October 1, 2017

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Advent Oasis 1

Wednesday December 2nd - 7:30pm

All Saints', Whitby300 Dundas St. WestWhitby, ONL1N 2M5 Map

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HOPE

Lighting of the candle: You are invited to light your own candle at home

Lord God, let your blessing come upon us with the lighting of this candle of HOPE.
May its light be a sign of Christ’s promise of salvation, in this time of darkness.
Now we watch and wait for his coming.
Lord Jesus, come soon!

A reading from the first letter of Peter

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1: 3-9
Reflection

Malcolm Guite, a great and well-loved Anglican priest, theologian and poet at King’s College Cambridge, wrote these words:
Advent! A holy season in which we connect again with our “inconsolable longing,” as C.S Lewis called it - our yearning for the One who is to come and is also, mysteriously, the One who has come already - come as a child, come as a fellow-sufferer, come as Saviour, and yet whose coming, already achieved, we hold at bay from ourselves, so that we have to learn afresh each year, even each day, how to let him come again.
I believe that it is the paradox of this mystery of the incarnation, this tension between the now and the yet-to-come, which gives rise to HOPE in this season of watchful waiting that is Advent.
Peter blesses God for the new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead which is the promise for all believers. We have already received this gift, and yet we must be patient and wait to open it, rather like a child prodding and poking at the gifts under the tree and longing...yearning... to rip off the paper. This is, indeed, an inconsolable longing.
Yes, we have this marvellous promise of an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, which awaits us in heaven, but we also have to live our lives here on earth before we receive our inheritance.
Peter’s letter was written between 64 and 68 AD, to encourage and bring hope to Christians, at a time when they were facing unimaginable persecution and death every day, both from the Roman occupiers and the Jewish leaders, which Peter simply refers to as various trials. Their faith was tested by fire, but Peter urges them to hold on.
We are also facing various trials in these dark and uncertain times of pandemic, racial conflict, wars and natural disasters around the world, and our faith is being tested. Like the recipients of Peter’s letter, we have not seen Jesus in person, but we love him and believe in him. When we gather for worship on Sunday, in person or on our screens, there is comfort and hope in the liturgy and the message. This is not merely a vague desire that “everything will be all right”. This hope is a reassuring certainty that God is indeed present, and that Jesus is alive NOW. But, inevitably, Monday comes and the News is bleaker than ever. How can we live in hope in our day-to-day lives? How can we live the Resurrection life when our world is in pieces?
Peter assures his listeners that their faith will enable them to rejoice, despite their troubles. In other words, hope and joy are inextricably intertwined. If hope brings joy, then conversely, joy is a source of hope. Indeed, God gives us glimpses of his presence in our physical world all the time, if we allow ourselves to be open to them. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth said recently, “Hope is to be found in the care given to the vulnerable and those in need.” How true! We are all aware of the many acts of kindness and caring by neighbours and strangers to the vulnerable and those in need during the past nine months.
We know that the very act of giving brings joy to the giver as well as the receiver. Our food bank at All Saints’ has received many donations from individuals and organizations from outside our congregation... a sure sign of hope. I am certain that I am not the only one who reconnected with distant friends much more regularly when the pandemic hit. Nurturing our relationships is another source of hope and joy. A year ago, most of us had never used Zoom, or even knew what it was, but look at us now!
Peter reminds his audience that, in spite of their hardships, it is possible to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy because of the promise of salvation. Glimpses of God in our daily lives enable us to share in this joy. Occasionally they may feel like a blinding light when something momentous, such as the birth of a child, is a cause for celebration, but more often they are tiny pinpricks of light in the darkness, which could be easy to miss if weren’t keeping watch. Counting our blessings is a sure sign of hope.
In the spring of this year, when garden centres were either closed, or had huge lineups, I grew some of my plants from seed for the first time. Watching the tiny shoots appear, and grow into leaves and then flowers, became a metaphor for hope for me. Then we were blessed with a seemingly endless summer, and were able to take delight in the beauty of God’s creation as the earth came back to life.
Asking ourselves each evening, “What brought me joy today?” and thanking God for it, is a sign of hope. The other week when I was out walking in my neighbourhood, I stepped onto the grass to make room for a couple coming towards me, walking with a young man in his twenties who was pushing a baby in a stroller. Nothing unusual about that, but as we passed and acknowledged each other, I saw that the fellow pushing the stroller had Down’s syndrome. He was most likely a very new uncle. He was beaming from ear to ear, and looked so delighted and proud to be doing that! I thanked God for that moment of joy that I was able to share in those few seconds, which I might so easily have missed it had I not had my eyes – and heart – open.
On this past Remembrance Day I received a link to a short video made by my brother’s choir in Winnipeg, honouring those who were victims of the Holocaust. There were images from the concentration camps that were very painful to see, and a poignantly beautiful song by the choir, entitled Inscription of Hope, by Z Randall Stroope. Each choir member had recorded their individual parts at home, which were then engineered to blend together, along with the grid of their faces on the screen as they sang. The inspiration for the song was these words which were discovered etched on the wall in a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where some Jews were hiding from the Nazis during the Second World War, living in the dark, and facing certain death if discovered:

I believe in the sun,
even when it is not shining,
and I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there,
and I believe in God, even when he is silent.
I believe through any trial there is always a way.

What a powerful and heart-rending testimony to hope even in the face of death!
Although we Christians are not faced with anything like the persecution and death to which Peter refers in the scripture, our lives are threatened in so many ways at the present time of uncertainty. And yet, we have been given the gift of faith, which goes hand in hand with HOPE, so that we can see beyond the now and fix our eyes on the yet-to-come.
Thanks be to God!

Intercessory prayer Please join in the response at home

Loving Creator God, thank you for the hope found only in you. We pray for all who are living in darkness and despair, with burdens they cannot bear,
Lord Jesus, come soon!
We pray for all who are sick, and for those who tend them. We pray for all who wait for loved ones and wait in vain,
Lord Jesus, come soon!
We pray for those who live in hunger, and for those who will not share their bread, for those who are misunderstood, and those who misunderstand,
Lord Jesus, come soon!
We pray for those who are captives and those who are captors, for those whose words of love are locked within their hearts, and those who yearn to hear those words,
Lord Jesus, come soon!
Have mercy on them, Lord. Have mercy on us all.
Amen

Closing prayer

Father God, as we extinguish our candles, and darkness descends, may the words shared tonight remain within us; may the light of your love be a flame which never goes out. We commend this day to you, and pray for a peaceful rest tonight.
For this we give thanks in Jesus’ name,

Amen

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In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, worship services are presently conducted by Zoom at 11am. Please join our parish email distribution list or follow All Sts on Facebook to get a weekly invite to our online service.

Effective September 13, 2020, we will be re-opening our church building for in-person worship. Pre-registration is required, and health & safety protocols will be in place.

This in-person service will be at 10am. Beginning September 13, our online worship will also be offered at 10am.

Normally All Saints offers services as follows and we hope to get back to this schedule soon:

8:00 a.m.
Quiet and Contemplative
Communion Service

9:30 a.m.
Shorter Contemporary Seeker-Oriented
Communion Service with Sunday School

11:00 a.m.
Classic Anglican Communion Service
with Choral Music

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Advent Oasis 1

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