O Come

Emmanuel

earth groaning . . . war poverty injustice oppression abuse school shootings assimilation suicide bombers hunger deceit human trafficking addiction disrespect homelessness power

corruption pollution plastic oceans pipelines suicide grief disease thirst fire earthquake storm . . . despair

O Come, Emmanuel

all my relations . . .

peace gentleness respect humility diversity

equality laughter family love thoughtfulness

patience harmony reconciliation healing

community hope kindness gratitude abundance

justice freedom mindfulness compassion

. . . joy

O come, Emmanuel, come and delay no more

Dorothy Smith

Coordinator of Administration Indigenous Studies Centre

Cover Art: Advent Series 2012 “Love” by Wendy L. Fletcher

www.wendylfletcher.com Used with Permission

Sunday the First Week of Advent

St. John the Baptist: a Required Saint for our Time: A Reflection for Advent

In this ‘spiritual not religious’ culture, John the Baptist is a required saint, for he was most certainly not religious. Nor did he have a very high regard for the religious, “You brood of vipers!” (Luke 3:7) he called them, pointing out their hypocrisy and inviting them to lives of

integrity. John lived out the spiritual practices that he preached: he fasted, he lived a life of chosen deprivation, and in his preaching he invited people to repentance – to metanoia – a change of heart and mind. Theologian Cynthia Bourgeault has an interesting way of

understanding this. In her book The Wisdom Jesus she writes, “(repentance/metanoia) doesn’t mean feeling sorry for yourself for

doing bad things. It doesn’t even mean to change the direction in which you’re looking for happiness…the word literally breaks down into meta and noia which…means ‘go beyond the mind’ or ‘to into the larger mind’.”1 This moving beyond our little egos and beyond a surface religion was the essence of the preaching of the Baptist, John. Those who heard him and heeded his preaching were brought into the muddy waters of the river Jordan and immersed as a sign of their

openness to in-breaking of the power of God to their lives. Those who seek a genuine spirituality in these post modern times can look with grateful appreciation to John, the Baptist who invitation to integrity

and depth of living provides the perfect prelude to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Very Rev. Peter Elliott Dean and Rector, Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver BC

Chancellor, Vancouver School of Theology

1Bourgeault, Cynthia. The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind – a

New Perspective on Christ and His Message. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc., 2008, p. 37

Monday the First Week of Advent

Advent and Christmas: This Presbyterian Waits in Hope

In Covenanter Scotland and Puritan England, Christmas Day was not even celebrated, let alone Advent. (No wonder people called them dour!) Not every strand in the tradition took matters so far but in general Presbyterians and other Reformed Christians were wary of celebration of special days and holy seasons. This was not simply because the Apostle Paul discouraged such practices, as in Galatians

4:10-11, “You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.” It was also because of a deep conviction that anything good in a special season, spiritual self-discipline in Lent or hope during Advent,

to give two examples, should mark the Christian life all the year round, not just for a few days or weeks. That is obviously right, but surely

any athlete will teach us that periods of focused training do make us more physically fit. I do not see why it is any different with our spiritual fitness… if we keep matters in perspective. But perspective can be hard to maintain just now. The message of Advent is "Christ is coming so be ready," but we may hear that as “Christmas is coming, so get ready." These two messages only sound

similar! Christmas, the cultural celebration, can immerse us in life as it is in the present, a fondue of acquisition and anxiety. Advent lifts our eyes beyond all that and invites us to hope. Perhaps those grim

old Presbyterians with their principled debunking of the importance of the season can help us keep the season in perspective. If so, we may even find the time and spiritual energy to remember that we can hope in the promises of God, all the year round.

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris Professor of Homiletics

Dean of St. Andrew’s Hall

Tuesday the First Week of Advent

To Live Expectantly

There is a kernel of wisdom I have held onto from a course I took many years ago on ritual…I think of it every time I travel. Our instructor suggested that if we wanted to observe genuine, authentic ritual, or even liturgy, we ought best to spend some time at the airport. “Watch,” he said, “as people wait for loved ones to arrive, watch their exchange.” It is true…there is nothing more authentic then the ritual of expectancy and hello as we stand at the arrival gate

and anticipate the entrance of a beloved. It may be someone we miss so dearly or whom we haven’t seen in such a long time we can hardly remember their features. Or, we wait with held anticipation for what their physical presence will reveal to us when our eyes first meet theirs

again.

