St. Aidan's Anglican Church, Kansas City - weekly talks

Fr. D.O. unpacks the theme of rejoicing on the third Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday.

Fr. D.O. unpacks the theme of rejoicing on the third Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday.

Mark 1:1-8; Isaiah 40; II Peter 3

The Greek word for Gospel or Good News is a word borrowed from the Roman Empire's use in proclaiming an imperial conquest. St. Mark, with bold subversion, reclaims the word and proclaims what the real conquest of victory over universal evil and death, through the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

The whole of creation has been redeemed and set free by the true Lord. Mark's Gospel was written in the belly of the Beast, the imperial city, Rome. His message is counter-cultural, subversive and, if fully received and implemented, is dangerous. This imperial, cosmic victory, was not won without a cross. If we suffer with him, we will reign with him, says St. Paul to the Romans.

Advent is a time to reclaim where Jesus seeks to be the one, true Lord of our lives. Surrender and feel your need for a savior. Humble yourself, incline your ear and he will raise you up.

Mark 1:1-8; Isaiah 40; II Peter 3

The Greek word for Gospel or Good News is a word borrowed from the Roman Empire's use in proclaiming an imperial conquest. St. Mark, with bold subversion, reclaims the word and proclaims what the real conquest of victory over universal evil and death, through the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

The whole of creation has been redeemed and set free by the true Lord. Mark's Gospel was written in the belly of the Beast, the imperial city, Rome. His message is counter-cultural, subversive and, if fully received and implemented, is dangerous. This imperial, cosmic victory, was not won without a cross. If we suffer with him, we will reign with him, says St. Paul to the Romans.

Advent is a time to reclaim where Jesus seeks to be the one, true Lord of our lives. Surrender and feel your need for a savior. Humble yourself, incline your ear and he will raise you up.

Advent – the beginning of the Christian new year and a way of marking new creation time ... After Adam 1.0's move towards autonomy from God, all creation, including time, began to move towards death and decay. In the renewal of all things in Jesus Christ, Adam 2.0, all creation, including time, began to move towards life. The liturgical cycle proclaims that Christ, the New Human Being, has come, has died and has risen for all.

Advent is also a penitential season … identifying with the expectation and hope of cosmic transformation. We all know that something is wrong in our lives … personally, socially, globally … and we know why --- Death entered the world through Adam’s autonomy from his creator … Christ, the second Adam has come to destroy the curse, the enemy behind it and restore all things. We are living in between the times … the first Advent and the final Advent.

Hear Isaiah’s groan in today's Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 64:1-9

God why don’t you do something? Rend the heavens and come down and do business with your enemies! Yet God remains on plan. In his Son, one day he would rend the heavens and come down to unite heaven and earth.

This is a season where we face the fact that we cannot save ourselves … we need a savior … all our attempts are as filthy rags.

Isaiah and Jesus, in the Gospel reading form Mark 13 are telling us the same message: Awake / arouse yourself to take hold of God. Isaiah was amazed that no one cared. God's people had fallen asleep. The cry is to wake up from spiritual slumber.

Three Ways to be on Watch, to be alert, discerning the moment:

1. Prayer – letting go … to apprehend … living attentively and structured in our prayer life is helpful … to pray without ceasing is the goal. Prayer is a way of actualizing our communion and friendship with God. Prayer is therefore a call to participate with the Kingdom of God.

2. Fasting – letting go … to apprehend … ascetical practices are a means of taking up one’s cross to crucify an overactive ego, a demanding, compulsive false self in order to clear away the dross to better access the Spirit.

When the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, a huge shift occurred where the unconverted masses started going to church. In an act to save themselves from the new, emerging culturalized Christianity, devout men and women fled to the Egyptian desert and established the foundations of monasticism. In order to escape the encroaching cultural compromise, they practiced a form of self-persecution … denying oneself in silence, solitude, prayer and fasting. People began to flock to the desert to seek counsel and prayer from these Desert Fathers and Mothers.

An overly contexualized Christianity ceases to be counter-cultural. Ancient Christianity is Counter-Cultural, not because its old, but because it is based in living through a different life in a sacramental world – the Crucified, Risen Lord Jesus and maintaining changing forms and practices handed down to use from the beginning.

An overly contexualized Christianity becomes more secular than sacred. This is not promoting a sacred – secular divide from the side of new creation. It all belongs to God. The unredeemed world has no grid for this marriage of heaven and earth. When we seek to emulate the secular without the sacred, we extinguish

Advent speaks of the tension of the already-not-yet Kingdom; the now and not-yet work of conversion in our lives. Forms of fasting in order to crucify the false self is necessary for flowering in our faith; otherwise, we drift and collapse amid the wind, waves and floods coming our way. Jesus said to WATCH …

Application:

Let us examine ourselves where we have become secularized in tension with the sacred.

Where might we be grieving the Holy Spirit? Resisting the Holy Spirit? Quenching the Holy Spirit?

Where have habits crept in that are at cross purposes with our salvation, our spiritual health and transformation? Fasting is a way of denying those

Advent – the beginning of the Christian new year and a way of marking new creation time ... After Adam 1.0's move towards autonomy from God, all creation, including time, began to move towards death and decay. In the renewal of all things in Jesus Christ, Adam 2.0, all creation, including time, began to move towards life. The liturgical cycle proclaims that Christ, the New Human Being, has come, has died and has risen for all.

