Advent 2009: Resources for Christian Clergy

With sections for all four Sundays in Advent, as well as Christmas Eve, this resource provides commentary on the scriptures and sermon notes that help connect the scriptures with today’s national dialogue on the use of torture.  With an introduction and a bibliography, the 15-page document combines scholarly research and exegesis of the lectionary readings with a conversational tone that makes it easy to build upon the ideas in developing your own sermons.

We encourage:

• clergy to use this resource as you prepare your sermons for Advent.
• lay leaders to bring this resource to the attention of your clergy.
• denominational offices to find creative ways to make the resource available to the clergy within your denomination.
• ecumenical agencies to alert your member denominations and congregations to the availability of this resource.

We also welcome comments/feedback on this resource.  Let us know how you plan to use it.
E-mail your comments to: campaign@nrcat.org.

On the third Sunday of Advent, the author of the gospel of Luke is describing the scene where the crowds have come to be baptized by John.  John is preaching to them, calling on them to repent and “bear fruits worthy of repentance.”  Wondering what that might mean in light of their circumstances, the crowds ask him, “What then should we do?”  Although our context is significantly different from that of John the Baptist, the question has staying power.

Shortly after the torture memos were made public in April 2009, The Pew Research Center conducted a survey that showed 54% of people who attend church services at least once a week agreed that the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Surely from this poll we must conclude that the church has lost our way.  It’s a good time to put ourselves in the shoes of the crowds of people looking for a way to live during difficult and chaotic times and ask with them, “What then should we do?”

Like Luke, we are waiting.  And in the meantime we have decisions to make about what it means to be the church – the people of God.  We, like Jeremiah and the early Church, must sustain the hope of the Realm of God through our actions, even though it seems at times that the Realm of God is in the distant future.  If we give up on that, accepting an ethic that serves a lesser, more expedient “end,” we deny God’s promise and destroy both the present and the future hope.