Day: November 29, 2017

What went ye out into the wilderness to see?

Advent. Such a powerful idea. It marks the movement of God’s Word coming to us. Without that motion there can be no Christmas, spiritually and religiously speaking. It is not about Santa Claus, for however much Santa Claus belongs to Christmas, Christmas does not belong to Santa Claus.

There is a far deeper meaning to Advent that speaks to the darkness and the despair of every age including our own. Our two services of Advent and Christmas Lessons and Carols on Sunday, December 3^rd, the one at 4pm for Grades 7-11 at Christ Church, and the other at 7pm in the School Chapel for the Grade 12s, speak to the critical idea of a culture in which there is a profound respect for learning.

We awaken to self-consciousness only to discover something which is prior to us, something which has a greater primacy than ourselves and without which we cannot make sense of selves as selves. Such is the truth and the goodness of God which cannot lie hidden and concealed but must manifest itself and gather us into itself. Such is the nature of the Good, we might say. Advent is the season of teaching and particularly marks the idea of Revelation. God’s word comes to us as light in the darkness of human experience and evil. The coming of God’s Word in the rich parade and pageant of the Carol Services awakens us to hope and peace, to joy and love.

Designed in 1918 and first performed at King’s College Cambridge, England, the Advent Service of Lessons & Carols was intended to speak to a world devastated and destroyed by the ravages of the First World War by recalling the greater themes of hope and peace.

This year, 2017, marks the 140^th anniversary of Hensley Memorial Chapel in the 229^th year of the School. The Chapel is a strong part of the culture of learning which counters the corporatization of education which reduces all learning to a means rather than an end, turning education into a consumer product, a for-profit model which does little justice to the classic themes of an education for the whole person and expressed in service and sacrifice for others.

The Scripture readings in Chapel challenge us to think more deeply about what it means to be human beyond the reductive approaches which turn us all into things to be manipulated and used by others. They recall us to freedom and truth, to order and love without which we consign ourselves to a wilderness of our own making, the wilderness of modernity.

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