We all hold a state of anticipation and expectancy differently. Children often can’t even contain their enthusiasm; others of us are more reserved with slightly guarded joy. Advent invites us into a spirituality of expectancy…a time when we wait with anticipation in our relationship with the Divine. Sometimes we live on the edge of joy ready to know and see God in fullness and

rich proximity. Sometimes we have no idea what to expect or are just clinging to hope of what might or could be.

We are a people of a narrative –a story-- that invites us into rituals of anticipation. In the discipline of the days leading up to Christmas—in advent—we are reminded to be expectant of God’s meeting with us. God with us. Expectant as in waiting for a birth.

There is a time to live expectantly—opening ourselves to remember ancient promises fulfilled and impossible gifts of truth and justice made possible with our participation. It is a time to move away from the depletion of routine or cynicism.

Like our airport expectancy, spiritual expectancy fixes our eyes on what is before us, familiar yet renewed, and tunes our spirits into joy

and hope. There is more than one holy birth in our midst...maybe advent is a time to come again to the arrival gate with eager expectation

The Rev. Brenda Fawkes Director, Field Education

VST Alumni, 1997 – M.Div.

Wednesday the First Week of Advent

An Anglican Waits in Advent

As an Anglican in Advent, I'm longing for the fulfilment of my body. That's because Anglicanism has a special focus on the incarnation happening right now in our real physical lives. So in Advent I'm longing for the fulfilment of my body. I'm longing for

my body to be glorious – to be the right weight, to be as strong as it can be, and for me to enjoy it and experience it as wonderful. This isn't wishful thinking - that would be avoidance: wouldn't it be nice if....! No, Advent longing is living in the certainty that my body is

about to be wonderful. My job is to cultivate that longing so that I can almost taste the reality. I refuse to be scared it won't happen, I refuse

to be scared that God's fulfilment can't be counted on. I refuse to be scared. And then indeed it starts to happen – a miracle! And I long for the fulfilment of our body politic. At first that is as discouraging as my body. Will our country never become the beacon of justice which is its true character? Will this country never become the body of Christ? Will justice always wait until the others have the

mythical 'enough' so there are lots of crumbs for the poor? But in Advent my task is to long and yearn and desire without limit. I can almost taste what it would mean for Canada to be the gold standard of

care for our own people and care for the world. And then it happens! Not like a miracle without my participation. But like a miracle where my participation becomes possible. Both bodies

begin to heal, and when ready, they are overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. And what miraculous birth might not happen then!

The Rev. Canon Dr. Harold Munn Anglican Mentor in Residence

Thursday the First Week of Advent

Queering Advent

What is your gut-reaction to the phrase queering Advent? Maybe you

think I’m about to force you into an off-colour conversation about sex

or subject you to fiery politics. We all make assumptions. Let’s unpack

the title and see what we come up with.

“Queer” and its verbal form “queering” are used—academically—to

describe a kind of discourse which questions what is “normal” or

normative and complicates what we take for granted. “Queering,”

then, can mean making the familiar strange. In Christian tradition,

Advent marks the arrival of God Incarnate in the birth of a first-

century Jewish baby. To celebrate the birth of God Incarnate as a

Christian is also to say that we are celebrating Jesus’ teachings,

crucifixion, and resurrection. That these additional categories are

implicit in the Advent story is not to say that we should elevate any

one above another; sometimes, we are so focused on the end of the

story that we forget the beginning and middle. Advent marks the

beginning of God’s embodied life. To celebrate embodiment is not to

diminish the story of atonement or promise of resurrection but to

orient ourselves to the time at hand, to our physical surroundings, and

to the teachings of Jesus—a Jewish rabbi and prophet—which ask us to

consider the poor, the orphan, the other.

In many ways, the Advent story is a case of making the strange

familiar: a virgin birth and a baby who is also God. When we elevate

our own strangeness to the only familiar choice, we exclude the special

strangeness of other genders, cultures, and faith traditions.

Let’s make the familiar strange and strange familiar. Let’s follow

Jesus’ backwards politics and preferential option for the other. As we

honour our own tradition and recognize the birth, life, death, and

resurrection of God Incarnate, let’s complicate our own assumptions

and welcome the strangeness of other genders, cultures, and faith

traditions.

