To Everything, Turn, turn, turn, there is a Season …

The common complaint that stores and malls start arranging Christmas stock and decor the moment Hallowe’en sales start slowing, and rather dishearteningly without leaving just a little respectful space between the two holidays for Remembrance Day, certainly played out this year. For those of us striving to live in the sacred present of the church year, it can be a bit disorienting. But take heart! The upcoming Sunday is the last Sunday of the church year, and the four weeks that follow are the Season of Advent! Of course, Advent is not Christmas. But it does look forward to Christmas: Advent means “coming” and is all about preparing for the coming of the baby Saviour on Christmas Eve.

And that last Sunday before Advent, traditionally known as “Stir Up Sunday” but nowadays more commonly known, among mainstream Christians at least, as “Christ the King Sunday”, is our one-week opportunity to get ready for Advent. So there is a LOT going on next Sunday. Everyone is welcome: if you are part of Emmanuel’s fellowship then invite your friends and family to come and take part. If you are NOT part of our fellowship then bring yourself — and also any friends and family who want to come. Christmas is special, which means getting ready for Christmas is special. We would love to share these fun, sacred customs with everyone

First of course, is our regular Sunday worship, with our altar hanging changed from its common green to a celebratory white, because Christ really IS our King and that’s really something to celebrate.

Second, also of course, is stirring up our Christmas fruitcakes, that will be offered for sale at our December 15 Bake Sale. As the church year flows in a circle, the past year flowing into the new year; the preserved fruits harvested from last summer combines with our hopes and prayers for the coming year, in the very concrete symbol of fruitcake. Each person is invited to stir their own prayers into the cake along with a spoonful of fruit, to the words of the “Stir Up” prayer-of-the-day:

Stir up, we beseech thee O Lord, the hearts of Your faithful servants: that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruits of good works, may by You be plenteously rewarded.

Third (and excitingly new this year!) we are offering families a chance to learn more about the Advent Wreath, dip candles to make their own Advent Candles and to build a Lutheran Advent wreath for their home. The definition of “family” in this offer is “one or more people who share a home at least sometimes.” Different traditions have different numbers and colors of candles. Roman Catholics use four candles coloured purple-purple-pink-purple for the four Sundays of Advent. Anglicans add a fifth, white candle for Christmas day and in a few cases order the candles purple-purple-purple-pink to show the progress from darkness to light as Christmas approaches. Scandinavian Lutherans often use all white candles, which nicely gets around how to order the colours. Modern Lutheran theologians have strongly urged for blue, not purple, to be used as the liturgical colour for Advent. This is because purple is a symbol of penitence appropriate to Lent; but not appropriate to the holy anticipation that characterizes Advent. So we are urged to choose four candles that are darkest blue, dark blue, medium blue, and pale blue, and at last white for Christmas. But liturgical ware-houses haven’t sourced any candle-sets that meet that specs, so we’re going to have some fun making our own.

Fourth — also excitingly new — we are going to build on our three-part prayer seminar earlier this year that covered the use of personal prayer books called a “Book of Hours”, by compiling a small folded book with prayers for use by families and individuals during Advent: prayers, scripture, adult-colouring pictures suitable for art meditation, and family liturgy for lighting candles. Over the next few years and seasons, we will prepare similar books for the other seasons of the church year, with the long-term goal of binding the several folios together into a bound book.

Finally, we will decorate the church for Advent and Christmas. That’s something we do every year, but this year we have moved the activity to Stir-Up Sunday so that more people can take part.

Our worship service starts at 10:30. If you want to take part in the Advent Workshop but don’t want to come to worship, arrive around 11:45. Of course if you come later you can always join in when you get here. We’ll offer snacks so that no-one faints from hunger, and we’ll wrap up before 2pm to get out of the way of the next church-group we share our church-building with.