Fourth Sunday of Advent
	Year B RCL

December 18, 2011 4 Advent Sermon Audio

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

Romans 16: 25-27

Luke 1: 26-38

A PAW IN THE DOOR

It’s an unnerving sight: in this old house, where there is plenty of room for a cat’s paw to insinuate itself underneath a door and into the room, one sometimes appears there. What they think they have to gain by this exploration isn’t clear to me — they only do it when they know we’re in that room and want a little privacy. I guess they’re trying to open it themselves, a skill they’ve actually mastered when it comes to folding doors, a combination of pushing and pulling that I can find challenging on a bad day but which they picked up pretty quickly.

Or sometimes at dinner, over the table’s edge: a single paw in the air, like a periscope. The goal here is less clear — reaching for something? No. Reconnaissance? Whatever it is, it’s a funny thing to see.

Gypsy lives in the basement, now that it’s cold outside. The boy cats know she’s down there — why they should care is a mystery, since they are all virgins and have no… um, equipment anyway. But care they do, and want desperately to get down there and annoy her. So they crouch at the basement door and reach underneath it with their paws. Soon they are rewarded with an angry hiss from the other side of the door — Gypsy doesn’t much like the boys anyway, and looks forward to her winter of privacy and mouse patrol. They reach and she hisses, until everybody becomes bored with the game and the boys wander off.

The intimacy of animals and humans in winter is part of having animals in your life. In the winter, they’re around more: right on the couch where you want to sit, perpendicular to the place where you want to lie on the bed, batting with one paw at the bubbles in your bathtub, preceding you down the stairs in the morning like a fleet of vergers. That was even more true in the first century than it is now: the stable in which Jesus was born was probably right downstairs from where the people in the crowded inn were staying. Easier to get to the animals to feed them, to keep an eye on them, easier to get milk and eggs when the weather is raw. I guess everyone heard His first cry: the animals, the people upstairs, the sleepy inkeeper and his wife. Maybe his wife helped deliver the baby.

Suddenly the old story seems friendlier: it’s not one of being excluded by a mean hotel manager. Suddenly it’s poor people stretching their hospitality just a little further than it was already stretched, finding one more corner for a couple who really needed a corner that night.

We haven’t gotten our nativity figures out yet, not even the rickety wooden stable in which they all live, which Q made when he was twelve. There’s time. Christmas comes gradually in this house. It grows on us — we use the house as a three-dimensional Advent calendar, putting one thing out every day. And so the animals haven’t made their appearance yet.

But the cats are ready. Don’t tell me there wasn’t one in that stable.

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The Friendly Beasts

Jesus, our Brother, strong and good,

Was humbly born in a stable rude,

And the friendly beasts around Him stood,

Jesus, our Brother, strong and good.

“I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown,

“I carried His mother uphill and down,

I carried His mother to Bethlehem town;

I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown.

“I,” said the cow, all white and red,

“I gave Him my manger for His bed,

I gave Him hay to pillow His head;

I,” said the cow, all white and red.

“I,” said the sheep with curly horn,

“I gave Him my wool for His blanket warm,

He wore my coat on Christmas morn;

I,” said the sheep with curly horn.

“I,” said the dove, from the rafters high,

“I cooed Him to sleep that He should not cry,

We cooed Him to sleep, my mate and I;

I,” said the dove, from the rafters high.

“I,” said the cat, so fat and sleek,

“I crouched there to guard him, I searched out each creak,

His arms were so tiny, his face was so meek,

“I,” said the cat, so soft and sleek.”

Thus all the beasts, by some good spell,

In the stable dark were glad to tell

Of the gifts they gave Emmanuel,

The gifts they gave Emmanuel.

– French carol, 12th century

New verse by Barbara Crafton

The Almost-Daily eMo from the Geranium Farm Copyright © 2001-2010 Barbara Crafton – all rights reserved

For the third year now, the people of St. Luke’s, of neighboring parishes and other followers of God in the Way of Jesus have used a shared devotional as part of our preparation for the Nativity.

This year, in addition to our email distribution, we’ve set up a blog to collect and log these devotions. If you’re interested, head on over to http://edevotions.posterous.com and you can subscribe to a daily feed of the devotions or comment on something you read there.

Blessed Advent. O Come, O Come Emmanuel……

One of the things about New England that I like the most is the custom of putting lights (of whatever kind) in the window at this time or year.

Don’t get me wrong, the lights in the yard are wicked cool (another New England affectation), but these lights, set windows everywhere when daylight wanes (the sun set at 4:16 today), I love these because they are a sign of home and hearth in the darkest times of the year.

Isn’t that really what we as Christians are bound to proclaim in this season of Advent? That the light of the world, Jesus, is closer to you than you can possibly imagine and that there are any number of household that dare to proclaim that fact to anyone who might drive, walk, skateboard or bicycle past?

