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Reflections for Advent and the Christmas Season
- First Sunday of Advent
- Second Sunday of Advent
- Third Sunday of Advent
- Fourth Sunday of Advent
- Christmas Eve
- Christmas I
- Epiphany
Reflections for Advent and the Christmas Season
by Bill McKibben
Using These Reflections
The resources provided here offer individuals, families and other small groups a way to remember the reason we celebrate this holy season. The reflections begin the first week of Advent and follow through the Feast of Epiphany.
Before Advent begins, make an Advent wreath. Find a book with instructions or follow these simple directions. Take a large, flat shallow bowl (at least 9 inches in diameter) and fill it with sand or coarse salt. Place four purple candles securely around the edge of the bowl. Place a large white candle in the center. Make a circle of evergreens and place them around the bowl.
You will also need a manger scene, a Bible and matches. Light one purple candle the week of Advent I; two the week of Advent II, etc. Light all five beginning on Christmas Eve.
Set aside time each week to worship, perhaps after a meal on Sundays. Invite those who may be alone to join in your worship.
Depending on the ages of those in your group, adults may want to read the biblical reflections beforehand. The worship items on pages 14, 18, 19 and 22 could be read or sung several times. Incorporate parts or all of the Advent-Christmas calendar on pages 15-17 into worship time, especially as a discussion starter.
Gather around the Advent wreath. Take turns reading, lighting the candles, praying, singing and sharing feelings and ideas.
About the Reflections' Author
The following seven new reflections are by best-selling author Bill McKibben, a Fellow at Harvard University and well-known speaker. His books include Hundred Dollar Holiday, The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and most recently Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously.
Reflections
by Bill McKibben
Advent I
Isaiah: 2: 1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13: 11-14; Matthew 24: 36-44
Time, as most of us realize daily, is the great shortage in our lives. In recent years, workers have gone on strike in many industries simply because they could no longer stand working ever longer hours. In a recent poll, 60 percent of women with children under six said they were finding it harder and harder to balance the demands of work and family. In another survey of civil servants, a majority said they would gladly trade a fifth of their pay for an extra day off each week.
And in some ways time is at the greatest premium during the holiday season. More and more of us dread the approach of Christmas. For some it's because a "proper" Christmas requires more money than we can easily afford. For more, though, especially in flush times, it's because our lives are already stretched near to the breaking point. The shopping, partying, wrapping, and mailing that go with the Yuletide season are simply too much: we find ourselves looking forward to the New Year, if only because it means we can return to the mere galloping pace at which we conduct our "normal" lives, a pace that seems almost restful after the sprint of the holidays.
But time, as we're reminded in this week's Scriptures, is something we need to make, perhaps especially at this time of year. "Hold yourselves ready, because the Son of Man will come at the time you least expect him"- which is probably true even if you know he's arriving on December 25, right around the close of midnight services. "It is time for you to wake out of sleep, for deliverance is nearer to us now than it was when first we believed."
We need time to listen for footsteps - you can't hear footsteps when you're running yourself. And the only way to make that time is to cut back on some of the "obligations" of the season, to remember that our deep obligations are to strive for peace within ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world. Luckily, it's not the impossible task that it sounds. Because everyone around us is as time-stressed as we are, they will appreciate gifts of time more than gifts of money or of more stuff. (We all have stuff enough.) A gift of a quiet afternoon at a museum with a friend - that's a real gift to you both, and to the Creator who wants us living calmly enough that we can hear the sounds we need to hear.we offer this season to those we know? To those we don't know? How would we present this gift of ourselves? A coupon book? A word? An email? What gifts of ourselves can we offer year 'round?
Prayer:
Faithful and loving God, help us to make our time your time.
Discussion Questions:
What gifts of time can we offer this season to those we know? To those we don't know? How would we present this gift of ourselves? A coupon book? A word? An email? What gifts of ourselves can we offer year 'round?
Advent II
Isaiah 11: 1-10; Psalm 72; Romans 15: 4-23; Matthew 3: 1-12
In perhaps the most famous of all prophetic passages, Isaiah today treats us to a vision of the world when the Branch has sprung forth from the root of Jesse. The imagery is unforgettable: "the wolf shall live with the sheep, and the leopard lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall grow up together and the cow and the bear shall be friends; the infant shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the young child dance over the viper's nest."
