To Nativity and Beyond

By David Sinclair

Packed with practical ideas and original, ready to use seasonal material, this volume will be widely welcomed by hard-pressed ministers and worship leaders looking for fresh inspiration in Advent

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Release date: Oct 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9780861538492

Book preview

First published in 2016 by

SAINT ANDREW PRESS

121 George Street

Edinburgh EH2 4YN

Copyright © David Sinclair 2016

ISBN 978-0-86153-846-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent.

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher.

The right of David Sinclair to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

On page 38 the extract by Bonhoeffer is from a sermon on Gideon, preached in Berlin on 26 February 1933; in Dean G. Stroud (ed.), 2013, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, Eerdmans, p. 60. Permission sought from the US copyright holder, Simon & Schuster, New York.

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Other versions used:

New International Version, Anglicised. Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formally International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, a member of Hodder Headline Ltd.

Quotations from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

It is the publisher’s policy to only use papers that are natural and recyclable and that have been manufactured from timber grown in renewable, properly managed forests. All of the manufacturing processes of the papers are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

Typeset by Regent Typesetting

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Kathy Galloway

Introduction

An Advent Candle Ceremony for Pilgrims

The First Week of Advent

The Opening Place

An Act of Opening

Four Readings and Reflections

Prayer

Reflection on the Magnificat

Prayer

Finding a Voice: A Service Based on the Magnificat

The Second Week of Advent

The Turning Place

An Advent Repentance

Facing Up to Repentance

The Path of the Prophets

John Muir

Käthe Kollwitz

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Mahatma Gandhi

Three (Connected) Meditations on Hope

Reception and Transmission

Parish Pilgrimage

The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Hope in Ordinary

The Third Week of Advent

The Dreaming Place

Meditation: The Dream in the Desert

Reflections on the Call to Dream

Reflection: O come, O come, Emmanuel

A Liturgy of Expanding Dreams

The Fourth Week of Advent

The Freedom Place

Freedom Is Coming: A Service for Advent

Prayer: The God Who Comes in Freedom

The Service of Angels

Silent Night

Longest Night

All-Age Services

A Gift Service (with all-age communion)

A Christmas Tree Service

A Manger Service

Santa Claus and St Nicholas (a dialogue)

Meditations, Prayers and Hymns for Christmas Eve

Prayer of Approach

Meditation: ‘Take No Thought for Tomorrow’

Meditation: Mary

Prayer: Our Time and Our Place

Meditation: Christmas Time

Prayer: ‘Your Light Has Come’

Prayer: ‘The Glory of the Lord Shone Around Them’

Meditation: ‘The Light Shines in the Darkness’

Prayer: ‘The Reflection of God’s Glory’

Prayer: For the City

Meditation: The Theft of Baby Jesus

Hymn (based on Isaiah 9:6)

Meditation: The Approach to Midnight

Responses at Midnight

Hymn: ‘Baby Lying in a Manger’

Christmas Stories

Dan, the Shepherd

The Night Porter

Eleazar the Scribe

The Christmas Angels

Rachel the Gossip

Martha Remembers

Snow at Christmas

Prayer Resources for Epiphany

Heaven Knows

Prayer of Adoration

Prayer for Stargazers

Prayers for Cultural Openness

Prayer of Intercession

Prayers for Bethlehem

Prayer of Lament

Prayer for Peace

Prayer for Justice

Prayer for Protection

Prayers on the Gift of Gold

Prayers on the Gift of Frankincense

Prayer of Confession

Prayer of Praise

Prayers on the Gift of Myrrh (for a communion service)

Prayer of Penitence

Prayer of Adoration and Thanksgiving

Prayer of Intercession

Prayer of Consecration

Prayer of Blessing and Sending

Acknowledgements

There are, inevitably, many people to thank for their assistance and encouragement on the road to producing this collection of worship resources.

The first people to thank are those who persuaded me in the first place that I might perhaps have something worth publishing – Anne Muir and Ann Crawford. And since then I have been helped immeasurably by the staff at Hymns Ancient & Modern: Christine Smith, Mary Matthews and Joanne Hill.

