After a couple of weeks off recovering from Covid, we are back to celebrate the church’s new year with a conversation about everything Advent. Find out why this week’s reading, Mark 13:24-37, is not actually as strange as it seems for the Christmas season. Join us around the virtual table as we talk about the themes and symbols that converge on these very special four weeks of preparation for the birth of Jesus.
What do you love most about Advent? Please join the conversation! Add your reflections in the comments below.
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We have been in a time of waiting and expectation and patience for many months now. Advent takes all that expectation and patience and distills it into four weeks of being more completely focused on an arrival that we Kn ow will come – the arrival of hope, peace, joy and love., through Jesus Christ. It kind of makes sense of all the waiting we endure during our lives…. it is a waiting that will not end in disappointment.
Thank makes sense to me David. Well said
Sorry, but I didn’t recognize Advent from the comments all three of you made on podcast. What a downer! For me growing up in UK, Advent was excitement, anticipation and creativity–both at home and at church– as we prepared for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Looking forward to something is an essential part of celebration, probably what we enjoy most about any event, as the actual day is often over in a flash. Making the Advent wreath and decorations, lighting a candle each week, preparing the Christmas cake, mince pies (had to eat one each week, as well as during 12 days of Christmas), marking off the days on the calendar. You all made Advent sound joyless and very Puritan. It is a time to anticipate and look forward. A Joy-filled time.
Hi Lesley, thanks for listening to the podcast. Of course, on one level Advent is a time of joy as we prepare for Christmas. I too have many things that I love about the preparation for the 12 days of Christmas. But as you know, the podcast looks at the readings for the upcoming week, and these readings say something important. I know that we differ on the importance of scripture, and you know that it is very important for me. The readings remind us that it is not all joy. There is a suffering world that Christ has come to redeem. The joy comes from knowing that salvation is at hand. When you were growing up in the UK did they use the 1662 BCP? If so, I think the first reading of Advent was Christ entering Jerusalem and turning over the tables in the temple. And then the second Sunday would have been the one we read on Sunday with reading about the second coming in judgement. I find that there are two competing themes in Advent, one joyful and one somber. It is the tension between the two that makes the season really interesting spiritually. On a side note, I don’t think our comments would be Puritan in that the Puritans outlawed Christmas and Advent and all of it. For them, no day was special. I think Advent is really special. Joyful and serious.