Unforgettable - and also, for those of us who live in and love the wild places of the earth - a little sad. We who know the howl of the wolf on the hunt know it is a lovely sound; our gut sense is that God did not make a mistake when making predators and prey; that the nature of the bear is marvelous as it is - perhaps more marvelous than the slow-witted domesticity of the cow, which after all is a product of our own desires and needs, not God's.
Surely this language is metaphoric, coming as it does after a long passage of prophecy about the coming Messiah who will be determined to "defend the humble," to "judge the poor with justice." Surely, in fact, there's a clue to the imagery in the passage from Matthew, when John the Baptist cries out at the Pharisees and Saducees coming for baptism: "You viper's brood!"
The hope of the prophets from Isaiah to John and far beyond is that men and women will cease to victimize and prey on each other. That the wolf - the overly canny businessperson, say - will learn gentleness. That the fierceness of the warmakers or the polluters will subside, as they see interests other than their own. That our children will be able to play and dance without the poisonous interference of those vipers and cobras that want to sell them cigarettes or narcotics, or market to them with images of bodily perfection no normal human can hope to achieve. That the predatory in all of us will shrink, since predation is not our true nature.
Those hopes may seem dim - but it is important to remember that even in recent history the wolves of racism have begun to live peaceably with the flocks they once dominated and terrorized. And certainly there are individual cases where people have set aside violence and greed and learned to care, even to serve those around them. Such changes are hard, of course, but now is the season when even the impossible seems almost easy. For we are not alone - One is coming soon who can transform us in the deepest ways.
Prayer:
Faithful and loving God, help us to treat others and ourselves with care.
Discussion Questions:
Do we know any "predators" close by? Far away? How can we urge them to change their ways? How can we treat others with care?
Advent III
Isaiah 35: 1-10; Luke 1: 47-55; James 5: 7-10; Matthew 11:2-11
"Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect some other?" John the Baptist's query from prison is one of the never-ending human cries. Something new appears on the scene. Its novelty interests us, attracts us. But then we possess it, and wonder: is there something else even better out there, something newer and shinier coming?
In a consumer age, we are, of course, constantly urged to look for the new toy, the new car, the new dress. Each one is the ultimate - but only for the season, perhaps the model year. "Timeless classic," in Madison Avenue lingo, means a duration considerably shorter than the average marriage (and our divorce rate may be the most profound sign of our constant search for the newer model).
Christmas time is, of course, the apogee of this mentality. TV threatens our children with the idea that their lives will be empty without this year's special fur-lined computer chip. Parents crowd into stores, lest they be caught without this year's particular toy.
But this demand for novelty can carry over into our spiritual lives as well. Maybe there's some newer good news we could partake of? Some more fashionable religious model? The streets of the college town where I am writing this small reflection are filled with stores selling esoteric tests, special meditation candles, and so forth. Who among us hasn't wondered if maybe there's some quicker path than the one we're on?
Jesus's answer, though, is joyful and instructive. "Go and tell John what you hear and see," he tells the Baptist's disciples - don't talk to him of abstract dogma, but of the effects of my incarnation on the reality of this place. "The blind recover their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the poor are hearing the good news."
In a sense, this is old news - as old as Isaiah, anyway, who had prophesied just such an advent. But it touches us in the deepest places, spots that the newest Norelco razor will never reach. That's because we sense its rightness - this is what God's about. And so we embrace it anew each year. At Christmas, the most beloved customs are the oldest ones, because they remind us that the truth never changes.
Prayer:
Faithful and loving God, help us not to fall victim to novelty and fad in our spiritual and every-day lives.
Discussion Questions:
Who tries to tell us that we will find happiness and meaning in life through stuff? How and where can we hear, tell and learn the story that true happiness and meaning in life comes through relationships... within ourselves, with others, with Creation and with God?