There were those who helped in the process: Ken Jeffrey, who invited me to speak at a conference in Aberdeen; Dede Johnston, in Holland, Michigan, who arranged for me to spend time there; and those there who set up opportunities for me to trial some of the material: Jeff Japinga, who arranged a session with students at McCormick Seminary in Chicago; Andrew McCoy, who did the same at Hope College; and Andrew Spidahl, who brought a group together at Hope Church, Holland, for a worship workshop.

There were those who contributed to specific ideas: Petra Hardie, whose thoughts led to ‘The Path of the Prophets’; Janet Foggie, whose comments in Aberdeen on the similarity of my writing to that of John Paul Lederach led eventually to ‘Finding a Voice’; and the members at Hope Church for the discussion that allowed ‘The Service of Angels’ to appear.

The accumulated entitlement to the study leave scheme of the Church of Scotland allowed me to take three months off to concentrate on the collection – and the agreement of the Presbytery of Glasgow as well as the encouragement of Wellington Church were central to making that possible. During that time, Norman Shanks, Roger Sturrock and David Lunan all played their part in looking after things in my absence – and the congregation and I were very glad that they did.

Much of the material used here was first used either in Wellington Church or in my previous churches: St Andrews Martyrs, Boarhills and Dunino, and the encouragement over the years of these congregations has been a gift and a blessing.

But, as always, the one who keeps the show on the road, the one who provides the greatest support and the best encouragement, is Mary, to whom this little collection is dedicated.

David Sinclair

Glasgow

Foreword

It often seems as if Advent has been increasingly swept into and embraced by Christmas – another, and somewhat lengthier part of not just a Christmas celebration, but a whole Christmas season. But as David Sinclair reminds us, right at the start of To Nativity and Beyond:

Advent is not about

preparation for Christmas;

it is about

preparation for the arrival

of the Christ,

the arrival of

his kingdom,

his reign,

his way.

For churches and individuals seeking, in the midst of somewhat frenetic busyness, both secular and religious, to give Advent its place as a distinct and particular season its own right, and to discern its meaning and significance in our lives and the life of the world, this is an enormously helpful book. It reminds us that Advent is about preparation for change, and for those willing to be agents of change. Nor is the change just an inner, spiritual, personal one.

Advent is for the world. It is not, therefore, the Church’s role to call people out of the world and into the church as the place where God’s kingdom might come. It is the Church’s role to look for signs of the coming kingdom in the world, to encourage them, to recognise them, to announce them, to support them.

To be agents of this task means first to open ourselves to it; to make space for what is to come, even though we may not yet know its name or its shape. It means to turn to it and attend to our own frailties and vulnerabilities, our own failures, and to turn from these to new possibilities. It means to hope, to dream the other, the new; and eventually, to dream liberation and freedom. Through this time of preparation and approach, via this pilgrimage, we come to Advent. To Nativity and Beyond offers meditations and prayers, creative liturgy and reflection that do not allow us to skim over the surface of reality.

In that regard, this is a serious book, though not a solemn one. It takes seriously the capacity of worshippers to engage with the shadows of life as well as its brightness. It comes to Christmas with a sense of birth after a long and sometimes painful gestation, and celebrates it with humour and delight; and to Epiphany as a time of gifts that are nevertheless close to, and sometimes born out of tragedy and terror.

There is much here for the individual reader. But this is primarily a book for worshipping communities, arising from the life of one – and a wonderful resource for worship leaders and preachers. It is always engaged with the world and all its people, always travelling towards the God who is travelling to meet us.

Kathy Galloway

Introduction

Pilgrimage through Advent

Advent might not be for me!

If I believe

that everything is fine,

just the way it is,

Advent is not for me.

If I believe

that the church is fine,

just the way it is,

Advent is not for me.

If I believe

that I am fine,

just the way I am,

Advent is not for me.

Advent is not about

preparation for Christmas;

it is about

preparation for the arrival

of the Christ,

the arrival of

his kingdom,

his reign,

his way.

