Liturgy
Advent
The Ven Mandy Herriman, Deacon, Parish of Kingsley-Woodvale
‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’
JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’ As a devotee of Tolkien’s trilogy, this has long been one of my favourite quotes. I have had cause to revisit this quote many times over the past year. What to do, how to be, how to respond in a world which seems to spiral further and further away from God. How do we live out our faith and hope in the incarnational God who continues to be present among the struggles of the world, our communities and our lives, even though it might feel at times as though God is deaf to our prayers – for peace, compassion, harmony.
As we approach the season of Advent and look with hope to this new season of the church in the world, so we turn to the scriptures we will read in order to decide what to do with these times that are given us. How to search for, and rediscover, the hope that God reminds us of when we place ourselves at the foot of the manger in the shadow of the cross.
Isaiah invites us: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’ (Isaiah 2.3) and then just a little further on: ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!’ (Isaiah 2.3-4).
Called to be Christ’s disciples in this world, the invitation is clear. Come to the Lord that we might learn of God’s ways, walk in God’s paths, speak peace and be a light to the nations.
What, we might ask then, are God’s ways and what are the paths we might walk in order to be peace-dreamers and peace-makers? What is the light of the Lord within which we are invited to walk?
We turn for our answer to the incarnational God who came as a vulnerable babe into this world that reviled him, rejected him, abused him, oppressed him, beat him, mocked him, exiled him and dehumanised him.
And we hear his words in response to a test question from a lawyer: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’” (Matthew 22.35-40).
It is as simple and as easy as that. In all we do, in everything we say, in every deed, every act of mercy, every welcome extended, every encounter we are blessed to have; is measured against this law of love. No conditions, no lens of prejudice or bias, no filter of fear, no weight of judgement, no apologetic exclusions. Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself.
It is as easy . . . and as difficult. . . as that. It is the answer to the decisions we must make about responding to and within this world in these times.
‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’