Advent IV
Isaiah 7: 10-16; Psalm 80; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
We are in the last hours and days before Christ's coming. Now as we wait, we should probably be asking ourselves what difference it all makes. This is the centerpiece of our faith, this is a ritual we repeat each year, but is it really all that important? If the church closed down tomorrow, if our Bibles disappeared and with them our memories of these stories, would it really matter? Couldn't we still be "good people?"
And the answer, of course, is that we could. But the hopeful reading from Matthew reminds us of the limitations of being merely a "good person." The story of Joseph often gets lost in the Christmas season, for it lacks the drama and high language of the Annunciation. But it is worth remembering, for it is probably closer to the kind of experiences most of us are likely to have.
When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant before they came to live together, one supposes he could have abused her in some way, the way many husbands do today for far less serious offenses (and often for no offenses at all). He could have gone out of his way to shame her - if he lived today, he might have decided to go on some daytime talk show called Fiancees Carrying Someone Else's Baby. But, in the careful words of the English Bible, "being a man of principle and at the same time wanting to save her from exposure, Joseph desired to have the marriage contract set aside quietly." He behaved decently - not superlatively, but decently.
Instead, though, we are told an angel comes to him and explains the situation, and just as quietly, he sets about the difficult business of being a father to someone else's child (a child that would cause him a great deal of trouble, beginning with the flight into Egypt). A direct and unambiguous conversation with God allows folks to go beyond decent behavior toward something much higher.
And, of course, we have that direct connection ourselves. Christ's birth and - as Paul points out in today's reading from Romans - his rebirth after the Cross give us access to a kind of grace we could not achieve on our own. This grace is not the exclusive property of Christians. In other faiths people find other ways to God. But this is our channel, our connection, and it draws ever closer.
Prayer
Faithful and loving God, help us go beyond being "decent people" to being disciples of Jesus.
Discussion Questions
Have we ever considered being a parent to another's child? In what ways could that happen? As a mentor? Housing a refugee?
Christmas Eve
Isaiah 9: 2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1-20
Ah, well. I have served my time on Christmas Eve. I have tied tea towels with neckties around the heads of innumerable shepherd boys and shepherd girls, and rehearsed the angel choir on the out-of-tune upright in the church basement, and passed out the candy canes to the Sunday School when the service was done. But I have never tired of it, this sweetest night of all nights. And especially, I have never tired of Luke's wonderful account, economical but filled with suggestive detail, understated but overwhelming.
There's the slow beginning - all that stuff about Quirinius, the Syrian governor who gets his name mangled by millions more people each year than he would ever have expected. And then the swaddling clothes, and the inn, and the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shining round. And the speed with which the shepherds set out on their journey, and their astonishment at finding it as the angel had said.
Of all the lines in the story, though, the one I love best is perhaps the simplest. "But Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered over them."
I love it for the picture it paints of Mary, the eye in the hurricane. She'd known for months that something was up, and now she was watching closely. Enormous events were afoot, but while everyone else was marching to and fro across the countryside and listening to angel choirs, she was...pondering.
Which is what we should be doing too. The greatest sadness of our commercialized Christmases is that they rob us of the chance to ponder. We are so busy that we take no time to slow down. We are like those new mothers who schedule their C-sections on a Friday so they can be back in the office on Monday, or those fathers who don't take paternity leave because they feel it might slow them down on the fast track.
Easy enough to scorn them, perhaps. But all of us have a new baby to contend with tonight. Do we have the calm and the peace to welcome that baby into the world, to ponder over his special future? Or are we so distracted taking pictures that we barely notice the real infant there in front of us? Fall silent, wonder. Ponder. It is the right thing to do this sweet night.
Prayer:
Faithful and loving God, help us make time to ponder, to pray, to meditate.
Discussion Questions:
How will we develop the ability to ponder alone? Ponder together? What are we willing to eliminate in our busy lives to have time to ponder? What tools, like this booklet, can we use to help guide our pondering?