And so Advent

puts everything

– and everyone –

under scrutiny.

Advent asks

the most searching of questions

of me

and demands

that I ask them

of myself.

Advent talks

about renewal,

about change (radical change),

about turning things (and me)

inside out and upside down.

So if,

on reflection,

I decide

that I would really like

to keep things

just the way they are,

Advent is not really

for me.

But the truth is that we do not have the option, the choice. Whether we sing ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’ and ‘Freedom is coming’, or whether we do not, the biblical witness is that change is coming – and our choice is about what our relationship is to be to that change. Do we resist as much and for as long as possible – putting off the challenges, hiding from the scrutiny, supporting the status quo? Or do we fling ourselves into the maelstrom – and offer ourselves, not as opponents of change, but as its agents?

What follows is for those who wish to be agents – but it is not all about activism.

Advent can be seen as a training period, a pilgrimage, for agents. It needs, for our purposes, not to begin immediately with repentance, though Advent is traditionally a time of penitence, but to begin rather with waiting and watching: developing an openness to what is to come, an availability – and indeed an emptiness – that does not presume to know what is yet to appear, nor to know what needs to be done; and our worship is therefore concerned with opening up time, allowing space, giving ourselves room, and giving God room.

If we begin our consideration of Advent at this point, if we begin our Advent worship at this point, it perhaps changes how we look at the pattern of Advent. I remember once saying that Advent Sunday would not be quite ‘right’ if we did not sing ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’; that great anthem has always seemed to me to be the place to start, with its triumphant, arresting, confident ‘Rejoice!’ Waiting, watching, availability, are all themes that we have tended to consider in relation to Mary – on the last Sunday in Advent. But maybe these themes are for the first Sunday; maybe the triumphant, joyful note should wait a little.

The pattern of these meditations moves then and only then, from waiting and watching, to repentance and hope. These are themes often associated with the figure of John the Baptist, traditionally considered on the third Sunday but here brought to the second (as is the case with the current Revised Common Lectionary). The openness and vulnerability of a time of waiting and watching brings us, almost inevitably, to an awareness both of where we have fallen short (and continue to do so) and also of the possibility of something else. We call that ‘something else’ hope. It is the other side of the coin of repentance, the side that says that falling short can be overcome, that something else is possible, that the coin can be turned – and so can we.

On the third Sunday we have the chance to consider that something else that we have called hope. We take the opportunity to dream dreams, to allow visions to guide us – and to think about what our dreams might anticipate. Anticipation and dreams are only possible after a time of waiting, after a period of repentance, after the acknowledgement that there is hope after all – and the empowerment that such hope brings.

And on the final Sunday of Advent we focus on a particular dream: the dream of freedom and of liberation. Now we allow ourselves to celebrate; now we sing of release from captivity, of the triumph of liberation over oppression; now, at the end of this time we call Advent, rather than at the beginning.

So in this series of Advent meditations we attempt to understand this liturgical and ecclesiastical season as a pilgrimage. It is a journey that connects the Church’s understanding of the ways of God with how we understand the ways of the world, and indeed with our own ways, our own lives, and our own faith. And perhaps, in the process, we might begin to discover how our own faith, our own lives, our own ways – and indeed the ways of the world – are changed by the coming of the Christ.

There needs to be, however, a word of warning. We journey through Advent predominantly in the darkness, looking for the faintest of lights. Among the many things that might tell us that Advent is not really for us is the idea that in Advent we are already in the light. The darkness has to be taken seriously, or it can never be overcome. So there are sombre, serious, challenging things about ourselves and about our world, past and present, to consider. But we consider them in the knowledge that the light is on its way.

And perhaps the most important thing to notice about Advent is that it is not just for the Church, indeed not predominantly for the Church. Advent is for the world. It is not, therefore, the Church’s role to call people out of the world and into the church as the place where God’s kingdom might come. It is the Church’s role to look for signs of the coming kingdom in the world, to encourage them, to recognise them, to announce them, to support them. And it may not be in ‘power and great