The reverend extraordinaire Nicholas Lubelfeld is our resident sage on all things theology, especially when it comes to the Anglican tradition. As is his common way, Nicholas helps us lean into the season with tender hearts and endearing humility.

Transcript

Then also there’s the song of Zechariah - that’s the father of John the Baptist - whose silence preceded the birth of John because he didn’t believe the message of the angel Gabriel who said, “Your wife is going to have a baby in her old age and he’s going to be the prophet of the Most High and go like Elijah.” In the Eastern churches they call John the Baptist the great forerunner of the Lord.

So sing some hymns about John the Baptist and his ministry and read those passages, and read that song of his father which is prophetic, or read the song of Simeon in Luke chapter 2, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation which you prepared before all people, a light to enlighten the nations, the glory of your people Israel.” What prompted him to say that? Well, according to Luke he took the baby Jesus up into his arms, and here you have this picture before you that Luke paints of the meeting of the Old and New Testaments. That’s the last prophet of the Old Testament, that’s Simeon in the Temple holding the New Testament in his arms, and he prays like that.

So let those canticles and the meditation on them, let those Scriptures, let those hymns and that collect work their wonder on you and you won’t need me to explain to you why it is we should be celebrating Advent and you’ll be all the better ready to celebrate Christmas. And each year you’ll find yourself wanting to offload the things that don’t matter in order to make way for the celebration and the contemplation and meditation upon the things that do matter. Because you realize that with each passing year, as the winter light becomes lower and lower and there’s a darkness that comes earlier and earlier, you’re putting mind to the fact that it’s our need which is the vacuum in which God gives, it’s our sin that needs to be repented of, which is the darkness which needs to be enlightened.

And that way you’ll find yourself more and more over the years so passing through things temporal that you lose not the things eternal, and you begin to love more and more the things God has commanded and desire what He promised. So when it’s time for Christmas and you see in your mind’s eye because of the Christian art or you hear it in your ear because of the hymnody the singing and the portraying of those Scriptures in which you celebrate the birth of Jesus you think, “Wow.” It’s these wonderful gifts of the liturgy that help you enter into that in your own life more thoughtfully, more consciously, more actively, and at length more faithfully.

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