Mathew Arthur

Student, 1st Year, MA-IIS

Friday the First Week of Advent

What the Church in China has Taught me about Hope

A few years back the first ever fellowship I joined in China was lead by a pastor. There were ten committed members in total, meeting twice a week. We read the Bible and had theology discussion together. Due to the pressure from the government, this fellowship only lasted for about a year. Six out of the ten members, however, went on to receive

further theological education. The pastor of my home church in Beijing graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy from a South Korean Seminary. During his ten years there,

he and his family were provided by a Korean church with a car, a place to stay, and enough money for the whole family. If he went back to

serve in China, he would need to start from zero and went through strenuous financial pressure. Yet upon graduation the pastor and his family courageously returned to China because he knew from the beginning that his seminary training and his life indeed were for the people in China. He knew that God would provide for all his needs. When I worked in an underground seminary, I came to know more

"preachers” (the designation was for a position for delivering sermons on Sunday regularly, even though not ordained) from rural churches, with a monthly salary of only 400-800 China dollars. It could barely

sustain their livelihood. What I saw in them were their eagerness to learn, passion to serve, and diligence to work in other part-time jobs while continuing to serve the Lord whole-heartedly.

The lesson on “hope” that I have learned from the churches in China is this: I saw and still hear testimonies from my dear friends there that as committed disciples and servants of the Lord, they persevere through all the difficulties and wait with great patience for what they do not see. After all "who needs to hope for what is seen?"

Ashly Tu

Student, 3rd Year, M.Div. Originally from Ganzhou, China

Saturday the First Week of Advent

Advent Reflections from Edinburgh

“Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.” -Isaiah 40:1

I always interpreted Isaiah 40:1 as signaling the comforting power of God. That when we face exiles of sadness, pain, and loneliness, God would comfort us. However, the verb Mjn (‘comfort’) is a plural imperative—it is not God ordering God to comfort, but God ordering the people to comfort.

Living all alone in Edinburgh, I wanted God to comfort me. I wanted God to take away the sadness, to come down and hold me when I was weeping to go home. But even if you aren’t living this experience, there often comes a point when we each seek God to give us this kind of comfort. When there is a loss, a sudden life change, or a moment

when we realize our own fragility, we often yearn for the Almighty to show us that there is this comforting presence that defies human limitations. However, these divine interventions rarely come.

But as plural imperatives maybe the power to comfort is not

something that God delivers directly, but does so indirectly through

each of us. When we reach out to another through a simple e-mail or phone call, through words or prayers, we offer a divine comfort that is sourced in God, but delivered through us. So maybe when you hear Isaiah 40:1 read over Advent, try to see the words within you and around you right now. They are not something you need to wait for God to do in the future, but they are God’s blessing for you today, and

it is a blessing that we can share with others no matter who they are or where they are.

“Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.”

Maryann Amor MTh Hebrew Bible, New College,

University of Edinburgh, 2014 VST Alumni, 2013 - M.Div/MATS

Sunday the Second Week of Advent – Patricia Dutcher-Walls

A Meditation on Isaiah 49:1-7

The “servant” in the poetry of Isaiah is a slippery multiple image. It is at one and the same time singular and plural; the whole people Israel; the Persian emperor; the persecuted prophet; a poetic image of suffering; and a

future leader whose identity is yet to be revealed. The servant goes to Israel and beyond Israel, is called to exiles who long for home or who have forgotten home, and also to others who lie outside of all conventional boundaries.

Meanings expand beyond the comfortable and predictable. To reduce the meanings to just one mission is to limit and

reduce the scope of God’s compassion. To respect and play with the multiple and expanding images is to see the servant not only as an image of Christ but also as an image of the breaking of our own comfortable expectations, the opening out of our hopes and hearts, the startling welcome of those we shun and ignore.

The Rev. Dr. Patricia Dutcher-Walls Dean and Hebrew Bible Professor

Monday the Second Week of Advent – Faye Chisholm

A Prayer for the H.R. MacMillan Library Vancouver School of Theology

God who is love We pray that our library, honored to hold so many of your gracious gifts

Be a place Of sharing wisdom, experience, knowledge

Of growth Within ourselves, within the communities of faith we serve

Within all schools on our campus and in the community Of wholeness of each one, and all those we touch All All is Your gift

May we be disposed to using your bounty. In this season of waiting

May we listen so as to help summon each toward the person s/he is called to be.

In Jesus’ name we pray Amen

Faye Chisholm Coordinator, Library Public Services

Tuesday the Second Week of Advent

Dorothee Sölle: A Spirituality for Advent

God is not to be found except in the flesh. – Dorothee Sölle

When God was born, so the story is told, it was into this world, into the social, sensuous, corporeal, communal human history we share. From that birth on, to love God is to love those en-fleshed in the

world. Because of that infant boy’s tiny human body, the naked, powerless, dependant and vulnerable become the subject of our love for God. United in a single night – our need for God and our need for one another; our love of God and our love of one another.

