Preparing for Advent

Those who know better may appreciate the pun. If Advent is a season of preparation (it is), it may seem kind of redundant to prepare for it. Yet, it seems a good idea this year.

Worship planners at BMPCNC are organizing the worship for Advent-Christmas-Epiphany around a theme. In conjunction with the lectionary readings for the Sundays of the season, we are using a theme, generated from a general sense of the readings, to help guide our worship plans.

Our theme for this season will be: Fear Not: Words of Peace in Troubling Times. Reading through the various lections for the Advent season espeically, one is struck by how fraught with trouble were the times before and during the era of Jesus' birth. Isaiah wrote to a people trapped in exile. Mary, an unwed mother, was due to birth the Messiah. Roman hegemony stood on the neck of the people of Palestine. Those were indeed troubling times. And yet it was the moment which God appointed as the right time for the birth of the Savior. Isaiah proclaims a marvelous word of hopefulness to the people in exile. The angels appear to Mary and to Joseph to reassure them that God is in control.

We also live in fearful times. The war on terrorism drags on. Poverty, issues of the environment and financial instability are very much on people's minds. These are troubling times for us. From a global level all the way down to a very personal level, each of us no doubt can identify troubling aspects of our lives. And during the Advent season, we hear again a word of grace, "Fear not." What a wonderful word of hope to which to cling!

In practical terms our utilization of this theme will help your worship leaders more than anything. It will provide a framework within which we can develop preaching plans, rehearse musical offerings and orient our visual and dramtic arts for the season. We believe this theme truly captures a sense of our current life situation, while at the same time offers a profound word of hope for each of us. Our desire is that our use of this theme will provide a unique cohesiveness to our worship, which will in turn deepen your faith as we journey through the Nativity Cycle of worship this winter.