What can we say December 3? Advent 1

    Advent comes around every time this year! I keep reposting my fairly widely read and hopefully helpful post, God Became Small: Preaching Advent – with loads of illustrations, and reflections on how preaching is peculiar during this season.

   I have frequently groused about the Advent lections themselves, as if some theologically prissiness has overwhelmed wise choices? Determined not to be Christmasy – which is fine – we extend the apocalyptic, and give John the Baptist a wide swath, even as our people are longing for Mary, Joseph, the pregnancy, the longing… which I get, and which matter to me spiritually.

   So prior blogs on my grumblings over Advent 1, and my ruminations on the texts for this year’s Advent 1.

   I am thinking to go off lectionary and do a mini-series (just 4 weeks…) on the Isaiah 9 bit (put to marvelous music) of the messianic titles: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” People hum this text in their heads - from Handel's Messiah! I love the ramp up to these words, especially "and his name shall be CALL--ED" - as if making "called" into 2 syllables reminds us something big, unusual, hifalutin is coming!

   Endless questions intrigue me. What is his counsel exactly? Is God’s “mighty-ness” what we in our world think of as might? The titles seem to be applied to Christ – but it’s “everlasting Father,” not Son. What do you do with that? And it’s the “prince,” not the “king” of peace. Why? All these, in my view, get subsumed under Isaiah’s ultimate kid name, which gets applied to Jesus in Matthew – that fabulous, theologically hopeful nickname Emmanuel.

   More later…