The Advent Wreath

The Advent Wreath

I was asked today the significance of the Advent wreath.  So, with Advent only a few days away, here is my response.

Of recent years, Advent wreaths have taken on many forms both religious and secular.  It interests me that at least the greenery and the circular wreath remain a Christmas ornament without Christian significance.  It has become part of our secular culture.

Origin

The origin of the Advent wreath lies in Germanic pagan culture when, in the dark of winter, lights were lit and the circlet of evergreen leaves symbolised the return of new life.

The Christian Advent wreath was developed in Medieval Europe, originally in Germanic cultures.  This pagan symbol helped Christians express the meaning of this liturgical season.  Like so many things, it was how Christianity became embedded in a culture.  By using existing symbols, people were able to express their Christian faith in intelligible ways for that time and place.

As a small excursus:  Pope Francis, in his journeys in Asia has encouraged people to express the Gospel in terms of their own culture, not European culture.

Greenery

In the Northern Hemisphere, winter with its darker days, cold weather and deciduous trees, Earth seemed to sleep or even die.  The evergreen trees held on.  They were life.  I remember, when I lived in Florence, Italy seeing green Christmas trees in an overcast grey piazza at twilight.  The green shone with light and life and the smell of the trees lifted the spirits.

So, the evergreen symbolises life, hope, survival and renewal.

The circle

The circular wreath reminds us of the eternal Trinity without beginning or end.  This Triune dance which holds all creation in being.  It also symbolises our destiny – eternal life in the Life of the Trinity.

As with the evergreen, we are prompted to live in hope.  In the words of the liturgy, ‘as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ’

The candles

There are four candles – three purple and one rose in colour.  These are the liturgical colours of Advent.

Purple is the colour of penitence.  We use it in Lent.  We use it in Advent.  The penitential aspect of Advent is joyous and hope-filled.  It’s a bit like spring cleaning and for us in the Southern Hemisphere this may be a useful analogy.  We make space for Jesus.

The Scripture readings in the liturgy emphasise God longing for us, our longing for God, clearing the pathway for the Holy One, making space in our lives for God to fill us.  It is about embracing the Reign of God here and now and to come at the end, whether our personal end or the final Parousia when Christ will be ‘all in all’.

So, the purple of penance is to keep the spring cleaning going, not as an end in itself but for space for God.  And to continue the analogy, this includes material things (caring for those people in need) as well as attitudes (both psychological and spiritual) which do not reflect the Gospel.

The Church wears purple for three Sundays of Advent – first, second and fourth. 

However, the liturgy is wise and knows we need a breather so the Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday, taken from the first word of the Entrance Antiphon, Gaudete – Rejoice!  We are given a breather, a time to rest, refocus and rejoice.  So, the liturgy wears rose (or pink).

Lighting the candles

On the first Sunday of Advent, the wreath is blessed and the first candle is lit and accompanied by prayer.  The second Sunday, the first and second candles are lit; the third Sunday, the first, second and third (Gaudete) candles are lit until we come to the fourth Sunday when all four are lit.

Some wreaths have a white candle in the middle which symbolises the Christ child.  This candle is lit with the other four on Christmas eve.

Conclusion

The Advent wreath and the ritual lighting of the candles helps us focus on and live the great story of Advent, the coming of our God in human flesh and blood and this same God will welcome us at our ending and all creation’s ending in this present form.  St John writes ‘Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’1 John 3:2)

So, Advent is a time of joyful, expectant penance (house cleaning) as we wait in hope and we know that our hope is never, ever in vain.

For other pieces about Advent see:

https://oldqueenslander.blogspot.com/2006/12/first-sunday-of-advent.html

https://oldqueenslander.blogspot.com/2006/12/second-sunday-of-advent.html

https://oldqueenslander.blogspot.com/2006/12/o-antiphons-17-december-2006.html

https://oldqueenslander.blogspot.com/2006/12/o-antiphons-part-ii-22-december-2006.html

The Home-grown Prophet

The Gospel reading for today is one of the keys to understanding Luke’s theology.  In the liturgy, the first part was read last week and the second part this week.  We read Luke 4:14-28

¹⁴ Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵ He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

¹⁶ He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

²² All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

²³ Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

²⁴ “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵ I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶ Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷ And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸ All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.²⁹ They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.³⁰ But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Luke has Jesus arriving in his home town fresh from his confrontation with the devil and a successful preaching tour of Galilee.  Luke writes that ‘everyone praised him’.

Jesus, the observant Jew (as was his custom) joins the worshippers in Synagogue on the Sabbath.  He is invited to read the haftarah from the Prophets (Nevi’im).

