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First Sunday of Advent

Marking the start of Advent with John Bell of the Iona Community and Rev Carolyn Kelly.
Live from the Chapel of Glasgow University with the Choir directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper.

Marking the beginning of the season of Advent, with John Bell of the Iona Community and Rev Carolyn Kelly, University Chaplain.
Live from the Memorial Chapel of Glasgow University with the Chapel Choir directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper.
John explores 'The best of times and the worst of times' – what part does God play in the brokenness of the world
which so many are experiencing so painfully?
This Advent reflection invites deeper thought on how Christ’s presence unfolds that mystery.

38 minutes

Last on

Sun 27 Nov 2022 08:10

Script

SCRIPT MAY NOT REFLECT SPEECH AS BROADCAST WITH COMPLETE ACCURACY

UNIVERSITY CHAPEL BELL

REV DR CAROLYN KELLY Welcome and Introduction

Good morning and welcome to the University of Glasgow Memorial Chapel.

I am Carolyn Kelly, University Chaplain, and our reflections this morning are led by John Bell of the Iona Community. Our music will be sung by the Chapel Choir.

We have just heard the Chapel bell, also known as the ‘hurry bell’, which has rung out for over 90 years at 8.45 am: ‘Hurry, come along!’

It calls to sleepy, reluctant, students in nearby flats and halls: wake up! lectures are about to start

It calls to teaching staff: are you ready? They’ll be waiting for you!

And it beckons those who gather for Morning prayer in the Chapel, “Yes, you too: Come along!”

Today this first Sunday of Advent we are all ushered in,

invited to a time-in-waiting, to prepare the way:

to reflect on the year that has past

to recognise and rejoice in life’s fullness,

and lament lost opportunities

to allow our hearts to hope - for what?

we barely dare say… for God to show up at all?

Could God, in the Christ child, even come, in this time of all times?

Prayer

And so we pray:

Loving God, Source of all life, who was and is and is to come

Together with the psalmists, and the prophets of old,

the gospel scribes and sages who read the signs

we look and we listen

searching for traces of your presence in our world

but right now, those are not easy to see

we listen for signs of life, but they can be hard to hear

and as for the kingdom that’s coming… it’s not often that noticeable.

Emmanuel, be God-with-us again

Come, long-awaited Jesus:

In this time of all times, will you show up?

MUSIC: O COME, O COME EMMANUEL (Tune: Veni Emmanuel)

CAROLYN

Our first reading is taken from the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 64.

In this text we find words which articulate the frustration of people who,

in the midst of pain, guilt and disappointment beg for divine intervention,

for God to come to their aid.

ISAIAH 64:

Reader 1

64 Othat you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
2as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
4From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait forhim.
5You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in yourways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.
6We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7There is no one who calls on yourname,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face fromus,
and have deliveredus into the hand of our iniquity.

Reader 2

8Yet, OLord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are ourpotter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9Do not be exceedingly angry, OLord,
and do not remember iniquity for ever.
Now consider, we are all your people.
12… Will you restrain yourself, OLord?
Will you keep silent, and punish us so severely?

MUSIC: HYMN – WHEN OUT OF POVERTY IS BORN (Tune: Kingsfold)
Published in Scottish Church Hymnary 4th Edition (Canterbury Press)


JOHN BELL – SERMON 1

Advent begins four weeks or so before Christmas Day.

..except in Scotland’s past, for, until relatively recently Advent was barely mentioned ....and if you go far enough back even Christmas didn't seem to happen at all for many people.

We can blame it on the Reformation which in Scotland was iconoclastic. That meant that not only were stained glass windows, statues, paintings, churches and chapels destroyed; but long-standing religious traditions also went. The Protestants of the time were keen to be rid of all kinds of what they called Romanism.

So, the celebration of St Andrew, our patron saint, whose anniversary happens next Wednesday would have been as much neglected as the cathedral bearing his name.

And because the birth of Christ could not, unlike his death, be biblically associated with a calendar date, Christmas was not celebrated by Presbyterians. Indeed although Christmas was designated a public holiday in 1871, many people worked on that day well into the 1960's.

As for Advent, I never remember it being mentioned in the sadly less ecumenical years of my youth. For us protestants there was no Advent wreath and certainly no Advent candles. In the street where I grew up most protestant houses had candlesticks holding coloured candles. But they were never ever lit. That was what Catholics did.

Only recently has the season been celebrated by most people in this country, perhaps more by confectionery manufacturers than protestant churches.