Christmas 1
Isaiah 52: 7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1: 1-4; John 1: 14
Sometimes preachers, in their understandable zeal, will remark that Christmas is only made "real" or "important" by Easter - that it's the eventual resurrection of Jesus that makes his first birth count. And perhaps, in some theological sense, it is so. But the resurrection is for many of us a mystery almost unapproachable in its magnificence - we can spend a lifetime and beyond learning to make sense of it. The birth of Jesus, though, is a story immediately accessible to us. So accessible that sometimes we look past its pure, overwhelming meaning. In the words of John, rightly immortal words: "So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory." Or in the slightly more wooden phraseology of Hebrews: "When in former times God spoke to our ancestors, God spoke in fragmentary and varied fashion through the prophets. But in this final age God has spoken to us in the Son."
The eruption of God into the concrete reality of our planet seems to me every bit as pungent and overpowering as Christ's resurrection. Think of it: people shaking hands with the son of God, sharing a room, dancing at weddings with him. And of course, for a long time many of them had no idea that this was so - most likely, even he had no idea that this was so.
I remember once when I was living in New York City and working each Monday at a food pantry in the basement of a ritzy church. One day a man and his wife came in the door. They were poor and they weren't terribly clean, but they were polite. And as he was leaving, the husband asked what time church was on Sunday. I told him, but almost as soon as he was out the door I knew that I should have found out where he lived, offered to pick them up, and welcomed them with the widest of arms. And I remember thinking - if I'd met Jesus in such a circumstance, I would have been just as chintzy with my love. And then, of course, I thought, "Well, I did just meet Jesus. And I blew it."
I've blown it many times since, of course, and even occasionally risen to the occasion. But the scandalous idea that God could take human form: that is what we celebrate here on this day. It is a great gift, and a great responsibility.
Prayer:
Faithful and loving God, help us to see Jesus in others, especially those in need - human and otherwise.
Discussion Questions:
How can we be more open to seeing Jesus in others in need? How can we feel forgiveness when we "blow it" and then be less inclined to "blow it" in the future?
Epiphany
Isaiah 50: 1-16; Psalm 72; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2: 1-12
Now we reach the end of the Christmas season. If you are like those people contacted by a survey firm in the winter of 1999, then three quarters of you will find that you have been made more anxious than joyful by the Christmas season, that you are eager for its passage and for the resumption of "normal time."
In a way, this is entirely understandable. We have allowed Christmas to become a bizarre festival of consumption and partying. I say bizarre not because it is unprecedented (its date, after all, was chosen not to mark the birth of Jesus but to compete with the Roman New Year festivities) but because it is so unsatisfying. And that is a shame.
The story of the Magi offers what we might call a clue, though of course it is so obvious that that term seems almost silly. They arrive at the house bearing the first Christmas presents. And who are they for? They are not for everyone in attendance. Caspar doesn't hand Mary and Melchior and the odd shepherd small bottles of frankincense. No, they are for Jesus. And clearly we are called to do the same. It is, after all, his birthday.
Now, this sounds stern, almost puritan. (Indeed, the Puritans were not big on Christmas, routinely fining those poor Bostonians who thought it should be a celebration.) But in fact it is a recipe for a more enjoyable holiday. There is only one way to find out - try it for yourself and your family.
And do not wait until next Thanksgiving. Resolve now to do things differently next year. Send out a letter soon to friends and family asking if the gift-giving could morph into something else next year: a joint present for some worthwhile cause, a trip to be together. In the course of the year, think of small tokens you could make for your friends and loved ones. When the fall rolls around, look for places to volunteer. Guard your time with some jealousy, for it is your time. Or rather it is God's time... given to each of us.
And then, a year from today, make a hard-headed, cold-hearted calculation. If you liked doing Christmas the old way, with all the trips to the mall, then go ahead and do it again. No one will condemn you, and the merchants will love you more. But if you liked Christmas better in its simpler form, if you left its embrace feeling more joyful and more renewed, then you have a piece of knowledge and a bit of wisdom that will last you the rest of your Decembers. And you have a wonderful gift to pass on to your children.
Prayer:
Faithful and loving God, help us to learn and then to plan how to experience a less anxious, more joyful Christmas season.
Discussion Questions:
How can we experience joy rather than anxiousness next Christmas? Are we willing to involve others in a simpler celebration? What can we do now to make sure that happens? Who will investigate the tools in the back of this booklet?
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