Advent is also a penitential season … identifying with the expectation and hope of cosmic transformation. We all know that something is wrong in our lives … personally, socially, globally … and we know why --- Death entered the world through Adam’s autonomy from his creator … Christ, the second Adam has come to destroy the curse, the enemy behind it and restore all things. We are living in between the times … the first Advent and the final Advent.

Hear Isaiah’s groan in today's Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 64:1-9

God why don’t you do something? Rend the heavens and come down and do business with your enemies! Yet God remains on plan. In his Son, one day he would rend the heavens and come down to unite heaven and earth.

This is a season where we face the fact that we cannot save ourselves … we need a savior … all our attempts are as filthy rags.

Isaiah and Jesus, in the Gospel reading form Mark 13 are telling us the same message: Awake / arouse yourself to take hold of God. Isaiah was amazed that no one cared. God's people had fallen asleep. The cry is to wake up from spiritual slumber.

Three Ways to be on Watch, to be alert, discerning the moment:

1. Prayer – letting go … to apprehend … living attentively and structured in our prayer life is helpful … to pray without ceasing is the goal. Prayer is a way of actualizing our communion and friendship with God. Prayer is therefore a call to participate with the Kingdom of God.

2. Fasting – letting go … to apprehend … ascetical practices are a means of taking up one’s cross to crucify an overactive ego, a demanding, compulsive false self in order to clear away the dross to better access the Spirit.

When the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, a huge shift occurred where the unconverted masses started going to church. In an act to save themselves from the new, emerging culturalized Christianity, devout men and women fled to the Egyptian desert and established the foundations of monasticism. In order to escape the encroaching cultural compromise, they practiced a form of self-persecution … denying oneself in silence, solitude, prayer and fasting. People began to flock to the desert to seek counsel and prayer from these Desert Fathers and Mothers.

An overly contexualized Christianity ceases to be counter-cultural. Ancient Christianity is Counter-Cultural, not because its old, but because it is based in living through a different life in a sacramental world – the Crucified, Risen Lord Jesus and maintaining changing forms and practices handed down to use from the beginning.

An overly contexualized Christianity becomes more secular than sacred. This is not promoting a sacred – secular divide from the side of new creation. It all belongs to God. The unredeemed world has no grid for this marriage of heaven and earth. When we seek to emulate the secular without the sacred, we extinguish

Advent speaks of the tension of the already-not-yet Kingdom; the now and not-yet work of conversion in our lives. Forms of fasting in order to crucify the false self is necessary for flowering in our faith; otherwise, we drift and collapse amid the wind, waves and floods coming our way. Jesus said to WATCH …

Application:

Let us examine ourselves where we have become secularized in tension with the sacred.

Where might we be grieving the Holy Spirit? Resisting the Holy Spirit? Quenching the Holy Spirit?

Where have habits crept in that are at cross purposes with our salvation, our spiritual health and transformation? Fasting is a way of denying those addictions, putting them to death by the cross of Christ. This is how we participate in our transformation. Put off the old man and put on the new …

3. Alms – letting go to … apprehend … Generosity is at the core of our salvation. God so loved the world that he gave … Paul quoted Jesus as saying, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.”

Application:

Generosity, mercy, compassion, identifying with life on the margins is a key mark of true Christianity. We are asking you to consider giving more during this season and sacrificing a little less for the commercial side of Christmas. This is a way of taking back the true meaning of Christmas.

A community of generosity has been freed from the all consuming drive of individualism and has learned to recognize that everything and everyone is connected. One of the chief marks of a Christlike community is generosity. It was Jesus who lived the generous life and said that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

This message is directed to the local church plant of St. Aidan's. We are being called to live more generously in terms of time, energy and money. We must live as stewards and not owners. Everything belongs to Christ through who we share our lives with others.

A community of generosity has been freed from the all consuming drive of individualism and has learned to recognize that everything and everyone is connected. One of the chief marks of a Christlike community is generosity. It was Jesus who lived the generous life and said that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

This message is directed to the local church plant of St. Aidan's. We are being called to live more generously in terms of time, energy and money. We must live as stewards and not owners. Everything belongs to Christ through who we share our lives with others.

Matthew 25:1-13; I Thess. 4:13-18

Christians will not live a disembodied life in a mid-air heaven; rather, we shall meet the returning King Jesus to live and reign on a new earth, a renewed materiality. Heaven, where Jesus is, isn't another location within our space, but another realm. What difference does this make? We are not living in this world so as to one day escape through a secret rapture of all Christians. This sort of attitude devalues God's good creation. On the contrary, knowing that we shall one day live on a renewed earth transforms our approach and attitude to the hear and now. What we do matters ... matter matters! We, thus, become expectant, wise stewards of creation.

Matthew 25:1-13; I Thess. 4:13-18

Christians will not live a disembodied life in a mid-air heaven; rather, we shall meet the returning King Jesus to live and reign on a new earth, a renewed materiality. Heaven, where Jesus is, isn't another location within our space, but another realm. What difference does this make? We are not living in this world so as to one day escape through a secret rapture of all Christians. This sort of attitude devalues God's good creation. On the contrary, knowing that we shall one day live on a renewed earth transforms our approach and attitude to the hear and now. What we do matters ... matter matters! We, thus, become expectant, wise stewards of creation.