Who among us is able to love? To love in a way that heralds joy,

dispels fear, and restores hope among those who need love most? Perhaps it is those who have allowed the reality of earthly life, the events of human history to carve a longing for God within them, those who have noticed the fragility of the incarnation – perhaps it is they who have room for the birth of love within them, room for God’s unending love to be carried in their flesh.

On the way to Bethlehem, surely each of us trips over enough aching earth, enough hurt in history, enough longing for the promise of new life to empty a stable-shaped space within us. Surely each of us,

should there happen to be no room at the inn, would offer room for that birth of love in our own flesh.

No [one] is too small or too large, no [one] is too young

or too old, too educated or too ignorant. God has given us all a part… God’s spirit wants to make us courageous and capable of the truth. God wants to be born in us. – Dorothee Sölle

The Rev. Janet Gear

Assistant Professor of Public and Pastoral Leadership, and Director of Denominational Formation

(United Church of Canada)

Wednesday the Second Week of Advent

Signs of the Kingdom in the Downtown Eastside

Birthing the I AM

The Star of Bethlehem is clouded by denial and disdain.

The light of Hope sputters in the hopelessness of a life seemly

lived in the intersection of poverty addiction oppression and abuse,

lost in the eyes of those who wander the streets.

For it seems the seed of hope and transformation cannot be born

in the womb of denial and disdain.

Its gestation requires a radical vision of the Star of Bethlehem.

Awakened by the One who dares to see the I AM in me

By the One who shatters King Herod’s power disguised in poverty,

homelessness, and

the addiction that ravages a body beyond recognition until there is

only a shell of empty living.

It is I who cries out to be seen and says I AM here,

see me and I see you.

For I AM the one who dares to look deep into the night of the soul

Willing to see what others cannot.

Willing to claim I AM here.

In the claiming I AM, I am born again.

I AM is there.

In the gestation of Hope and transformation

As the cry of birthing anew is heard,

the darkness of night and the despair of denial and disdain is

shattered

and Hope shines bright in the vision of all

with eyes that see I AM.

Linda McLaren

VST Student, 2nd Year, M.Div. Candidate for Ordination, United Church of Canada

Thursday the Second Week of Advent

The Healing Grace of Advent

HOLY WATER Tears, most Holy water mapping

sacred terrain of lamentation.

In silence voicing

our regret with waves of grief

crashed up against the hardness

of these days, our days

our tears most holy water

spinning fragile filament of

promise drawing us,

drawn water, drawing us

across the grey of trailing ash

into tomorrow and beyond it.

Holy water gushing grief

swollen up and running over

as the cup which

promised life by way of

bleeding through eternity into now

soaking ground, primordial hemorrhage

spewing out a squalling order,

crashing waters of creation.

Holy water, sacred wetness

forming prayers to

broken stones.

The Rev. Dr. Wendy Fletcher

Professor of the History of Christianity

Friday the Second Week of Advent

Truth and Reconciliation this Advent

Tribal peoples indigenous to our planet’s northern latitudes treated this annual time of increasing darkness as important for rest and regathering. Hunting and harvesting were completed. The Creator’s nourishing gifts from earth, river and sea were stored for the winter. Shelters were made secure. Clan house fires provided heat and cooked food.

For North Coast peoples, the winter fire also gave energy and location to creativity, preparation and memory. By its light, artists wove and carved. Around its warmth, elders retold family stories identifying relationships to the land, animals and plants with whom they shared

ancestral places. In its flickering presence, clan symbols on walls, baskets, boxes and blankets shifted between light and shadow, fueling

imagination and assuring relationship. In northern British Columbia, the Nisga’a called the winter solstice “Luut’aa,” which means, “The sun has travelled its furthest journey to the south.” Today, “Luut’aa” is their name for December. In Christian parlance, the name for December is Advent.

During Advent, in our latitude, the sun begins to travel “toward its furthest journey” to the north, and Christians prepare for Christ’s arrival in our midst. As we do this, we might pay heed, to the

activities around our own winter fire: Do we extend its warmth and protection to everyone? Do we count everyone’s memories as important?

Do we tell the truth in our stories? Do we hear the truth in others? Do we know how to reconcile relationships and/or build new ones?

