Advent Reflections from St. Barnabas, Pewaukee
Below please find a series of social posts shared with The Chapter community during this Advent season by members of the Nashotah House community who worship and serve at St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.
Week 1
The first candle lit at Advent is the candle of the patriarchs. The patriarchs are the great ancestral fathers of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But these men are not only the physical progenitors of a nation, they are also the spiritual fathers of the church.
Abraham was a man like any other. He was just a man in Ur of the Chaldeans. But one day God called him. God called him to leave behind father and mother and country and go where God called him. And, amazingly, Abraham went.
Abraham shows us Jesus. God called his only Son to journey into the far country, to leave home and follow His voice by faith as the true Abraham.
When Isaac grew-up, God provided a wife for him. Abraham sent his servant to the land of his fathers to find the wife for Issac God had chosen. By God’s intervention, the servant found Rebecca, and Isaac married her and loved her.
Isaac shows us Jesus. Jesus is the Son for whom God provides a wife. And His bride is the church.
Isaac’s son, Jacob, saw angels ascending and descending from heaven to earth and from earth back to heaven. Another time, an angel met him on the road and he wrestled with him, and Jacob was convinced afterward that he had wrestled with God. The angel blesses Jacob, and renames him Israel.
Jacob shows us Jesus. Jesus is the ladder that joins heaven and earth, and he is the one we see when we see God. Jesus is also the true Israel, the one who God blesses.
All these men, whose lives foreshadowed the coming glory of the Messiah, died in faith without seeing their story’s completion. We have seen it in Jesus Christ. Yet we too await the story’s final completion in Christ’s second coming. This Advent, we rejoice with the patriarchs in remembering Christ’s first coming, and with them we faithfully await his glorious return.
-Micah Hogan, Seminarian at Nashotah House
Week 2
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6 RSV).
Advent is a season of joyful and hopeful anticipation. During this time, we patiently await the celebration of the birth of the King of kings, Jesus Christ, into this world. Children eagerly wait and watch as Christmas decorations are brought out, lights are hung, and trees are decorated.
The four weeks of Advent seem like a thousand years as the children wait for presents to appear under the sparkling spruce that has taken residence in the living room. These weeks of longing serve as a symbol of Israel’s longing over thousands of years for the coming of the Messiah.
This span of time was all too familiar for the prophets that God selected to tell of the Messiah’s coming. The prophets were not always received well. How could they be? Many generations passed between their prophecies and Jesus’ arrival. Of those whose ears were graced with the words from Jeremiah’s mouth, none lived to see their savior appear. Which brings us to a reminder for our modern ears: one who is greater than all the prophets, Jesus Christ, himself, has foretold his coming again. We are now the prophets in the new nation of Israel, God’s people, who are tasked with telling the world that a king who is worthy to bring justice and righteousness, who will come to save his people, will once again walk this earth. No matter how many generations must pass before his coming again, the arrival of Christmas at the end of Advent is a reassurance that he will in fact come to fulfill his prophecy.
-Mark Brown, Seminarian at Nashotah House
Week 3
This week we gathered at the Advent wreath and lit the pink candle which represents John the Baptist. We even wore pink . . . er . . . rose vestments to mark the occasion. So. What is the Baptist’s significance? Stephen Schwartz’s musical, Godspell, based on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, opens with John the Baptist blowing a shofar to get the attention of the community and singing the familiar “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” He repeats this refrain with increased volume until the entire assembled cast joins in a crescendo of singing and dancing.
The story of John the Baptist appears to be a footnote to the Gospel. It reads like a simple introduction. It is not. We will see that it is an essential element.
The Prophet Isaiah writes, “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Isaiah 40:3).
There was a tradition of making a roadway for the king. The herald called for a highway in the desert for those returning with God, their king, as their leader. John the Baptist is a similar herald. He bears the good tidings of the new kind of exodus and eschatological event when at the last day the Messiah will lead the people of God to a new Jerusalem. Isaiah and John the Baptist are the voice of one crying in the wilderness, each pointing to the glory of God's wondrous acts in the world.
John the Baptist comes preaching repentance so he can deliver a people prepared to hear the gospel message.
To use a football analogy, this story is the greatest handoff of all time.
-The Rev. Cn. Eric T. Raskopf
Week 4
“And Mary said, ‘Behold I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’” (Luke 1:38).
In Mary’s “yes” to the angel, we find the great reversal of history, a cosmic do-over. If our first parents chose to disobey God, Mary (and her Son, Jesus Christ) reverses the fate of humanity. If our first parents in the garden chose to listen to a fallen angel and thus follow their own path, Mary chooses to believe the archangel Gabriel and obey the will of God. These two trajectories present a choice for us all. Will we respond with the “yes” of service to our creator? Or do we prefer the cosmic anarchy of asking, “Did God really say. . . ?”
One leads to the proper ordering of ourselves to our creator, and the other leads to loneliness, despair, and self-destruction. It leads us to hell. T.S. Eliot’s character Edward in the “Cocktail Party'' explains what hell is when he says, “Hell is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”
Whatever else hell is, it is alone. How could it not be? Our first parents decided to choose their own way and become gods. The devil tells Eve, “For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Their eyes were truly opened and became like God. But this is not a good thing, as it is not our end or purpose. We are not created to be self-sustaining. We are not God. Unlike created humanity, God is self-sustaining and in need of nothing. He is in himself never alone, as he is a self-contained triune community. We humans are created for the service of our creator and one another. As the collect for peace in the Prayer Book teaches, “O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom. . . .” To serve God is indeed perfect freedom. It is what we were created for. This is the significance of Mary’s “yes” to God. It reorients those of us who believe toward our true end. It does so by faith (trust). When we say yes to God, we understand our dependence on Him, and our place as servants in his universe. In Mary’s “yes” we are given a new option that leads back to our creator and a properly ordered universe in which we find life. As we prepare ourselves for the birth of our Savior, consider these two roads, these two humanities.
-Jeremy Johnson, Seminarian
The Rev. Canon Eric Raskopf (‘15) is the Priest-in-Charge of St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. He serves as both an Anglican priest and a criminal trial attorney. He has been married to Anne since 1988. Mark Brown, Micah Hogan, and Jeremy Johnson are residential seminarians studying at Nashotah House, and serve at St. Barnabas. You may read more about St. Barnabas by visiting their Facebook page here.