Four R's

Ray thinks that the four weeks this advent carry a theme.  

Return
Repent
Respond
Receive

The Voices of Christmas

The Akron-Fairgrove Community Singers are presenting this cantata this year. The discription grabed me as being appropriate for this weeks readings.

Using beloved carols and new anthems especially composed for this cantata, the
story of Christmas unfolds through the "voices" of witnesses (heard in the
narration) and is echoed in the voices of the choir as they sing the Good News
of the Savior’s birth. The music will eloquently convey the message that Christ
was born to everyone (past, present and future), and so we are all, in some
sense, connected to the manger; we are all witnesses to, and voices of, the Good
News of His birth.

From Isaiah to Mary, to the Psalmist, to the Baptist individual voices intone the good news. Paul spurs us to do the same. Sing singers with me.

Preparing

If last week was about apocalyptic inversion to come, this week is about the efforts of God’s servants to prepare the world for its coming.

Isaiah proclaims he has come to preach a restoration to come; the passage is taken up by Jesus to define his mission. The psalmist sings in expectation of that restoration.

Mary sings her magnificat praise to her God who with strong arm will invert the present order, while in her whom the Son of God is preparing to bring it about.

John baptizes taking water to cleanse and foretell a baptism of another kind. He is not The Prophet that is waited on, but he clearly stands in the prophet’s office. The Pharisees see it and begin to tremble at the coming inversion, despising the words of the prophet.

Paul exhorts us to the life that, like Mary, Isaiah, and John prepares the way for the coming of the Lord in our lives.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.