The imaginative play of firelight made clan symbols move from clarity to near invisibility. Reconciliation efforts move, too. Sometimes the

way through is clear, and sometimes barely seen. The place between light and shadow, though, is not one of polarity but of promise.

The sacred fire at the TRC events in September was tended constantly. It never went out. May the same be said of our Advent fires, however they take shape in our lives this season.

The Rev. Dr. Paula Sampson Director, Indigenous Studies Centre

Assistant Professor of Ethic, Liturgics and Indigenous Studies

Saturday the Second Week of Advent

I Look for Christ’s Coming in Unexpected Places

Advent is an invitation to reflect on the coming of the Holy Child of God. It is a time to prepare and be ready to experience the Holy One in unexpected places. When and how the experience will happen for each of us is in God’s time. I have learned that most of the time Jesus does meet us in places we least expect his divine presence.

The Divine comes to us in many forms during life’s journeys.

* * * *

It was an early wintertime morning many years ago. I was on my way to a meeting with Navajo elders, and I was behind schedule because I

had over slept! My anxiety level was high for I didn’t want to keep my elders waiting. Upon my arrival, however, they were waiting patiently.

* * * *

I hurried out of the driveway in my car and something happened not far from home – I noticed the spectacular sunrise ahead of me. Its

every color appeared and they had a soft glow. The dawn slowed my rush by its awesome beauty. In Navajo culture and tradition, when the colorful streak of dawn appears, it is custom to offer corn pollen or

corn meal with respect and gratitude. I was being informed to do likewise. The Creator knows when we are ready for our own readiness – we are

made ready to share our gifts to those around us. We each are being prepared to be ready for the Divine Child within us – “I abide in you, you abide in me” – we become a new birth in Christ and our experiences help us prepare the way of new growth. It is by faith and trust in the Unseen we look for Christ’s coming, wherever and whenever that time may be for us.

Advent is waiting patiently for you and me. Advent invites us to look

for the signs of the Sacred. It is with patience, we see and meet the Holy One in its Divineness, waiting for us simply in the present. Amen.

Cornelia Eaton (Navajoland) Student, 2nd Year, M.Div. by Extension

Native Ministries Program

Sunday the Third Week of Advent

Why Apocalypse Matters this Advent

“But of the day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…. Watch therefore – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight, or at cock crow, or in the morning – lest he come suddenly and find you asleep, And what I say to you I say to all: Watch” (Mk. 13.32,35-37).

Lessons appointed for Advent draw from a repertoire of Hebrew Bible and New Testament texts that look to the intervention of God in history and the end of all things to bring about God’s promises. At one level these texts serve up strange news: stars falling from heaven,

cosmic war, rumours of false Christs, and the end of time belong for us to either to the world of science fiction or to a world from a bygone

age. What has apocalyptic to do with a digital world and the notion that the universe will end, all things being equal, not with a Second Coming every eye will see, but after billions of years when entropy will leave the universe inert at absolute zero? Advent and the apocalyptic texts it brings us do not furnish a roadmap to the end, but a lesson about the present. Taken together, these

lessons ask us, Whose time is it we are living? Who has final charge over our brief sum of days and months and years? What does the world around us teach us when we know that things run out, not only

in our lives, but in the very universe itself? In the light of the inevitable ending of all that is, what should we do with our time and the world around us? What are our priorities? Who or what is our god? Jesus’ strange statement that no one but God the Father knows “the

hour” is used by Mark to instruct that come what may, even if that includes travail, tragedy and trauma, the hour is always held by God the one in whom all hours, days, and seasons exist, even if they run counter to God’s intentions for us and our world. To seize the apocalyptic hour is to have courage and to obey Jesus’

command, to watch and to wait for the signs of God’s coming to us and for us, not once upon a time past or future, but even now amidst

the complexities of life and the challenges of the day.

Dr. Harry O. Maier Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies

Monday the Third Week of Advent

The Spirit of Aloha in Advent

Aloha is a Hawaiian word that has different meanings. It’s a common term used to say hello and goodbye. It can also be defined as love and respect. It’s a term that can be used to convey sympathy, regret and compassion.

Aloha also has a deeper, sacred meaning. It can be broken down into two parts: “Alo,” which means the presence of the divine, and “ha,” which means breath. When combined it means the presence of the Divine breath or, in other words, the presence of the breath of God.

The Spirit of Aloha is living life in a God-like way showing love and respect for others.