This is the hope that we dare to profess in this, the shortest days of the year. Namely, that the long dark night is fixin’ to be over, and for good. Our option for light and hope is ever-present. And that that light, ‘the light of the world’ is present in the communities, large and small, that line each and every street in every town that Believers call home.

So, whether you put out a lot of lights, or just a few, remember to leave one or two burning in the window as the sun sets each night from now until the Epiphany, so that we can be as a ‘light the shines to the Nations’…

Blessed Advent y’all…….

	Second Sunday of Advent
	Year C RCL

Sermon Audio: December 6, 2009-The Rev’d Warren Hicks

Malachi 3:1-4
Canticle 16
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

This week’s collect has us put on the armor of light, and today’s
reading from Matthew talks about putting on the wedding robe in order
to be welcomed into the banquet. These two images speak to me of a
deliberate act on our part, a choice we have to make to embrace God’s
light-filled living and an openness to receive His bounty.  This
choice entails giving up the things of the world that lead toward
darkness, both within ourselves and as we relate to others.  Of course
we can not take up this daily armor on our own, and God is in fact our
shield against the many arrows of the day.  Still, the choice is ours,
and each time we make it, we move ever more steadily into God’s
perfect Light.

Psalm 5, 6; Amos 3:1-11; 2 Peter 1:12-21; Matt. 21:12-22.

Lesser Feasts & Fasts: Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon.

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea”, it will be done. Matthew 21:21
“So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” –– Peter 1:19
Psalm 6:9 “The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord will answer my prayer.”

Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, was the founder of a religious community that lasted from 1626 to 1646 in England. The community devoted themselves to a life of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. They taught neighborhood children and cared for the poor in the district. They read the daily offices, including the recital every day of the complete Psalter. Day and night, there was always at least one member of the community kneeling in prayer before the altar.

We are reminded to pray. Pray without ceasing. Pray on every breath. We are reminded to read and study scripture until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. The reading and study of scripture and prayer without ceasing will fill us and make us whole as we pattern our lives after Jesus. May we all begin again this Advent as we prepare for the coming of our Lord.

PRAYER: Lord God, make us so reflect your perfect love; that, with your deacon Nicholas Ferrar and his household, we may rule ourselves according to your Word, and serve you with our whole heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Monday of the first week of Advent

Psalms 1, 2, and 3
Amos 2:6-16
2 Peter 1:1-11
Matthew 21:1-11

It’s always jarring when we read a passage we associate with Holy Week during Advent.  Our gospel passage tells of the entry into Jerusalem—a Palm Sunday text.  What is that doing here?

But even though we wait for the coming of the Christ Child, a lovely and innocent baby, our salvation comes not from the birth of a child, but from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Son of God.

“Advent is both a beginning and an end, an alpha and an omega of the church’s year of grace.  Too often considered merely a season of preparation for the annual commemoration of Christ’s birth, this rich and many-layered season is actually designed to prepare the  Christian for the glorious possibilities of the parousia,  It is a season of longing expectation—Come, Lord Jesus.” William Storey

First Sunday of Advent
Year C RCL

Sermon Audio for November 29, 2009-The Rev’d Warren Hicks

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

It seems as though every morning that I wake up there’s a new crisis on the horizon.  It’s certainly not a new observation that there seems to be considerably more bad news at the doorstep than good news.  If we as Christians got all of our information from ‘the world’ hope would be elusive at best.

From the ongoing global financial crisis, the humanitarian crises in Sudan, Zimbabwe and Gaza, to the specter of climate change and global warming it is easy to conclude that the world is “going to hell in a handbasket”.

We who point toward the coming of God’s Kingdom to earth we do not have the luxury of abandoning hope.  To see current realities as devoid of hope we have to live in posture where we have to look from the point of view that the height of God’s creation is going to be brought about by human will, skill and ingenuity.  The reality is other than that, however. Thanks be to God!!!!

God will usher in the kingdom at time of God’s choosing and by a means known only to God.  Our role, it seems, is to be alert and willing to do what God would have us do in helping that to happen, or at the very least not working against God’s initiative.  We are, at best, midwives in the process of renewal, redemption and recreation.  God will birth the Kingdom here.  We are to stand at the ready to be of whatever help we may at God’s request and call.

As we look into an Advent season that is meant to remind us of the coming of God’s Kingdom in a helpless, homeless and poor child, may we be ready as the Shepherds and Magi were ready to go where the angels of God call us and to behold with wide-eyed wonder the new thing that God is doing.  It will not be ours to understand, but to experience and ours it will be, not to have nd to hold but to share and revel in.

Blessed Advent…

O Come, O Come Emmanuel, God be with us.