Tag Archives: Advent Sunday Evensong

O LORD OPEN THOU OUR LIPS

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in an English parish church in November AD 2011

ADVENT SUNDAY EVENING: O Lord, open thou our lips. And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise. O God make speed to save us. O Lord make haste to help us. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

A large congregation, and a goodly number in the Quire and Places where they sing; the hymn book, the (1662) Prayer Book, the versicles and responses, the Choir, the Psalm, the Lessons, the clouds of incense, the organ, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, the Apostles’ Creed, the collects, the Anthem, the prayers (for Her Majesty’s good governance amongst these), the well sung hymns, the sermon, It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old … and an evening prayer, and blessing.

“Wonderful. Wonder-full. Like a cathedral” – someone said at the door. Quite so. Like a cathedral. That’s what we aspire to. That’s what we’re reaching for. The cathedra, the seat of the Lord God Almighty. That’s why a parish church exists – seats in the heart of holiness, for everyone, and a door. The gate of Heaven. The place of

Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back … *

The place to which we lift up our eyes to seek succour and counsel, in company with praying people through ages past – the vision of which takes our minds off guarding our little piles of stuff for a while; the vision that takes our minds off wondering “what I want for Christmas” and the gold-wrapped but still fragile little securities that leave us still wanting – to notice the advent of God; to notice the gift of the Life of God in glorious, mysterious, immortal, invisible wisdom: reaching. Reaching to touch and to bless and to heal us. Advent, adventus. Come! We welcome you into your City, Lord. Come! Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants as may be most expedient for them.

Some things in the world and in the Church of God are, quite simply, everlastingly fresh expressions.

* R S Thomas, The Kingdom

ADVENT’S ADVENT ALREADY

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ADVENT’S NEARLY UPON US again which means another whole year has upped and went! Maggi Dawn speaks of Advent’s Beginnings and Endings; Jan Richardson speaks of a door and of blessings; all of us look “for the City of Peace, in whose light we are transfigured, and the earth transformed.”

Advent: the coming of a Light by which we ourselves are first transfigured, a consequence of which is that the earth (and our view of it) becomes transformed. Beginning with transfiguration we end with transformation. 

Transfigured and transformed we discover that we have been mightily blessed by the simple event of having walked through a door into a lamplit scene of New Life; we have stumbled upon the great and mighty wonder of a young woman and a man and a baby; we have stumbled upon the breath of God streaming from the nostrils of horses, sheep and cattle, mother and father, shepherds and foreigners, rich and lowly, baby in manger bed, tired, happy, servant tenderness; the transfiguring and transforming Holy beaming in the faces of the recently very worried unwed. There’s resurrection right here in this new beginning just as surely as there’ll be resurrection come the ending.

And having walked through that door and having seen that light we know that this is our beginning and ending; we know that we are breathing Alpha and Omega; we know that all the colour of the good life shines in this scene. As gobsmacked as kings from the Orient and black-clad shepherds from the fields we recognise our deep, deep primal need for the continual transfiguring that alone transforms the world and worlds. There’s no going back. Advent. Coming. Tiny infant lungs are filled with the Very Breath of God. For me. For you. For all.

The door is open at St Michael & All Angels, Bramhall. On Advent Sunday 27th at 8am, 9am, 10.45am & again for Advent Evensong at 6.30pm.