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “When we speak about the Holy Spirit, we speak about the breath of God, breathing in us.” With each breath of air we take, we breathe in life, the life that comes from the breath of God. We inhale the breath of God. We exhale the Spirit of Aloha. The Spirit of Aloha is about sharing our love, respect

and compassion for others. As we prepare our hearts and minds during this Advent season, we are reminded of the God’s love and aloha in sharing the precious gift of Jesus with us.

May the Spirit of Aloha be with you during this season of Advent.

Scott M. Furukawa (Hawaii) Student, 1st Year, M.Div by Extension

Native Ministries Program

Tuesday the Third Week of Advent

An Advent Prayer for the Community

Gracious God, this past semester has been filled with so many words and so we are thankful to enter into this Advent time of silence. This past semester has been filled with so much busyness and so we are thankful to enter into this Advent time of stillness. And this past semester has been filled with the many things we ought to have done (and the many things that we ought not to have done) and so we are

thankful to enter into this Advent time of repentance. And so we watch, we wait, we wonder

As we enter into the silence of anticipation, we pray with those silent in their dread. As we enter into the stillness of listening, we pray with

those frantic to be heard. And as we enter into the sorrow of regret, we give you thanks with those rejoicing in delight. And so we watch, we wait, we wonder We pray with those who must hide their Advent preparations. We pray with those who risk everything to worship and to share their love of

Christ. And we give you thanks for the open doors that lead to freedom and release.

And so we watch, we wait, we wonder We pray with those who watch for Jesus’ coming once again. We pray with those who wait for the Kingdom without end. And in this season

of Advent, we pray with those who long to know the wonder of the Child. And so we watch, we wait, we wonder. Amen.

Margaret Trim Coordinator, Academic Records and Admissions

Student, 2nd Year, ThM

Wednesday the Third Week of Advent

A Lutheran Waits in Advent

In a collection of Luther’s writings about Christmas entitled Martin Luther’s Christmas Book Luther is quoted as saying “This is the word of the prophet: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6). This is for us the hardest point, not so much to believe that He is the son of the Virgin and God himself, as to believe that this Son of God is ours. That is where we wilt, but he who does feel it has

become another man.” Those words from the Isaiah are words we have likely heard over and over again. Yet when we read them with news eyes, when we slowly take in the words we hear “unto us”. One of Luther’s favourite images was as Christ as gift. Christ is present in

our lives and in our world. We are named and claimed by God as precious children of God. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is

given.” How do we hear those words? How do we take those words to heart this Advent season? How are our lives changed by the gift of Christ’s presence in our lives? My prayer for each of you this advent is that it may be one in which you can bring yourself into the Nativity, that you may be renewed and inspired as you experience the in breaking of Christ into your life, into your world. For unto us a child is born, thanks be to God.

The Rev. Kristen Steele, B.A., BEd., Dipl. C.S. (VST) MDiv. (LTS) Pastor at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, Langley, BC

VST Alumni, 2006 - Diploma in Christian Studies

Thursday the Third Week of Advent

A Christology for Advent

Advent is a season of expectation, and this presupposes an Advent Christology. An Advent Christology is a Christology grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ understood as an eschatological event which discloses the ultimate destiny of humanity and nature. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, understood as an eschatological event, is the beginning of the new creation of all things. How are we to

understand the nature of this new creation? This is a question which is receiving new and creative reflection by some contemporary theologians. The growing ecological awareness about the nature of the earth raises the challenging question: How are we to understand

Christ’s resurrection and future coming in the framework of nature? What is the relationship between humanity and nature in the new

creation? Jürgen Moltmann speaks of the importance of an ecological Christology, a Christology which emphasizes the interrelationship between humanity and nature.1 An ecological Christology takes seriously the bodily character of the Christ who died and rose again. Moltmann emphasizes the importance of the resurrection of the body

of Jesus. A person is a living body, body and spirit; so it is with Christ. Christ’s resurrection means that the whole bodily Christ lives. It is not merely his spirit which continues to be efficacious and his message

which lives on. The risen body of Christ acts as an embodied promise for the whole creation. From the perspective of an ecological Christology the expectation of the new creation is a bodily, earthly, natural, or material expectation. It includes both humanity and nature.

A purely spiritual understanding of the resurrection asserts that the Spirit of Christ rose from the dead, not his body. Such an understanding is implicitly or explicitly dualistic or Gnostic. It divides spirit and matter. It places all the emphasis on spirit, and devalues matter and the body.

