TWO advent opportunities for the season
Join Fr Joseph and friends this Advent as we prepare ourselves for “the once and future coming of Christ,” engaging the Advent sermons of Fleming Rutledge.
Fleming Rutledge is an American Episcopal priest, author, and theologian known for her preaching and writings on biblical theology and its intersection with contemporary culture. Ordained in 1975, she was one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church and served for 21 years in parish ministry. Her book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2017) received the Christianity Today 2017 Book of the Year Award.
Monday Zoom Book Group:
Mon Dec 1, 8, 15, 22, 6.30-7.30p MT
Join us on Monday evenings as we gather on Zoom to discuss the Advent sermons of Fleming Rutledge, published in her edited collection: Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2018).
Advent, says Rutledge, is not for the faint of heart. As the midnight of the Christian year, the season of Advent is rife with dark, gritty realities. In this book, with her trademark wit and wisdom, Rutledge explores Advent as a time of rich paradoxes, a season celebrating at once Christ’s incarnation and his second coming, and she masterfully unfolds the ethical and future-oriented significance of Advent for the church.
For this Zoom group, we will read and discuss select sermons for the four Sundays of Advent (~120 pages total, ~30 pgs/wk). Read ahead and come ready to share your insights, questions, and wonderings. Buy your book and register today!
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
READING / ZOOM SCHEDULE:
Mon Dec 1:
“Advent Begins in the Dark (Advent I)”
Advent Begins in the Dark (pgs 251-55)
The God Who Hides Himself (256-62)
The Doorkeeper (263-7)
Mon Dec 8:
“The Armor of Light (Advent II)”
On Location with John the Baptist (pgs 275-)
Advent at Ground Zero (256-
God’s Cut-and-Fill Operation (263-)
The Axe at the Root of the Trees (268-)
The Armor of Light (
Mon Dec 15:
“The Armor of Light (Advent III)”
Advent on the Brink of War (pgs 275-)
The Bottom of the Night (256-
Grace in a Violent World (263-)
A Better Bet (268-)
Beyond the Valley of Ashes (
Waiting for the Dayspring (The Glory of Lebanon (
The Sign of Immanu-el (
Mon Dec 22:
“King of the Last Things (Advent IV)”
Hell (
God on the Move (
In the Bleak Midwinter (
Somewhere beyond Miindless Fluffland (
The Magical Reversal (
Advent Quiet Day:
“Waiting + Hastening”
Sat Dec 13, 8.30-11.30a MT
Join us for a morning of teaching, quiet reflection, fellowship, and prayer on the theme of “waiting and hastening” in Advent—a contradiction in terms?!—drawing on a sermon by Fleming Rutledge for the Second Sunday of Advent.
Whether you’ve read every word of Rutledge’s Advent sermons or not a single one, come for this opportunity to slow down, listen deeply, and enter more fully into the holy tension of Advent: a season that calls us both to patient waiting and to active expectation for the coming of Christ.
Light refreshments will be provided, $15 registration (email Fr Joseph if cost is prohibitive).