There are a couple of questions here:  Jesus could obviously read.  It has been generally accepted that most people of the time were illiterate.  However, more recent research questions this.  Secondly, was Nazareth affluent enough to have its own separate Synagogue and could afford to own a scroll of Isaiah.  However, these are questions for another time.

Jesus reads from the text of Isaiah 61:1-2 and his commentary on this text proclaims that it is now fulfilled.  At this time there were already messianic interpretations of this text and these deeds were primary tenets of Judaism.  No controversy there.

Note that his hearers were very impressed indeed - All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ they asked.

Now I must admit that I have taken their question ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ as a rather cynical version of ‘Who do you think you are?  You grew up here, we know you.  Don’t get above yourself.’  However, in the context of their admiration, this does not work.

So why does their admiration turn to hostility?

First of all, Jesus seems to provoke their hostility with his response.  He immediately sets out to deflate their admiration and throws back the question, do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum? 

Do they want spectacle? Are they asking for the welfare of the town? Do his Nazareth neighbours and relatives believe they are in a privileged position because he is a local boy becoming famous for healing and preaching?  Can Jesus read their faces and their minds as they listen to him?  As a perceptive communicator, he probably could. 

However, more significant than that he knew the demands of social connections which put family, clan, tribe, nation first in all obligations of relationships.

He cites the stories of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath and Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian – both foreigners.  The context Jesus places these stories in is that they received help and healing when Elijah and Elisha could have done the same thing for their own people, Israel but went outside the borders instead. 

It was the preferencing of the foreigner rather than those of the prophets’ own tribe and nation that got Jesus’ listeners angry.  It was not because gentiles received care – the Jews had generally good relations with the Gentiles[i] even to having the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple.  Preferencing strangers would mean that the social ties embedded in Jesus’ culture were being set aside.

At the heart of Jesus’ preaching and that of the early Jesus community was profound inclusiveness and equality.  The Reign of God was the priority and the measure of all things.  All shared an equality of love, compassion, justice. 

I suggest that this is what turned their admiration to blazing, murderous anger.  He placed his townsfolk’s (probably most of Nazareth’s population were related or belonged to the same tribe) assumption of social privileges though family and tribe in the context of the Reign of God in which all people shared in the same privilege.

Consistently in the Gospels, Jesus replaces the priority of social ties with that of the Reign of God.  He promises rewards to those who leave all for the Reign of God, he praises Gentiles for their insights, praises the persistence of the Syrophoenician woman for her love for her child.  The Reign of God demands priority and is the context for all relationships.

This is not to deny the embedded social ties, it is not to reject family, culture or nation.  These ties may be strengthened and transformed. It is to see them all through the astounding and sometimes shocking inclusivity of the Reign of God.  There will be times when social ties with be rejected or questioned, there will be times when we question our culture and nation if we take this inclusivity seriously.

Trouble is, this universal sisterhood and brotherhood is fine if they all look and think like me.

Now, there’s the daily conversion.

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[i] There was a strong missionary aspect to Judaism of the time. 

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’ Zechariah 8:23

The Magi – again

In a previous post[i] I wrote about the story of the Magi in Matthew’s gospel.  However, some articles I have recently read prompted me to think more about this story – as well as the feast, of course. The Christian Church celebrates this event as The Epiphany, THE showing forth of Jesus – King and Divine.

The liturgy emphasises this feast as the revelation of Jesus to the gentiles and uses texts from Isaiah and contemporary prophets.  However, there are other, less obvious allusions as the story is awash with connections to the Jewish Scriptures.

I wonder how differently first century Jews and gentiles would have heard this coming from different cultures. 

The Magi.

Huqoq Synagogue

Gentile royal courts had astrologers/astronomers/soothsayers/scholars i.e. magi to advise the ruler.  The Israelites were not to use such people.  Leviticus 19:31 prohibits the use of soothsayers – ‘Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.’

 

Josephus records the astrological signs foretelling the fall of Jerusalem.[ii]

Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, writes disparagingly of magi.  He refers to Balaam (Nb. 22f.) who was a gentile prophet called to curse Israel but instead under the influence of God prodigiously blesses the approaching people.  Philo calls Balaam a ‘magus’ and turns him into a figure of ridicule.  Balaam’s she-donkey had more intelligence than he.

It is also interesting that Balaam came from the Euphrates River – the east – to Moab.

However, the reality was that by the first century synagogues were decorated with zodiacs and some Rabbis used astrology. 