So what is Advent - a warm up season, a rehearsal time for Christmas??

Or does it consist of four weeks in which Christians show penitence and cheer themselves up by thinking about the Four Last Things – Death, The Last Judgement, Heaven and Hell?

Or is it a season of frenetic purchasing and office partying, made more expensive this year because of the rise in the cost of living?

Or is it a time to ask, 'What is God up to?'

MUSIC: COME HOLY SPIRIT, COME WITH ENERGY DIVINE (Tune: Abbeville)

Words: Benjamin Beddome (1717–1795)
Music: EJ King (1821 – 1844), alto after WM Cooper (1902)
2 part version – arr. Katy Lavinia Cooper
Final verse – arr. Katy Lavinia Cooper

JOHN SERMON 2
'What is God up to?' ...that's not my phrase. It was the question asked by an old nun to a Roman Catholic priest who is a friend of mine. He had been celebrating mass in the chapel of an enclosed order on the Sunday after the devastating Tsunami on 26thDecember 2004.

Upset by that awful disaster, she didn't just ask the priest, she railed at him, accusingly, ' What is God up to?'

And some of us might – whether we are believers or not – have found ourselves asking a similar kind of question in this and recent years, as we have witnessed disorder in the world and even experienced it in our own lives.

When HIV/AIDS still beleaguers people mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, and the global pandemic of Covid harms millions of people, disrupts life and affects the economic wellbeing in almost every country in the world... - What is God doing?

When in Pakistan floods devastate a third of the land,

when in Somalia, drought threatens the lives of millions,

when in small oceanic nations, rising sea levels assure their devastation,

when in landlocked countries like Nepal, the water supplied by glaciers is running out,

what is God doing?

When a nation's soldiers with the blessing of their country's Christian primate invade, destroy and claim as their own an independent state which has a long pedigree of Christian witness.... What is God doing?

I dislike the over-use of the word 'unprecedented' but its use may be validated by a contrast between two women whom I heard speaking.

The one was the veteran broadcaster Joan Bakewell who, in reminiscing about post-war life in the 1940's and 50's spoke of how for young people in that era the world was full of hope and endless possibilities.

The other was a seventeen year old girl in from Fiji who I heard saying that she had decided never to have children because she did not think the world was a safe place into which to bring a baby.

When I mentioned this to a class of 16 adults I was teaching in Canada a few months ago, half the class said that their sons and daughters had made similar decisions.

In a world in which the young are rocked by uncertainty, what is God doing?

The question is legitimate and it has been asked of heaven before, most eloquently by Isaiah:

Why don't you tear apart the heavens and come down?

Why don't you tear apart the heavens and come down?

MUSIC: DROP DOWN, YE HEAVENS FROM ABOVE (Composer: Judith Weir)


JOHN SERMON 3

Has God – as Isaiah suggested – 'hidden his face from us, and left us in the grip of our iniquities?'

I think there are one or two perspectives we have to consider before we blame everything on God and bemoan what seems like divine indifference.

The first is that the world we live in is the only one we are getting, and it is given to us not as a perfect Eden, but as a place with its own vulnerabilities. Earthquakes have always happened, so have Tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. These are part of the given.

And the natural world – under its own steam – is able to cope with these. The fact that so many different animals, many of which prey on each other, are not all extinct is witness to this. If you lived in Australia you would know how some gum trees can only germinate and produce new life by going on fire.

What seem like threats to us, are facets of this good but not perfect natural world.

But if we overload the ecosystems of the earth with burdens of pollution in air, land and sea which it cannot cope with; and if we – in countries which boast of being civilised – continually do this in full knowledge that our polluting of nature and demanding of nature will lead to its gradual demise.....can we then rail at heaven?

Another perspective leads to a similar conclusion.

We are daily made aware of the how civil strife and international warfare have not diminished with our ever increasing knowledge. We may bemoan the wickedness and the mayhem created by bullying, lying, narcissistic and populist leaders and people of unaccountable wealth and power. But who trained them, who elected them, and how many are afraid to oppose them?

Empires and empire building, the subjugation of ethnic minorities, the repression of one sex under another are all anathema to the living God – the law and the prophets and the psalms and the Gospels proclaim this.

But if our individual and collective attitude is not – what God through the prophet Micah commended ….to 'do justice, love kindness and walk humbly.' Rather, if we opt to do harm, love avarice and walk as if we were infallible beings, then let's not blame it on heaven.

But that still does not answer the question.... in the face of all that confounds us,

What is God doing?

