Advent: 10 December 2022
Greetings,
We open the window for 10 December today in our Advent Calendar A to Z and discover the letter K inside. K is for… King and Kingdom.
This has been the year when Prince Charles became King. He’ll give his first Christmas Day message. It will be another marking of the loss of the Queen, whose broadcasts have been a staple feature of so many Christmas Days around the world.
King is a term used not only for human monarchs, but by Christians for the divine. And so, today, a carol about Christ born a king, but in the humblest of circumstances:
As Joseph was a-walking
He heard an Angel sing:
‘This night there shall be born
Our gracious Heav’nly King;
He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox’s stall.’
‘He neither shall be christen’d
In white wine nor in red;
But with the fair spring water,
With which we were christened.’
As Joseph was a-walking,
Thus did the Angel sing;
And Mary’s Child at midnight
Was born to be our King.
Here is a version of it by Annie Lennox featuring the African Children’s Choir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q_pNUskdZk
Richard Coles, vicar and broadcaster, and former preacher in St Salvator’s Chapel, makes a related point in Bringing in the Sheaves of how the kingdom comes given the humility of Christ the king.
[On Church decline] But these are the headlines, and they tell only part of the story. What remains unreported is the day-by-day building of the kingdom of God, the effort in this life to anticipate the life of heaven, unobserved, the faithful discipleship of people who may not want to offer definitive answers to the great controversies of the day, but do want to take care of their neighbours, and to take responsibility for maintaining the life of a community, and to offer their imagination and creativity and resources to support others doing the same, and discover in their lives what it means to let Christ in – not as an individual conquering hero, before whom the world quails and falls, but as the child in the manger, wrapped in swaddling bands, to whom very far away a star is beginning to turn, as the universe and everything in it switches course.
Finally a picture of a crown (or two), from beautiful Christmas illuminations on New Bond Street which I saw earlier this week in London:
A reminder that tomorrow we hold our final Sunday morning service of the Martinmas Semester, at St Salvator’s Chapel at 11 am, a Service of Readings and Music with poetry focussing on peace, and lovely music from St Salvator’s Chapel Choir, also livestreamed at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/chaplaincy/worship/ . Then also tomorrow, Sunday 11 December, at 8.45 pm we hold the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols in St Leonard’s Chapel. All welcome at both.
Yours,
Donald.