The Real Advent

Have you got an advent calendar yet? Growing up, I remember having one where you just opened a little door every day and that was it – no chocolate behind it or anything! Never mind some of the fancier ones available today, with various wines and spirits inside. The most expensive one I’ve seen is a £570 Dior one you can get from Harrods.

Some would say that the true meaning of advent – counting down to the birth of Jesus – has been forgotten. You might be surprised however to learn that the true meaning of advent was lost long ago – when it was first associated with Christmas!

A few years ago, Mark Forsyth, a Sunday Times bestselling author, wrote a great little book called ‘A Christmas Cornucopia’. If you’re into myth-busting, it’s a great read. You’re probably already familiar with some of it. For example, the Bible doesn’t tell us when Jesus was born, but we do know that it definitely couldn’t have been the 25th of December, because if it had been, the shepherds wouldn’t have had their sheep outside.

And did you know that the twelve days of Christmas song is actually a recipe for a Christmas dinner? One of the long-running traditions of Christmas is to eat different types of birds. Today, we tend to eat turkeys. 150 years ago it was geese. And actually, if you go back and look at the words, you’ll see it’s a list of twelve different birds, listed in descending order of size. The smaller birds would have been stuffed inside bigger ones; even the five gold rings were most likely ring-necked pheasants.

The song ‘Jingle Bells’ was originally written about the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

One thing Forsyth keeps coming back to is that there are two fairly common beliefs about the origins of Christmas. One is that it was invented by pagans, and then taken over by Christianity – the other is that it was invented by the Victorians. Charles Dickens, according to a recent film, is ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’. Forsyth concludes that Christmas is neither pagan nor Victorian. However lot of the things we associate with Christmas today did only start in Victorian times – such as Christmas carols, which were originally pub songs, that were Christianised. But basically, what we tend to think of as Christmas is just a hodge-podge of different traditions that have come together over time.

One of the traditions he puts under the microscope is Advent. ‘Almost everybody knows that Advent is about the coming of Christmas – and almost everybody is wrong’. Why? Well as he goes on to say, the word advent certainly means coming. But originally it wasn’t talking about the first coming of Jesus, it was talking about his second coming. Not the time when he came as a baby, but the time when he will come again as judge. In fact, the traditional readings in churches for Advent Sunday are all about Judgement Day, with the stars falling from the sky, and so on.

As Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, put it in the mid-300s: ‘We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the first’. He goes on to spell out the contrast: ‘In his former advent, he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger; in his second he covers himself with light as with a garment’. In his first coming he endured the cross, despising shame, in his second he comes attended by a host of angels, receiving glory’. 

And that, according to the Bible, is why Jesus’ birth matters. Because he’s coming back.

I think that at this time of year, we get a sense that we haven’t been living the way we should have been for the previous eleven months. We recognise that we’ve probably been a bit self-centred. And so we try to redeem ourselves with acts of kindness. With giving to charity. In short, with the sort of things that we should be doing all year round.

But that’s the opposite of why the Bible says Jesus came. It says that he came to redeem us, because we couldn’t redeem ourselves. He came, not primarily to be a good example, but to live and die in the place of his people. The manger was part of the journey to the cross.

His first advent was to achieve and offer salvation. And only by receiving that gift can we be ready for the real Advent.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 30th November 2023

Airdrie Psalm Singing Saturday

The Airdrie congregation recently hosted an afternoon precentor’s worksop, followed by an evening psalm-singing event entitled ‘Songs of Adversity’. A number of people from Stranraer were able to attend, and short reports from each event are included below.

Precenting Workshop report by Ian Murphy

A precenting workshop was held at Airdrie RP Church on Saturday November 4. During the two hours we were taught many techniques and tips by workshop leader, Tim Duguid.  This included breathing technique, pitching tunes, and reading music in the staff and sol-fa.  Alsow, we each had an opportunity to sing a psalm of our choice and receive 1 to 1 tuition, advice and feedback.  

This was followed by an evening meal and psalm singing.  

Further workshops are planned, and I would recommend them to anyone interested in precenting or singing.

Songs of Adversity report by Trinity McConnell

On Saturday evening the 4th November, Airdrie RPC hosted an event organised by Tim Duguid, a member of the congregation as well as lecturer at the University of Glasgow. The event, subtitled ‘Scottish Stories in Uncertain Times.’ was a night to focus on some of the men and woman of Scotland's past and it was great to hear some insight into a few of the Covenanters stories. The psalms were introduced by Jimmy Fisher, a deacon in the congregation. There was also plenty of psalm singing and it was so encouraging to be able to join together with others to praise God.

