Ancient Prayer
BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
This was the prayer read from the Book of Common Prayer on Sunday morning as the second Advent candle was lit. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy hearing these prayers read. They go by in an instant - the page is turned, the words are read, the candle is lit and we move on. Our little ceremony each week seems so ordinary, so unimpressive - and yet it is so rich and full with meaning and value and purpose.
It’s a pearl of great price, a vacant lot with buried treasure.
Hearing and reading the scriptures read seems straightforward enough - these ‘collects’ we read each week are part of an entire calendar of bible reading and prayer the Christian church has practiced for centuries. But that word ‘mark’ is an interesting one, isn’t it? As a verb without an object the word means ‘to take notice, give attention, consider’. And, as a verb without object the recognition that this - the scripture - is something of particular worth, value or meaning falls exactly between ‘read’ and ‘learn’. It is the necessary work of faith in order to grow into a resemblance of Christ and it is nothing more - and nothing less - than simply thinking about what we are hearing and reading, what the bible is saying to us today.
In much of contemporary, evangelical Christianity there is the notion that the bible fell from the sky, fully formed, perfect and without error in any way. I’m not sure the text itself supports this notion. But I do believe there is something unique in the history of the world about this particular collection of ancient documents we call ‘The Bible’. Pay attention, this old prayer of the church tells us. Look. Listen. Be fully present. God is about something in particular here - and it may not be obvious, plain, on the surface. ‘Grant us…’ the prayer begins - let our awareness and presence in this spoken Word be a work of your Spirit awakening us, enlivening us, making us fully present so that - for these few sacred moments - the busy-ness and stress and noise and haste of our lives might be replaced with the placid calm of loving you, the beauty of your Spirit returning us to yourself from all those strange gods we have been chasing after.
‘…and inwardly digest…’ the prayer continues. To be attentive and present in the reading of the word of God is where the power of God is made plain in our life. This is where transformation happens. At some point, as we wrestle, wander, struggle, sojourn, saunter through or carefully and meticulously study the bible we find ourselves engaging the text with something other than moving eyes and pursed lips. Eventually we will find ourselves asking, “what does that mean, why did that happen, what’s going on here’ and, eventually, what does this mean for me? if we have the courage to remain in solitude with the text we discover that the bible has been reading us, that God is indeed speaking to us - singularly, specifically, personally - about what’s happening in our hearts and our lives today. This is, I think, where the ‘inspiration’ of the Holy Spirit is found. As we ‘inwardly digest’ this unique writing we come face to face with the Holy Spirit of God, and we are changed.
These prayers that Andrea has chosen for our Advent ceremony are almost too rich and full to really grasp. We take them for granted, gloss over them, let them slip by. They use words like ‘patience and comfort’, and ‘blessed hope’, and ‘everlasting life’, all of them as full and pregnant as Mary, standing at the inn-keeper’s door. Perhaps the real power and glory, the real wonder and beauty of Advent is the way in which it asks us to slow down, to pause, to consider - to be present with and in - the coming of Jesus to our world. And maybe this is exactly the right prayer. Maybe we can’t just make the world stop, can’t just snap our fingers and make a time of quiet reflection in our lives. Perhaps this too must be a work of God that we are willing to be present in, and willing to accept, even willing to desire.
“Blessed Lord …grant that we may…”
Thoughts on Advent
“To prepare our hearts to welcome the Lord who, as we say in the Creed, will come one day to judge the living and the dead, we must learn to recognize his presence in the events of daily life. Advent is then a period of intense training that directs us decisively to the One who has already come, who will come and who continuously comes.”
Pope John Paul II
Once again we are entering an advent Journey here at Third Space. Our lives are so busy, and fragmented, and so full of competing stresses that Advent becomes even more important with each passing year. It’s a time when we stop and recognize that this extraordinary thing has happened - that God has entered the world, that God became one of us. And we have to stop to remember this, because we so easily forget just how powerful this story is. We go to church on Sunday and talk about Jesus, and God, and the Holy Spirit, and us, and how we’re all somehow mixed up in this world together. We read from our bible. We pray. We worship. We continue these practices throughout the week, some of us fervently, some of us casually. And then the phone rings, the baby cries, the boss taps his clipboard, the bills arrive in the mail and life comes rushing back in on us once again. Yes, we want to follow Jesus, but we also live in the real world.
And this is precisely why Advent matters so much. The birth of Christ - as a baby, like any other baby, with tiny fingers and tiny toes, needing to be fed and changed and held - is the event that melds our spiritual desires with our real world. Christ and child, Spirit and flesh becoming one: God With Us. Immanuel. God is no longer a distant lawmaker, waiting to be placated with sacrifices and prayers of contrition. God became one of us. And as Advent brings us to this realization we must, as Pope John Paul said, make a decision. We can accept this wild and improbable story as a thing of ferocious beauty and truth, or we can deny it. And with the birth of Jesus begins a trajectory through a thousand decisions we must face - what Christ’s parables mean, or if his teachings or sound, or the miracles were real, or the tomb was empty. Each one of these will grasp us from the gospel accounts and confront us with a reality that is wholly other than our own. We will be faced with the reality of God in the world - our world - and must come to a decision about the divinity of Christ. There will be no in-between for us. And each one of those decisions will be thrust upon us because Christ was born.
At the end of our Advent journey we will celebrate that Christ has come. Yet, even as we do so we seek out the Spirit of Christ to hold us, keep us, lead us and shape us. Christ has indeed come, and as we long for him in our world, continues to come, meeting us once again. All the while we look forward to the day of his final and ultimate return. When he arrives, as Pope John Paul reminds us, he will come to judge the living and the dead. How we fare on that fateful day will be determined by the decisions we make about Jesus Christ today - and that’s part of the Christmas story as well. It may, in fact, be the most hopeful part of the story, for Christ being born in human flesh means that it is now possible for us to know God in a very real, intimate and personal way. It is possible to know his love and to experience eternal life through him. Our story and Jesus’ story can be joined and that, too, begins in the Advent journey.