Act2 Advent reflection

Throughout this year we have explored many different images of the church – body of Christ, fellowship of the Spirit and a pilgrim people. Advent is a time for us to look at another – “an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself” (Basis of Union, paragraph 3).

The stories of Advent are filled with instruments through which God works. I want to reflect on two – John the Baptist and Mary the mother of Jesus.

John the Baptist comes in the mode of the prophet to prepare the way for the One who is coming after him. He calls the people to repentance and the creation of straight paths. As we have travelled around the Church we have sometimes thought we were heralds of something new God was doing. We have also been seeking ways to straighten some of the long and winding paths we have created for ourselves.

However, we have also been aware – like John the Baptist – that we are not the One but rather seek to point to the call of God on our lives. We have been joined by many different people, including from unexpected places, pointing us to see the new thing God is doing in our life.

Mary too was visited by God through an angel telling her, ‘The Lord is with you’. A perplexed Mary is nevertheless faithful to God’s call and gives birth to God entering our world in a decisive new way.

Anxiety and fear give way to joy as Mary bubbles over with the words of the Magnificat. Many fears and anxieties have given way to joy in this Project too as we have seen both the new things God is doing and the courage people have had to embrace the possibility of significant change to the shape of our lives.

However, after this outburst of joy, Mary still needed to follow the challenging path of obedience to Bethlehem. Luke records that after the shepherds visited and the angels burst into song, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

There was a lot for her to ‘process’ (as we would now call it); a lot for her to think about and make sense of in being an instrument of God through which Christ could bear witness to himself.

We too as a Church have a lot to ‘process’ about our life, about what we have heard and shared about the state of our life, our hopes for the future and the potentially precarious path ahead.

Over the next few months, you may hear a little less from the Act2 Project as we work through all you have shared with us. This does not mean the project has stopped. We will be carefully bringing together all the work done over the past year and preparing an integrated set of recommendations for the 17^th Assembly next year.

We would ask you all to keep the Church and the team in prayer as we ponder all these things in our hearts.

What are the words or actions you will treasure from the past 12 months? How will you remember and reflect on this time of exploring and discerning our life together?

We will also pray for you this Advent and Christmas season, that your community of faith will be filled with joy and abundance at God incarnate amongst you. We pray you will be filled with so much joy that it cannot help but cascade out into a song to which you invite your community to join in singing.