Advent 2007
My dear Friends,
The future has enormous impact on the present. Usually we think it is the other way around, but in fact, what we do in the present is deeply influenced by what we think the future holds. The hopeful expectation that things are getting better and better and will continue to do so into the indefinite future, now sounds simply naïve. Every one of us can list half a dozen plausible scenarios in which the future is deeply worrying and in which we feel we have no ability to influence changes. The worrying thing is that such a vision of the future is going to profoundly influence the present.
In a time like ours, with so many imminent threats and so much uncertainty, it's hard to know how to deal with the future other than by anxiety or denial. That's very understandable – not all predictions of problems come true, and we'd be paralysed if we had to respond to every imagined threat. But neither do we want to cling to the illusion, no matter how comforting, that life will just automatically get better and better.
That's where Advent becomes so important. Advent is a whole new way of looking at the future. Every year the church calendar challenges us with this life-giving alternative. Advent claims that God is what the future holds for us. Advent challenges us to go beneath our immediate responses to the latest crisis, and to start expecting to find God in every future circumstance.
If God really is arriving from the future, and if God is the God of justice, of compassion, of challenge and of hope, then this alternative future will make all the difference to our present. If we are expecting to encounter God in every situation, then the various threatening possibilities take on a whole new significance – each worrisome scenario becomes ripe with possibilities of responding to God's call to love, to act with justice, and to live with greater depth. The Advent discovery that every conceivable future circumstance is bursting with opportunities to become more deeply faithful to justice, compassion and deep living, will ensure that our present is transformed by that expectation.
If a child is scared of her first day at school, our quiet adult confidence in God being present in every circumstance will transform her present. If we face difficult personal news, the Advent assurance that God's possibilities of hope are offered even there, transforms our present. If we struggle with global issues, knowing that God's creative power can never be absent in any future, our energies to transform the present are renewed.
To claim this Advent hope and confidence requires sacrifice on our part. What we sacrifice is the twin temptations to imagine there is no hope, or to imagine there are no problems. But if we have discovered that God is imminent in every possible future, then we will be energized and alive, and God's future will be birthed in our present.
In the middle of the darkest night of the year we will gather to raise carols to the highest heaven because it is true that God arrives in the midst of the darkest future, transforming it with the One who is the Light of the world. We prepare for that by entering deeply into Advent – it makes all the difference.
Make good use of the various Advent events on the attached calendar to deepen your experience of the God who transforms our present by arriving from the future. A parish Advent hot turkey dinner on December 1st will enable us to support work with AIDS patients through Aids Vancouver Island. The Advent Carol service the evening of December 2nd enacts in word and music, and with readings by those who serve the poor in the city, that a transformed present is being offered to us. The three-evening series on “Pilgrimage” led by Herb O’Driscoll and Bishop John Hannen will allow you to enter more deeply into an Advent pilgrimage towards God's transformation. Finally, the light one-act opera “Amahl” will delight you with hope and transformation.
You are invited to use the enclosed envelope to take part in St. John's proclamation of this Advent good news to all the world.
I wish you a very blessed Advent as we allow God's future to transform our present.
Sincerely ,
Harold Munn
The Rev. Canon Dr. Harold Munn
Rector
