Holy Trinity Weekly

After a week of Thanksgiving feasting, we are back. This Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the Year of Our Lord. So, Happy New Year!

The history of the Advent Season reveals the true heart of the people of God preparing for Christmas. Begun as early as the fourth century, different parts of Christendom observed the weeks leading up to the Nativity with a mixture of penitence and joy. Some, recognizing the humiliation of the Incarnation and its cause: the sinful state of the world, fasted and sought God's mercy for themselves, their neighbors and their nations. Others, recognizing the brilliance of God and the
victory of the Incarnation could not help but decorating with lights and colors and composing music and poetry fit for the birth of the King. This legacy is all wound up together in Advent which by turns is somber and penitent remembering the Hebrew boys slaughtered by wicked Herod, remembering our wickedness and our need for a Savior, and yet wound through this is the heart of faith which in spite of
the sorrows and evil of life sees the long-expected Seed, the true Isaac, the Laughter of God, bringing peace and joy to the World.

As you prepare and begin to celebrate in your families and as we gather for worship in these weeks, seek to hold these two elements together: a sober recognition of the Fall but always with a slight grin and twinkling eyes, like a joke awaiting the punch line, like the darkness of winter punctuated by smiling, dancing lights.

The sermon text for this Sunday will be from our first lesson: Jeremiah 33:14-16. Our other lessons will be I Thessalonians 3:9-13 and Luke 21:25-36.