The resurrection of the body of Jesus, however, is not the reanimation of his mortal body, which would still be subject to death, but the

transformation of his whole person, body and spirit, as the first fruits of the new creation. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, understood as an eschatological event, means that Christ already anticipates in his own person the transformation of humanity and the world that will take place at the end of history when he comes again in

glory. continued in tomorrow’s reading . . .

1Jϋrgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ (London: SCM Press, 1990, 246-312

Friday the Third Week of Advent

A Christology for Advent, continued

What is it that we should anticipate in an Advent Christology? The Vietnamese Roman Catholic theologian Peter Phan2 takes a clue from the emergence in the scientific community of a new way of looking at the universe called the “common creation story.” This story emphasizes the common origin of all things, including humanity, in the one millionth of a gram of matter from which hundreds of billions of incredibly diverse galaxies, each with billions of stars and planets,

have evolved. This new organic model of the universe emphasized interrelationships and interdependencies among all being in both their similarities and

their differences. This model rejects both a purely instrumental view of the universe as a resource to be exploited to serve humanity’s

needs and a view of the physical environment as only a temporary abode for humans on their pilgrimage from history to eternity. On the contrary, the universe and the environment are humanity’s home with which we are in solidarity, and for which we must care. In this model there is a radical interrelatedness and interdependence of human beings with all that exists.

What is the nature of this new creation, this transformed cosmos of the end time, and how is it related to this present cosmos? If we take an ecological Christology as the starting-point this vision of the future

shape of the cosmos presupposes both the identity and the transformation of the cosmos and includes the transformation of both humanity and nature. We can only speculate on what that will look like, but it is the vision of an Advent Christology, a Christology in

which the future shape of the cosmos is already anticipated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who embodies in his own person the unity of matter and spirit. In this vision nature has its own dignity and value in the final transformation of the world, and is not purely instrumental to humanity. It will endure in God’s new creation as the home for a transformed humanity and participate, by its own right,

and in its own way in the glorious transformation in the end time.

The Rev. Dr. William Crockett Professor Emeritus of Theology

2 “Eschatology and Ecology: The Environment in the End-Times,” Dialogue and

Alliance Vol. 9, No. 2 *Fall/Winter 1995) 99-115

Saturday the Third Week of Advent

Why the Magnificat Matters

In certain translations of the Magnificat, Mary tells us her soul magnifies God and this matters. While this is not an originally intended image, what comes to my mind is the image of the soul as a magnifying glass. And like a magnifying glass her soul enlarges, opens, and brings detail and focus to the Divine. Her soul magnifies

God for all who would like to see through her glass. Now, we think of the things we put under a magnifying glass as very small, the smallest things. How can the transcendent Creator of the

cosmos be magnified by a soul? It still is an astonishing claim. And yet Mary makes it. Then the God she magnifies does something no other

thing under a magnifying glass can do. God - who does inhabit the smallest things - magnifies the glass of her soul, increasing its breadth and clarity and purity, rendering her glass as dazzling to the beholder. And as we sing, pray, say the Magnificat with her, we are making the same claim that we magnify God. In the Magnificat, we are turning the glass of our souls ever more towards the Divine who will make us radiant and clear and refined in focus even in the darkest night.

The Rev. Jessica Schaap

Rector, St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Vancouver VST Alumni, 2008 – M.Div.

Sunday the Fourth Week of Advent

Christ our Mother

“Thus is Jesus our true Mother in nature, from our first creation,

and He is our true Mother in grace

by His taking our created human nature”.*

Julian of Norwich writes that our human essence existed in

God, who is Being itself, before time began and through the ‘fortunate sin’ of the fall of Adam, God’s Son fell into ‘the pit of the womb of the Maiden’ so that God’s goodness could convert the fall into goodness. Without the eating of the apple the Incarnation could never have occurred. In this way Christ our Mother feeds, comforts, and nurtures us. In Jesus all mothers are like Christ. Julian clarifies the true nature

of our humanity for with all creation we possess a dimension of divinity within us.

“Whereof it follows that as truly as God is our Father,

so truly God is our Mother.

Our Father wills, our Mother acts, our good Lord the Holy Spirit

strengthens.”*

*Chapter 59, Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich

The Rev. Mother Alexis Saunders Honourary Assistant Priest St. James Anglican Church

Diocese of New Westminster VST Alumni, 2000 – M.Div.

