FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH IN NEWTON

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Waiting for Christmas

12/7/2015

 
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Growing up, my family had a “Christmas Calendar.”  Made of green felt, it hung on a wall or door. Small pockets held miniature items made of pipe cleaners, buttons, and clothespins. Each pocket, numbered in glitter glue, counted down. Each evening, with great anticipation, we removed one item from one pocket to mark the number of days remaining until Christmas.

As we grew up, our excitement about the activity waned and one-by-one the different crafts living in each pocket began to fade and our felt Christmas Calendar was replaced by day-planners (I was a Franklin Planner guy), Personal Digital Assistants (I had a Cassiopeia and numerous Palm Pilots), and finally smart phones.

As adults, we can learn to embrace this period of "waiting-for-Christmas" as a gift. It is one of Christianity’s great treasures. Western Christianity calls this season “Advent,” as in “arrival.”  Eastern Christianity calls it the “Nativity Fast.” 

Child-sized felt calendars are for a child-sized Advent. As adults, however, we need an adult sized Advent.

Most people understandably see waiting and fasting as in-between times, periods between two important moments. Consequently, we endure waiting and fasting like we might hold our breath.  However, Advent is not an in-between time. It stands on it’s own, just as the season of Christmas (or Christmastide) lasts twelve days (thus "the twelve days of Christmas”) and stands on its own as a season of "feasting".

Advent invites us to wait and not hold our breath, but to breath and be attentive and awake. Usually, we endure mundane tasks. When we wash dishes, we are not actually washing dishes, but thinking about what we would rather be doing or what we will do once we are done.  When we are in conversation, we are not really listening, but thinking about what we will say next.  When we are driving a car, we tolerate the time that passes until we arrive at out destination.

Rather than hold our breath during Advent, we are invited to a waiting which awakens us, a waiting which alerts us to forgotten longings and hidden joy, a waiting which allows the Kingdom or realm of God to emerge, a waiting in which a precious gift will arise.

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Commitments Sunday - Advent Upon Us

11/19/2015

 
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This Sunday November 22 at 10:00 AM we will celebrate Commitments Sunday in the sanctuary. The following Sunday, November 29, marks the beginning of Advent.  We "pledge" portions of our time, talent, and treasure on Commitments Sunday as we launch into the season marked with giving gifts. 

You will receive a letter in the mail inviting you to pledge to the church in 2016, along with a pledge card for you to fill out. During Sunday's service we will come forward and offer our pledge cards. If you cannot be with us on Sunday, you can bring your pledge card with you to another service, mail in to the church in the included envelope, or make your pledge online. 

A "pledge" is a promise to give a certain amount of financial support to First Baptist Church over a certain period of time. A pledge means we are being intentional about giving and becoming generous. Everyone is encouraged to participate and any amount is accepted. Pledges remain anonymous and nobody will ever ask you how much you are pledging. 

Children will also contribute to Commitments Sunday. During the service they can offer their own Pledge Cards (when appropriate) and will offer works of art as expressions of their time and talent.

In addition to pledging for the upcoming year, we will welcome six new church members on Sunday. Come welcome them into the community and introduce yourselves!

And finally, as was mentioned, the season of Advent is upon us. At 11:15 AM, after worship this Sunday, we will make Advent wreaths in the chapel. Please join us in constructing your own wreath so you will be ready to light candles at your own table.  

The wreaths are a gift to you and come from Homeworkers Organized for More Employment (H.O.M.E.) - where our students traveled to serve this past July. Those who would like to contribute to the cost of the wreaths may make a recommended donation of $20.

As you can see, there is a lot going on and upcoming at our church! As Fall colors fade into Winter nights, our corner of Beacon and Centre is a great place to be.

"The Annunciation" by Denise Levertov

12/24/2013

2 Comments

 
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We know the scene: 
the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.
       
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
       The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.      
           
 ____________________

Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives?

         Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.
More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.                                 
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail,
only asked a simple, ‘How can this be?’ and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply, the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power–in narrow flesh, the sum of light.
 
Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love–
but who was God.


This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,
                                Spirit,
                                          suspended,
                                                            waiting.
                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
                                                       raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
                                  consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
                               and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
              courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
 


2 Comments

TS Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi'

12/11/2012

1 Comment

 
    I referenced this last Sunday. - Sean

    'A cold coming we had of it, 
    Just the worst time of the year 
    For a journey, and such a long journey: 
    The ways deep and the weather sharp, 
    The very dead of winter.' 
    And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, 
    Lying down in the melting snow. 
    There were times we regretted 
    The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, 
    And the silken girls bringing sherbet. 
    Then the camel men cursing and grumbling 
    And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, 
    And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, 
    And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly 
    And the villages dirty and charging high prices: 
    A hard time we had of it. 
    At the end we preferred to travel all night, 
    Sleeping in snatches, 
    With the voices singing in our ears, saying 
    That this was all folly. 
    Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, 
    Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; 
    With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, 
    And three trees on the low sky, 
    And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. 
    Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, 
    Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, 
    And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. 
    But there was no information, and so we continued 
    And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon 
    Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. 


    All this was a long time ago, I remember, 
    And I would do it again, but set down 
    This set down 
    This: were we led all that way for 
    Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, 
    We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, 
    But had thought they were different; this Birth was 
    Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. 
    We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, 
    But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, 
    With an alien people clutching their gods. 
    I should be glad of another death.



1 Comment

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