Stir Up

Christ Church Charlotte

Stir Up

December 11, 2024 • The Reverend Elizabeth Walker

My daughter Rosalie is an avid baker, and in this season, she has been busy. Last weekend, when I walked into our kitchen, she looked up quickly, sheepishly pushing the cookies she was decorating to the side. Curious, I moved closer and saw that she was icing tiny cookie angels. She confessed that she was hiding them from me. She said, “I know it’s Advent, so you probably don’t want to see any Christmas cookies yet!”

I’m not enough of a curmudgeon to take the joy of cookies away from my girl. In fact, it gave me a swell of pride that she knows the church calendar so well. Because she’s right! Despite our culture making this the season of Christmas carols and Christmas decorations and Christmas cookies, Advent is an entirely different season. It has its own carols, and its own traditions, traditions that point forward to a Christmas that is not here yet.

But fortunately for Rosalie, one of the traditional ways to mark this time involves cooking dessert.

The Collect prayer for this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Advent, begins, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” This prayer is used on this Sunday every year. The history (or at least the lore that accompanies it) is that this is a collect that began the service on the last Sunday before Advent. In the English church, it served as a reminder for women to go home and “stir up” the ingredients for their Christmas pudding the appropriate five weeks before Christmas, which was understood to be just the right time for culinary perfection. And so that Sunday became Stir Up Sunday.

The writers of our prayer book moved the prayer to the middle of Advent, but the name remains. Without Christmas pudding to stir up, we can focus on the real gift of Advent – God’s power – a love and peace that passes all understanding, is among us.

I offer this prayer to you in the middle of this season of Advent, because I hope you are letting the excitement of the season build. I pray you can look past the chaos and busy-ness and see the giddiness of anticipation in the children and childlike in your life. I pray you use the opportunity to notice the people around you and remember to know them better. Because in Advent, especially on Stir Up Sunday, it is our time to stir up joy in the world. Our Savior is coming.

Hurry Fast

December 18, 2024

It’s hard to wait. Christmas is good at making us wait. Do you remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Christmas, Christmastime is near Time for toys and time for cheer We’ve been good, but we can’t last Hurry Christmas, hurry fast In a recent CCK chapel, I asked the children if they enjoyed waiting on Santa or if they were ready for him to be here. You can imagine the ferocity with which they answered. “WE’RE READY!” You can also imagine who else was ready for Jesus to be born: Mary! Never mind riding on the back of a donkey; never mind the no place for them in the inn; never mind the particular difficulties of her pregnancy – as far as I can tell, every pregnancy seems like a feat! Long about the thirtieth week, mothers are carrying around the weight of the world! It’s hard to wait. When everything is heavy, when everything is harder than it used to be and harder than it will be. It’s hard to wait. Mary has been waiting for a long time. Just think, it’s not like she felt the baby Jesus kicking as soon as Gabriel disappeared back to heaven. Mary had to wait. And no matter how faithful, she likely wondered, “Was that real? What if it’s not true? What if it IS?” And even after Jesus was born, Mary had to wait to find out, “What does it mean that his kingdom will never end? What if his kingdom never starts?” You might say that for thirty years, Mary waited on the promises of God. I imagine that sometimes she believed, even when God felt far away. I imagine that sometimes she scoffed, even when she had every reason to see that God was living right there under her roof. In CCK chapel, I told the children that if they are having a hard time waiting, they can remember that Mary is waiting with them, that nobody wants Christmas to come sooner than her! I can tell you the same thing. When you are waiting on the promises of God, Mary is waiting with you. When you are counting the candles of Advent, present to the holiness of this season, Mary is waiting with you. When you are counting the minutes, ready to burn the greens and pack up the lights, Mary is right there with you. When you hear the voice of the angel, clear as a bell and when you are sure that the whole thing was a dream, Mary is right there with you. When we were children, we wanted Christmas to come, right this very minute. We’re not much different today. Waiting on the promises of God is not easy. But, like the gifts hidden in the top of the coat closet, those promises WILL arrive… right on time. Hurry fast. Please Christmas, don’t be late! _____ Join us for worship this Christmas. Details and schedule can be found at https://christchurchcharlotte.org/christmas-worship