So, this is the lens through which the visiting Magi would have been viewed.  They were astrologers and gentiles to be looked upon with suspicion, if not ridicule.

The Magi, seeking the King of the Jews, went to the normal place one would find a king of the Jews – the royal court in Jerusalem.  Ironically, Herod was Idumean, not a Jew. He was one of the most brutal, murderous and paranoid of rulers so these travellers actually put the child’s life at risk with their questions of Herod and set off a chain of mass murder and escape.

It is interesting that Matthew writes that Herod and all Jerusalem (not one of Matthew’s favourite places) were frightened – terrified - by the news.  This new king could only be seen as a political threat.  Already Matthew is contrasting the kingship of Herod with that of Jesus.

It took a dream to warn the magi not to return to Herod with their discovery of the child.  In turn, this increased Herod’s fury at being duped and precipitated the slaughter of the children.

So, the magi are not presented in a very positive light by Matthew. 

Looking at this background, with a murderous king, a vulnerable family and a group of court astrologers who initially got it wrong, we see one of the great themes of the Gospels – the great reversal.  Jesus is not to be found in the places of power.  His reign is completely antithetical to that of Herod.  The gentile astronomers, outsiders, for all their mistakes, worshipped.

The magi acted out of their own cultural and class expectations.  While it is obvious from the text that they knew the Jewish Scriptures or at least the Jewish expectations, it was obvious that they did not understand.

After seeing the child and his mother, worshipping him and giving their gifts, Matthew writes that ‘they returned to their own country by another road’.  This is more than safety against pursuit, this is for all who have encountered Jesus, we return to our own country, our own lives changed.  We take a different road, perhaps seeing differently, more thoughtful, more observant of the great reversal brought about by this birth.

The Star

Star of Bethlehem flower

For people of this period, stars were not as we understand them.  Stars had a ‘voice’.  They were living beings.  Philo wrote that ‘stars are living creatures, but of a kind composed entirely of mind’.

In the Scriptures, all creation is under the Creator’s authority.  Unlike pagan belief, stars, trees, etc. are not of themselves divine.  When God takes Job on a voyage through creation, God asks, ‘On what were its (the earth’s) foundations laid, or who set its core in place while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?’

Balaam pops up again.  At the end of his many blessings of Israel he proclaims that 'A star will rise from Jacob; a sceptre will emerge from Israel.' (Nb. 24:17)

Much literature has been generated establishing the star as a supernova.  It may be so, however, for Matthew the star is at the service of the Holy One.  Here creation is revealing the identity of Jesus.  The magi worshipped him because they, in the contradiction of a child born in a humble house, is not only a king, but divine.  So, creation, in the star, is proclaiming Jesus as the Holy One of God.

For the Jews, stars act as guides and do God’s bidding.  So, the star leading the magi, is understood to be this being who is doing the Creator’s bidding in leading the magi to Jesus.

The gifts

The gifts brought by the magi have antecedents in the Scriptures.  The Queen of Sheba (like them, a gentile) came to Solomon to test his wisdom. 

Now when the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to test him with difficult questions.  She arrived in Jerusalem with a very large caravan, with camels bearing spices, gold in great abundance, and precious stones. (1 Kings 10:1)

Never again was such an abundance of spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. (1 Kings 10:10)

These are the gifts fit for a king.

Queen of Sheba Orchid

However, there is also another association with this story.  The Queen says:

She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your words and wisdom is true.  But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told to me. Your wisdom and prosperity have far exceeded the report I heard.  How blessed are your men! How blessed are these servants of yours who stand continually before you and hear your wisdom!  Blessed be the LORD your God, who has delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel. Because of the LORD’s eternal love for Israel, He has made you king to carry out justice and righteousness.” (1 Kings 10:6f)

 Conclusion

So, like the magi, we will make mistakes.  For Matthew, the astrologers’ visit to Herod unleashes murder and the escape of Mary, Joseph and Jesus to Egypt.  Matthew invites the reader to see that God’s salvation is not impeded by evil. 

Both gentiles and Jews fail to understand this momentous event until they come to worship and contemplate.

I take heart in this as we live in a time when disaster seems to be more prevalent than goodness.  This Fleshtaking of the Holy One asks us to join in this Reign of God and like the magi and the Queen of Sheba contemplate Wisdom incarnate.

And go home another way.

[i] https://oldqueenslander.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-magi.html

[ii] Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as belied God himself; while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation, but, like men infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them. Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year. (Book IV, Ch 5, Sec. 3)