First Sunday of Advent

About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world.

Themes for this week:
Hope, Honesty, Honor/Shame

• What does hope look like in the midst of your own list of expectations, pressures, and worries?
• ​The Luke text ends with an image of guarding against despair and protecting hope. How does that happen, do you think? What practices and patterns “steward” hope?

​Reflection:

Edward Hays, A Pilgrim's Almanac, 20th century
"Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace."

Jürgen Moltmann, 20th century
"I tried to present the Christian hope no longer as such an 'opium of the beyond' but rather as the divine power that makes us alive in this world."
 
Martin Luther King, Jr., 20th century
"Only in the darkness can you see the stars."
 
Aeschylus, 5th century B.C.E.
"He who learns must suffer;
and even in our sleep
pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
by the awful grace of God."
 
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 20th century
"For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
 
Frederick Buechner, 20th century
"Go where your best prayers take you."

Lectionary Texts:

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36