Month: November 2025

Yet Another Advent Reflection

(from yet another retired pastor)

Advent, at least as far as the assigned Gospel readings were concerned, always felt backwards to me. We begin at the end, with signs of the end of the age and Jesus’ return, and we end at the beginning with either the Annunciation, Joseph’s dream, or the Visitation. In the prior lectionary (found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and going back to the 1662 Prayer Book from the Church of England), the annual Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent was Matthew’s version of the Triumphal Entry and the cleansing of the temple. But by the time I was confirmed, though the 1928 book was still in use, most Episcopal churches had adopted the three year cycle of readings which insisted on putting the end at the beginning, so that’s where I begin as well.

But why? Why begin the run up to the celebration of the coming of the Savior with such grim descriptions of the end times? I don’t know what prompted whatever committee was responsible for the lectionary revision, but my own take was that the readings and the prayer for the First Sunday of Advent was an assurance that the whole story we’d just rehearsed in the Christian Year just end was actually going somewhere. It would be both dramatic and traumatic, even for apprentices of Jesus and even more so for those who rejected the king and the kingdom. But in the end, justice would prevail and yet mercy would triumph over justice. And with that enigmatic word, the readings of the season move on to the forerunner, John the baptizer; and finally to the focus on Mary (and Joseph) in the months leading up to the birth of the Christ.

But that jarring beginning to Advent, while of relatively recent vintage, is essential as we start the observation of yet another Christian Year There will come a time when the upward spiral of the annual liturgical pilgrimage will reach its conclusion, the season of joyful anticipation will find its fulfillment, and the story will have finally – not concluded, but arrived. Even so, come Lord Jesus. And until You come, we’ll keep telling the story.

Questions Continue in the Daily Office

Our Father — Where?

Our Father who art in heaven …
and just where is that?
And what has some heavenly Being – wherever He is
have to do with me – earthbound
and suffocating in my own technological waste products?

But the word in the prayer is NOT HEAVEN
that’s only a lazy translation.
It is HEAVENS – plural – and that means something,
though timid teachers insist it does not.

But WARNING: here there be rabbit holes!
And nary a white rabbit in sight.
How many heavens? What is contained in earth?
Are they related to the universe we study?
More holes. Fewer rabbits. Maybe we should keep it simple.

“We” is the key word. Our construct. Our illustration.
Our impressionistic representation.
We’ll make it three in Trinitarian fashion,
The third first, as the Apostle tells the story.

It is the throne room of the Creator,
The control room according to an English prelate.
The central core from which all creation
And creativity flow.

The second heaven where the Nebulae
In grave and violent delight
Conduct their majestic reel,
And nearer at hand the spheres dance
To the music of their movement.

The first heaven is that
In which we live and move and have our being…
As the poet said of God.
But the first heaven is also where God is,
as close as the air we breathe.
Soaring with eagles, riding on the clouds,
Reigning on the throne.

Our Father in the Heavens, there is nowhere where you are not.
Preserver of the memories of our earth fathers’ love,
Healing the wounds of the wounded and wounding fathers
You are Father to the fatherless.

You set us in the midst of uncomfortable company
We share our lives with you in them.
It is the Our of our Father
And in that Our we give and receive instruction, wisdom and blessing.

Hallowed be Your Name?
How could it not be?

More Dangers of the Daily Office

Our Father …

But if “Our” is problematic,
“Father” is a veritable minefield.

Did Jesus know what a can of worms he opened?
                Was Joseph so loving, so present, so formative
                                that Father was a safe image?

Maybe Jesus’ experience of life was unlike ours,
                whose fathers were a mixture of iron and clay, 
like ours, whose fathers were present and loving though never perfect,
                like ours, whose fathers were angry, wounded, and wounding
like ours, whose fathers were absent by death,
                like ours, whose fathers were absent by desertion.

Or maybe the Incarnation is true, deity embracing
                the fullness of humanity
                and Jesus had a normal home.

Maybe Joseph had that most Christian of virtues –
                                humility.

Maybe Joseph could step back and give space
                for the HeavenFather to radiate blessing.

To pray “Father” means to give space for God;
                to recall the ways our fathers gave space to the HeavenFather.

To pray “Father” means to expose the deep wounds
                left by mortal fatherhood
                and allow ourselves to be
                re-fathered from on high.

The Dangers Within the Daily Office

Our Father who art… wait

What?

Our?

Who is this “Our?” Who am I signing up with?

There was this angry Catholic / Protestant / Orthodox / Evangelical / Anglican / (fill in the blank) so certain that those who weren’t on his (her?) way were headed for Hell, with or without a handbasket.

Is that person included in “Our?”

And that mainline leader whose theology is so amorphous that it echoes as “the bland leading the bland.” Is that person included when I pray Our?

That comfortable prayer, whether in the Daily Office or my formerly safe Anglican rosary, that prayer disturbs me.

And what might the others in the Our have to say about me?

I so greatly fear that if I won’t admit all those to Our, there may not be room for me either.

And the prayer is only just beginning.