Is God perhaps conceiving?

Listen to these words of Jesus to his disciples, as recorded in John's Gospel.


CAROLYN READING 2
Gospel: John 16: 21-24

21When a woman is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.22So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.23On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

MUSIC: ORGAN PLAYS PART OF VENI EMMANUEL

JOHN SERMON 4

What is God doing?

I want to use the word Incarnation.

But I want to rescue it from a primary association with a babyfest in December. The incarnation is not confined to Bethlehem.

It seems to me that the Incarnation is about a change in the heart of God, no longer to remain removed from the vulnerable world and fallible people brought into being and loved by their Maker. But rather in the midst of their tensions, their mistakes and even their gross iniquities to enter into solidarity with wonderful and fallible humanity.

It's as if God said …' What if ??'

What if rather than stay within the boundlessness of eternity, I constrain myself
within the limitations of time and space?

What if rather than be disembodied I limit myself to the physical form

and intellectual dexterity of a human being,

What if I emerge on earth not as the gifted child of a pedigreed family, but am
parented by people who have no status or secure locus?

What if rather than be educated in the finest academy, I learn about life through 30
years of anonymity?

What if rather than be inviolable, I make myself vulnerable – to pain, to prejudice, to

slander, to disease and to the loss of credibility because of what I say and who

I associate with?

What if rather than choose the best graduates from the foremost rabbinic seminary,
I pick for my companions a random sample of tradesmen, civil servants,

people with financial acumen, maybe even some with no specific skills and

one who might be quite untrustworthy?

What if rather than repeat safe nostrums from the inviolability of the pulpit, I talk
about the forgotten and uncherished truths about life, faith and divine identity in places where people may be so outraged that they might try to stone me?

'What if, should all I say, give and do to save the world by my life and example, lead
to animosity and rejection, rather than return to the safety of heaven,
I accept the capital punishment which earth reserves for those whose love,
honesty and integrity are too much to bear?

And what if, when I'm dead, I don't stay lying down?

Well in advance of Christmas, whatever your state of mind or wellbeing, take time to ponder on how out of sheer love, Jesus comes among us not to fix everything, but to be in total solidarity with us, and in the messiness of life to show a truer way of being human.

For those who follow that way, grief, trouble and pain are not the end, but can be the birthpains of something unspeakably better.

MUSIC: FROM HEAVEN HIGH I COME TO TELL (Tune: Scottish Carol Tone)

Published in The University Carol Book

CAROLYN - PRAYERS

Lord, surely it is time?

for some relief from this world’s hurting:

for those affected by floods and by fire, drenched by rain, or dried by drought

on islands and deltas lost to rising salt,

for the hungry to be filled with good things, and the rich to be content with enough

to awaken decision-makers and motivate voters,

to strengthen resolve and empower collective action,

for your people to be instruments of your justice, this day

MUSIC: COME NOW, O PRINCE OF PEACE (Tune: O So So)

Published in Scottish Church Hymnary 4th Edition (Canterbury Press)

CAROLYN

Lord, surely it is time:

To show mercy: for those who need and those who offer care this day

To give comfort: for all who mourn and experience loss or suffering, this day

For resources of healing to be shared: for COVID, for malaria, and for AIDS which we especially remember this World AIDS Day

For communities to be restored and strengthened, for life to be cherished and nurtured,

for conflicts to be stemmed, and weapons re-worked as instruments of your peace.

MUSIC: COME NOW, O PRINCE OF PEACE (Tune: O So So)

Published in Scottish Church Hymnary 4th Edition (Canterbury Press)

CAROLYN

Lord, surely it is time?

To stay the hands of those who do harm; to strengthen the hands of those who fear doing good

To soften the hearts of all embittered by grievance or intolerance

To heal the wounds of any immune to others’ suffering

To change our minds, to heal our hearts, to prepare a place

For you to be born again, within us.

All: Lord’s Prayer

MUSIC – HYMN: OF THE FATHER’S LOVE BEGOTTEN (Tune: Corde Natus)

CAROLYN – BLESSING

At the beginning, at the end,

at this moment in between,

in these best and worst of times:

Now is the time in which God creates

Now is the time in which God heals

Now is the time in which Christ comes.

May the life of the Christ child

given for this broken, yet beautiful world

Be born anew

this day.

And the blessing of God:

Creator, Redeemer and Spirit of Life

Be with and remain with you. Amen.

MUSIC: ORGAN VOLUNTARY

Broadcast

  • Sun 27 Nov 2022 08:10

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