Dear friends, it’s been a little over thirty days since I passed the Bishop Ordinary’s crozier to Bishop Alan Hawkins. Since then I’ve begun to move into my new role as Bishop Emeritus, assisting part-time with the episcopal oversight and care of Christ Our Hope. One of the tasks I’ve been asked to take is continuing the monthly Out Of the Ordinary (OOO) reflections, which I am delighted to do. Obviously, though, we had to find a new name. On a day when I was absent from our weekly Staff Meeting (never miss a staff meeting!), the DCOH Team came up with their preferred new name for this column: “I Used to Be the Ordinary, but Now I Am the Extra-Ordinary.” I didn’t have a better suggestion, so I’ve accepted the team’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion. But because we Anglicans ALWAYS want to increase the alphabet soup of our world, I am going to shorten IUTBTOBNIATEO to NLO. Simply: “No Longer the Ordinary.”
Be assured that I am happy with what all this means. I am no longer the Bishop Ordinary (true), so NLO fits. What I will be doing in the future promises to be far richer than any acronym can convey. One future task for me is continuing to write this column. May the Lord use it to inspire, encourage, and direct us in our walk together. Now onto the message.
Malcolm Guite, the much-loved British priest, poet, and preacher, pointed out recently that Advent is a very different season of preparation than Lent. In Lent, we practice self-denial, reigning in the free expression of our oft-misshapen desires in an atmosphere of penitence, submission, and humility. We are preparing to see, more clearly than ever, our desperate need for God’s grace and mercy. Beyond that, we are preparing to see the beauty and power of God in the sacrificial love of Jesus. We are clearing space in our hearts that is often occupied by lesser loves to receive the greaterLove, our truest desire. We fast so we can feast.
Historically, fasting is not a focus of Advent: Advent does not feature bodily self-denial. Instead, Advent calls us to willingly sit in darkness, waiting, experiencing, and acknowledging our longings. Yes, the first Advent has come, but we await the Second Advent. Longings for the redemption of all things, true justice, our completed transformation, true reconciliation, and Eden reborn are still unmet. But in this broken place, we are called to shift our eyes toward Jesus, praying, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
Guite’s reflection on Advent can be found here. It is well worth the hour it takes to listen.
This year, I need a full, rich Advent for the health of my soul. I’m holding three words as pegs on which to hang my Advent practices: longing, waiting, and listening. Those words particularly swirl together in the Collect for Advent Two. Listening and waiting are consciously present in the prayer: longing stands in the background shadows.
The Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent opens, “Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word . . .” A proper season of Advent requires us to listen carefully and personally to God’s words: hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Learning what we really long for, what we are made for, what we are missing, is one gift of God’s written word to us. But note that the prayer continues, “that by patience and comfort of your holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.” This at least hints that, beyond the written Word, there is the living Word, Jesus Himself. Our deepest longings and hopes are ultimately for the Lord Himself, as revealed when the written word speaks livingly to us. (Are we listening?) But even as we listen, we realize we need the Word Himself to come to us here and enable us to wait faithfully to the end. In other words, we need a daily, constant advent of Jesus in our lives to be ready for the final Advent.
Waiting, longing, and listening are deeply intertwined.
An earlier great Anglican priest, poet, and preacher, John Donne (1572-1631), faced a midnight-dark season of his life as a plague swept London during the winter of 1622/23. He himself had fallen gravely ill and was quarantined in his dean’s quarters in St Paul’s Cathedral. Separated from family and parish, he listened to the tolling of funeral bells as 40,000 Londoners succumbed to the same disease he was also battling. During this time, he wrote his famous poem, “No Man is An Island”. However, he miraculously emerged from quarantine, and during that time he wrote a larger work entitled Devotions. In these meditations, he plumbs the depths of human experience using the lens of God’s word to examine details of his own life. In particular, he “passes his own [plague-sickened] body and soul under the lens of Scripture.[1]” At the end of that, in a concluding cry that shaped the rest of his life, Donne penned a deceptively simple prayer: “Interpret thine own work.”
In the context, the meaning is clear. Donne himself is “God’s own work,” which includes the human experiences of fear, loneliness, isolation, spiritual darkness, and a threatening expectation of death. As Philip Yancey says about the Devotions, they are “John Donne undone,[2]” the spiritual wrestlings of a profoundly honest Christian in the midst of turbulent waters. In that context, Donne prays, “Interpret thine own work.” Nathan Wall’s article (referred to below) underlines that the only interpretive instrument Donne has at hand is his Bible, wielded by the Spirit, teaching him who he really is, what he really longs for, stirring up the only viable hopes that can sustain him, directing him toward the One for whom he is made.
This week’s Collect emphasizes that listening attentively to God through and in his word is a central calling of Advent. When we listen to God’s word, we can come to know him. We learn who he is, what he wants, what he does in the lives of his beloved people, and how he works to transform us. We learn of his amazing, unfathomable covenant love. Our hopes are shaped by his promises. Climatically, we pray and hope to see “the glory of God in the face of Jesus” through the word of God (Luke 24:27). God’s Word is God’s Word to us.
But it is also God’s word about us. Our constant quest for identity and purpose takes us far afield, often into danger and deception. We need to be shaped by a greater and truer word about us. This Advent, I particularly want to listen to God interpret his own work (me) to me so I can know who I really am and what I am really made for in each stage of the journey of this life. Would you consider joining me by redoubling your prayerful intention to listen when you read the Word, to welcome God’s word to you about you?
May each day of Advent be a new advent of Jesus in our lives through his Word. May the Living Word Himself come to aid us all on our journey home to Him.
SERVUS SERVORUM DEI,
Bishop Steve
[1] From “God’s Way with Words: John Donne and Figural Reading,” by Dr. Nathan Wall, in All Thy Lights Combine, edited by Ephraim Radner and David Ney. Lexham Press, 2022.
[2] Undone: A Modern Rendering of John Donne’s Devotions,” by Philip Yancey, Rabbit Room Press, 2023