I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
 
That sentence is the seed of the book's story and, in a curious way, it is the seed of our story as well, isn't it?  

All of us believe in God because of someone.  
Christ haunts us in the face of someone. 
We see God in the walk or word, deed or dare of someone. 
We believe in God because of some "Owen Meany",
or some group of "Owen Meany's" in our life. 
We all believe in God because of someone. 
We are all here today because of someone.
Today, think about who that is for you. 

There is no greater power than that of calling forth such belief in another. 
There is no greater power than enabling another person to see life in a way that gives hope and comfort and gladness.  

Each of us has sensed the power of someone who has helped us find our way a little, not so much by their pointing it out to us as by the way they themselves walked –  or walk –  in this wondrous, awful world.
 
Think about those people –  those saints –  who have touched your life – 
maybe unexpected people from unexpected places. 
People who have called forth in us belief and hope and strength.
 
Today is a time for remembering those people.


The Congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, heard these words as part of a sermon for All Saints Day in 2006.

All Saints Day - Part 2

This Sunday, Christian churches all over the world will be observing the oldest high holy day of them all: All Saints Day.

All Saints Sunday is the church's Memorial Day, a time to remember and give thanks to God for those who have died in the faith.

   All Saints Day is a day on which we remember special people,
people who now dwell with God.
people whom the scriptures and the church call saints.

Now, to be sure, there is much modern confusion about the meaning of the word "saint."
This confusion is due, in large part, to movies and the news reports and all the hoopla about the Roman Catholic "canonization of saints" – and all the rigamarole that is entailed in deciding who is and who is not a saint – as well as to a resurgence of interest in books about "the lives of the saints" or painted pictures of the saints such as icons.

Today there seems to be a renewed interest in the folks the Roman Catholic Church has named saints.
And our news media will even get caught up in the church’s deliberations to qualify a particular person to be known hereafter as a saint.

But, we have a pretty romanticized idea of what a saint is and was.
I have studied some of these people the church has identified as saints and have discovered that every single one of them are people too – they all put their britches on one leg at time (that is if they wore britches at all.)
 
The reality is that in real life, the saints were a pretty motley lot.
In the early years, men thought they were called to spend time in the Syrian desert.
Some stood in the desert and prayed for years on end without sitting down.

Others thought they were to live on top of pillars – as far away as possible from being sullied by being of this earth.  These guys spent their days on top of a pillar preaching and writing epistles.
And people came for miles to see them and to hear what they had to say.
 
One of these desert hermits in particular we know as St. Simeon – known as the holy fool.
It turns out that Simeon’s career started out quite normally.
It was the usual story:
living 29 years in an isolated cave next to the Dead Sea eating only lentils –
first struggling against temptation and then advancing to an alarming degree of holiness.
But, his pious career took an unexpected turn when he left his cave one day and to the city of Emesa in Syria.
 
There at the city gate, he found a dead dog on the trash pile.
 
For some reason, he felt called to tie that dead dog to a rope around his waist and drag it through the streets of the town.
Well, that was thought to be just as strange and cruel in those days as we might think.
 
Simeon took to eccentric and scandalous behavior to mock the idiocy of the world and to conceal his identity.
 
We are told that during church services, he would sit up front, eat peanuts, and throw the hulls at the preacher.
 
In the circus, he would wrap his arms around the dancing girls and would go skipping and dancing across the arena.
 
In the streets he thought it great fun to stick out his leg or a stick and trip people as they walked by.
 
He developed a theatrical limp and dragged himself around on his rear end.
 
In the bath house, he ran naked into the crowded women’s section – a no-no by the way.
 
On solemn fasting days he would feast riotously – consuming vast amounts of beans – and amuse himself by passing gas during prayers.
 
Everyone considered Simeon a mad man – an unholy scandal.

Sometime after his death, the secret life of Simeon came to light. 
People started to talk about his acts of kindness –
and about the strange and powerful miracles that seem to happen when he was around.

All the folks that are recognized by the church as saints have very human stories.

But, in reality, a saint is simply a human being, living or dead, that God has chosen, and upon whom God has lavished grace.

The Saints of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, heard these words as part of a sermon in 2006.

All Saints Sunday - Part 1

This week, Christians all over the world are celebrating All Saints Sunday -
a day that used to be so important to the Church
and to Christians everywhere that it became the basis for Halloween. 

Almost from the beginning, the church has celebrated an All Saints’ Day.  
Sometime in the 9th century, the Western Church settled on the present date to celebrate All Saints Day. 
At one time in the Roman world, November 1st, was the first day of the new year – a natural time to look back on the year past and remember those who are no longer in our ranks.

It is appropriate for us to take some time to think
about what it is we celebrate at this particular holiday. 
It seems to me that Halloween in our country has taken a peculiar turn and has earned a bad rap. 
Many of our Christian friends seem to have given up this holiday to the pagan culture of witches, warlords, demons, and devils, and want to ignore what the holiday has come to be over centuries of Christian celebration: 
A curious mixture of ancient Druid practice, classical mythology and Christian belief.

All the more reason for us to think again about why we celebrate the holidays we do.

In Great Britain, young girls go "souling"  –
singing for cakes in remembrance of the dead. 

In Belgium, its called "Aller Heiligen," and it's a day to say prayers in memory of all the saints who don't have their special day already set aside. 

In Poland, it is called "Zaduskski".  On this day the
church bells toll and it said that God comes on this night to count the souls that belong to the community of the faithful.

In our country, the Cochiti Pueblo Indians celebrate a feast on November 2, which they call "Their Grandfathers Arrive From the West." 

Zuni Indians in New Mexico call it "Grandmother's Day", and young men go from house to house singing songs in honor of grandmothers. 

Not a bad idea, huh?

    We have many ways to celebrate and mark the occasion, but what seems clear is that we all need time and ritual for remembering those who have gone before us. 
There seems to be a common universal urge to remember. 

    Frederick Buechner wrote, "When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are.  It means that you can
summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us.  It means that if we meet again, you will know me. 
It means that even after I die, you can still see my
face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart. " 

I think everyone here has some experience with the truth of these words, wouldn’t you say.
Of the many inspirational stories I have heard from many of you over the past few years is one, I am sure, I can tell without undue embarrassment. 

Many in this room remember, Leota Waugh – Edith’s mother.  I think Leota was in her 100th year when she came in one day in all aglow. 
"You'll never guess who I talked with this week," she challenged.
  Well, I couldn't guess in a million years. 
She said, "My college roommate." 
It turns out that after school, her college roommate moved to the mid-west and they haven't seen each or taked to one another in over seventy years! 
But throughout the years, each of them carried something of the other with them.
Each of them left a mark of themselves on the person of the other. 
And though the years and the miles have kept a distance between them, a telephone call came, and they knew each other. 
They knew each other's faces and spoke to each other in their hearts.

    We need to remember. 
For centuries, the church has known this –  and on All Saints Sunday we remember those persons who
have influenced our faith development,
whose presence is still felt in our lives even thought they now rest from their labors.

This is part of a sermon the Saints of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, heard in October 2006.