The evening was well attended and there was a lovely time of fellowship afterwards. It was my first time attending the Airdrie congregation and I was made to feel very welcome. There were people in attendance from all five Scottish congregations and I enjoyed getting to meet some of them.

Overall I think it was an informative and encouraging evening for all who attended and I would love to see more events like this in future.

Messiah the Prince - now in Portuguese

Perhaps the most famous book ever written in Stranraer is Messiah the Prince, by William Symgington (minister here from 1819-39). First published in 1839, it has been republished numerous times since. It has now been translated into Portuguese and is available to buy in Brazil from Publicações O Pacto.

Stephen contributed the following endorsement:

“It was said many centuries ago that while ‘other churches have asserted and contended for Christ’s priestly and prophetical offices, the lot seemeth to have fallen upon Scotland to assert and wrestle more eminently than many others for the crown and kingdom of Jesus Christ’. The reference was to the struggle of the seventeenth century Covenanters, and there is no greater summary of their principles than this work by William Symington. Written in the South West corner of Scotland, this book was timely in its day, being published four years before the ‘Disruption’ of the Church of Scotland. I pray that its republication will be similarly timely for Portuguese-speaking churches in our own day as they seek to proclaim the kingship of Jesus Christ over their own nations.”

Hope: Where can I find it?

Our world is in search of hope. The hope that things could be better. The hope that this isn’t all there is. 

But for many, sooner or later that hope turns to cynicism.

The English novelist, Charlotte Bronte, once said that ‘hope has proved a strange traitor’. There had been three Bronte sisters.  When Charlotte wrote those words, one of them was dead and the other lay dying. And Charlotte, the one that was going to be left alone, felt that hope was a traitor who had promised much, but let her down.

The Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote of how his ambitious hopes had failed. His heart, he said, had been ‘burned out with the lust of this world’s approbation’. In other words, his longing to know the approval of others had been disappointed. And he wrote to a friend that if it wasn’t for something inside him stopping him – surely his Christian upbringing – he would have poisoned himself or drunk himself to death, as other writers had done.

The danger of hope turning to cynicism increases with age – if it becomes clear that our vision of what life might look like isn’t going to happen. When we’re young, we think there’s still time to achieve what we want to achieve. But the growing realisation that it isn’t going to happen can lead to despair.

One of the oldest historical accounts we have is about a man called Job. It’s recorded in the Bible. And at one point he says: ‘My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope’.

Others actually get the thing they’d always wanted – only to find it blow up in their face, or slip through their fingers like dust. The buzz is short and the satisfaction temporary.  And it leaves them empty, hurt, angry or confused. What would it be like to achieve the thing you’ve always dreamed of? Here’s Jonny Wilkinson, speaking about winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003 by scoring the winning drop goal in the last minute of extra time:

‘I had already begun to feel the elation slipping away from me during the lap of honour around the field. I couldn’t believe that all the effort was losing its worth so soon. This was something I had fantasized about achieving since I was a child…I’d just achieved my greatest ambition and it felt a bit empty’.

So is our instinct to hope misguided? When so often ‘it’s the hope that kills you’?

In fact, if the material universe is all there is, where does this idea of hope even come from? To hope is to think that things are not as they should be. It’s to look at our lives, or to look at the world, and to say: ‘Something’s not right here. Something’s broken. But that it can be put right’.

And that fits perfectly with a Christian way of looking at the world. Because the Bible tells us that neither we nor the world were created to be like this. Instead, something has gone badly wrong. But God has promised that it won’t be like this forever.

One day, all wrong will be put right.

But if you swap that out for a purposeless universe, who is to say that things are meant to be any better than they are? In fact, how can we even talk about meaning? And so it’s no surprise that people who walk away from Christianity lose hope. Because what reason do they have left to hope that their life will get better rather than worse?

I’ve quoted two famous novelists already. Here’s a quote about a third, from the most recent biography of Thomas Hardy. His biographer is trying to put her finger on where his dark view of life came from. And she concludes that: ‘In a sense, he never got beyond his own loss of Christian belief, which removed hope’.

Now, stopping hoping for something isn’t always a bad thing – if what we were hoping in was a false hope. And the Bible certainly teaches that false hope is possible. Particularly when it comes to those who hope to get to heaven without trusting Jesus.

But to reject the true Christian hope is to reject the only solid basis for hope in the universe. As the Apostle Peter could say: ‘According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope’.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 2 November 2023