The Good Lantern

December 4, 2024 • The Reverend Emily Parker

Tsh Oxenrider published a lovely guidebook in 2020 called Shadow and Light: A Journey into Advent. She reminds us that the word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus,meaning coming or visit. Here in the first week of Advent, the first season of our liturgical year, we are now in a season of anticipation of the light of Christ, of waiting and wondering. Oxenrider wrote that “Advent is also a realization of our daily, ongoing preparation – the work of inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives and making room for Christ to do good work in us.” Most of Shadow and Light is devoted to the four-week journey of Advent as we approach Christmas. The theme for Week One is Expectation, followed by Preparation, Anticipation, and Gratitude. Each entry for each day of each week includes a reflection, a psalm or other Scriptural reading, and a question to contemplate. In the entry for tomorrow, Oxenrider invites us to consider, “When we reflect at daybreak on a small portion of God’s truth, beauty, or goodness, we open ourselves to seeing it unfold in the flesh through a candid comment from a child, a hint of snowfall in the scent of morning air, or the kindness in the smile of our mail carrier. Noticing God helps us keep noticing [God]... But still, we wait with expectation in the shadows. We remember the glimmer of hope and the steady hand that holds the good lantern. God is with us as we wait.” The contemplative question for tomorrow is, “Where have you noticed God today?” This question actually takes me back to last Wednesday at Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte, the day before Thanksgiving. In a short window of time in the morning, we witnessed the sure and steady movement of God through the kindness of strangers feeding strangers. That morning, donated food flowed through our doors from a local parish and from the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, a nearby faith community. Almost as soon as donations came in, they were sent back out into the world into the hands of hungry neighbors. I noticed God in the bright faces and humanity of those bringing food and those taking food home. Last Wednesday morning was just one glimpse, illuminated by the good lantern, into God’s truth, beauty, and goodness brought to life by love in action. In service, Emily+

Thank you is enough.

November 27, 2024 • The Reverend Connor Gwin

“If the only words you ever pray are ‘thank you’, that will be enough.” The Christian theologian Meister Eckhart wrote those words in the 14th century and they get as close to a succinct yet full summary of my beliefs as I have found. Gratitude is not my default position. I once rolled my eyes when I heard the word gratitude. I was taking part in a two-day silent retreat as a part of a continuing education program in spiritual direction and retreat leadership. As we gathered for the opening session of the retreat, our leader announced the theme for our extended time of silent reflection: gratitude. And my eyes involuntarily rolled. The exact word she used was gratefulness. The exact turn my eyes took was 180 degrees. I rolled my eyes because my default position is not gratitude but anxiously striving for more or fretfully defending what I feel is mine to protect. Through my fallen nature as a sinful human being and my particular life experience, I wake up in the morning as a hypervigilant and generally selfish creature. When you combine that default nature with a world full of pain, heartbreak, and injustice, you get a tendency to fear, scarcity, and isolation. The antidote to fear is gratitude. Don’t worry – I'm not going to suggest you develop a detailed gratitude practice or take up gratitude journaling. These are all good things, of course, but there is a way that the suggestion of gratitude can make you more anxious. (“I should be more grateful!”) Instead, I am going to suggest that you take Meister Eckhart at his word and start praying the words “Thank you” as a daily practice. Set an alarm on your phone that simply says, “Thank you” at three points throughout the day. When the alarm rings, take a deep breath, put your hand on your heart, and say “Thank you.” Listen to this incredible song* by Paul Zach, Music Minister at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. At just around two minutes long, you could listen to it when your "thank you alarm” rings. It is a fast track to a state of gratitude. When we pray “Thank you” we are not saying everything is hunky-dory. We are not presuming that everything is as it should be. We will gather tomorrow to celebrate Thanksgiving while many people in our lives and around the world continue to suffer. There will be empty chairs at family tables. There will be medical diagnoses that won’t take a break for the holidays. There will be financial ends that simply will not meet. When we pray “Thank you” we are acknowledging that great mystery of the Incarnation – God is with us. In the midst of the pain, confusion, and loss, God is present. At our lowest, Jesus is there with us. When we are burned out from the never-ending ways we strive and hustle to find our worth, the Lord says, “You are mine.” The Book of Common Prayer defines prayer as “responding to God.” Today and every day, let our response be, “Thank you.” * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3mpjwykh9ohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3mpjwykh9o