Monday the Fourth Week of Advent

Reflections on the Virgin Birth

In Mary we see a girl who is in a position of transition. She is betrothed – and so has begun the journey away from her father’s control. But she is not yet married and is still a virgin – and so is not yet under Joseph’s control. It is at this point of fluidity and ambiguity in her social position that Mary is invited to become the mother of

God. And it is at this point that she is able to answer for herself in a unique way. No longer defined just as ‘daughter’, not yet defined just as ‘wife’, Mary is free to answer for herself. Her ‘Let it be to me according to your will’ is an assertion of her right to decide for herself,

as much as a trusting response to the invitation of God.

This is the importance of the doctrine of the virgin birth – not that it exalts virginity over sexual activity but that it allows Mary the space to respond for herself. The conception of Jesus is the beginning of a new order: the order of the Magnificat rather than the order of the status quo. A new order that begins with a socially insignificant woman saying yes to God without consulting either father or husband – a new order that breaks with patriarchy and allows new relationships of

equality to come to birth.

The Ven. Dr. Ellen Clark King

Cathedral Vicar, Christ Church Cathedral Diocese of New Westminster

Christmas Eve

May Christ be Born in You

My first evening travelling in Italy, sitting at a sidewalk restaurant, breathing in warmth and sunshine, relaxed. And then, reading the menu, experiencing some sense of shock seeing the section heading: carne. It was suddenly vivid, not an erudite, remote theological word, an academic construct, a holy abstraction. Rather graphic, in fact. Carne is Latin for meat! Incarnate. Flesh. In the flesh. In human

form. Embodied. Absolutely down to earth. That is the mystery of tonight that will live on beyond tonight. The Creator of the Universe, the Ground of Being, the Immensity of God,

the Holy One, the Word of Love, chose to come among us. In the flesh. Tonight, in the silence, behind the Hallmark scene of a sweet

mother holding a sleeping baby, remember the visceral human aliveness of this birth. God chose to come into the midst of human messiness: blood at birth and death, smelly straw sticking into skin, bewildered riffraff herding sheep, refugees running from oppressive regimes. This is the good news of the Incarnation. Christ does not wait till all is calm, all is bright, to be born into human life. Christ is born into reality as it is. Christ is born in us as we really are. Me, as I

am, with my addictive patterns, my destructive relationships, my defensive posturing, my crippling confusion. But not just me in my messiness, Christ is born as gift to the whole earth, as it is, fearful,

violent, greedy, threatened. Christ is born in the warmth of family laughter, the beautiful traditional carols sung, the mellow candle light, but Christ is also born in

emergency waiting rooms, the office of the divorce lawyer, the Syrian ship sinking. And yes, Christ is born in you.

The Rev. Dr. Lynne McNaughton Priest, St. Clement’s Anglican Church

and Archdeacon of Capilano Diocese of New Westminster

VST Alumni, 1986 - M.Div.

Christmas Day

Do you remember that popular song from a number of years ago? – What if God was one of us. Joan Osborne sings, “If God had a face, what would it look like; And would you want to see, if seeing mean that you would have to believe? What if God was one of us . . . just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home.” Ms Osborne anticipates St. John’s prologue. God has a face – the face

of Jesus. And God is one of us – the Word became flesh. And seeing God’s face in the human face of Jesus is to see the glory of God, full of grace and truth. And to all who receive him, he gives power to become God’s children. God became one of us to help us find our way

home. Creaturely life is of such significance that God chooses to enter it, to dignify it and to heal it with God’s holy presence. God becomes

one of us to make us what God intended us to be. Incarnation means we are accompanied. Incarnation means Jesus Christ has cast his lot with us. In the tent of his flesh, he came to this world so that we and God’s good world would never be forsaken or lost, but held and cherished up close and personal. The incarnate Word has so tied up his life with the people in whose likeness he came, that

there is no distance between he and we. Jesus lives in solidarity with us. His name Emmanuel means, “God with us.”

Thanks be to our God, who just can’t keep a professional distance from the world. Love brings God to share the same carnal tent with us. Jesus, the Word made flesh, intertwines his life with our lives for our good. Love makes God downwardly mobile in the flesh at Bethlehem

for us. Love brings our God in the flesh to die on a cross for us. Love brings our Saviour back from the dead in the flesh for us. Love means that God as Jesus comes to us “for us and for our salvation.”

The Rev. Dr. Richard Topping

Principal, Vancouver School of Theology Professor of Studies in the Reformed Tradition