Rev. Bryan Travis Hooper
Mark 13: 24-37

Welcome to the Christian New Year. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, as we marked with the lighting of a candle. It is the start of a new season for us, but also the start of a new year. In this church, we have a tradition of welcoming this new season with the sacrament of Holy Communion, so we will get to do that later this morning. I also want to share with you some offerings that we are making available in your program today that I hope you will appreciate. (more…)

As in years past, you are invited to send just one Christmas card to your church family and friends. That card will then be posted on the bulletin board in the hallway. A list of all those who send Christmas greetings will then be listed in the January Epistle. You should consider including a check to the church for the postage saved by participating in this card giving exchange.

Advent is a time to begin.  The four Sundays leading up to Christmas present an opportunity for each of us to reclaim our faith and prepare for the presence of Christ.  As Advent leads us toward Christmas, I hope you will find meaningful ways to open yourself up to the new thing God may be doing in your life.

Each Sunday of Advent has a theme that shapes the season: Faith, Hope, Love and Joy.  Those traditional themes capture the expectant hope we have in this season as we welcome Jesus into our lives.  Yet, those themes also mask the difficulty and challenge that the young Mary and Joseph faced as they journeyed through Israel 2,000 years ago.  Their perseverance, faith and commitment remind us of the huge sacrifices and risks our ancestors in faith undertook in order to follow the call of God.  I can only understand their efforts by believing they were motivated by a deep joy rooted in a powerful experience of and relationship with God.  My hope this Advent is that you might have some small experience of God’s presence in your life, and be motivated to do great things in response.  As we follow Mary and Joseph this Advent, may we stumble upon Emmanuel, God With Us, right here in Hartford.

I realized today that it had been quite a while since I "blogged."  I actually wrote this post after my one-week vacation in October….but I never quite got it finished…so here it is now!

I took last week off….and it was nice!

One of the things I like to do when I’m on vacation is read….and I managed to get through two books last week, both of which are worth mentioning.

The first was   The Soul of Christianity by Huston Smith. Smith is a giant in the field of comparative religion, and the son of Methodist missionaries. This book is a fitting effort to capture Smith’s understanding of the basics of Christian faith. The result is a mixed bag, but well worth reading, especially for lay people. At times, the book seems overly dense as an introduction to Chistian thinking, but the density pays off as you get through the book. At his best, Smith is able to write in a poetic and beautiful way about topics that really capture what Christianity can and should be. His vast knowledge of other religions also helps to illimunate this topic by pointing out what Christianity shares wtih other religions, and what makes Christianity novel. He also does a good job of pointing out modernity’s failings, but I don’t think he went far enough on this point. The book left me with the feeling that Smith is still very much a modern thinker, though he has tried hard to avoid the most painful trappings of modernism.

He also intentionally avoids "hot button" issues like sexuality. Instead, he tries to offer a broad-based Christianity that captures something of the essense of Christianity, if that’s possible. He is not trying to illuminate current debates in the church. Instead, he is trying to re-create the foundation upon which such debates rest. This approach is much needed.

I also read The Tipping Point. This is a secular work that explores "epidemics." Epidemics are contagious social phenomenom that, for rather complex reasons which compose the bulk of the book, catch on and spread like a virus. The sudden success of Hush Puppies shoes is given as one example. The rapid decline of crime in New York City is another. I was happy to see the Methodist movement of the 18th century as another example. The book does a wonderful job of trying to understand how such radical changes happen so quickly. It is an amusing and informative read. Many of my assuptions were challenged and a few were completely destroyed.

There are many implications for the church in all of this.  I encourage you to read it and consider how it might apply to life in the church.

Rev. Bryan Travis Hooper
Matthew 25: 1-13

Watching the television and reading the newspaper I often wonder where people look these days for heroes. After hearing about the indictment of Scooter Libby, I realized how long it has been since I looked to political leaders as my heroes. Sadly, it seems that our leaders, of whatever political persuasion, invariably lie to us, in an effort to conceal something they’d rather us not know about. And I don’t know if people look to clergy for their heroes, but there is no shortage of disappointment there either. Clergy misconduct, in various forms, seems to be a common phenomenon. Hard as it is to believe, even clergy can abuse their power for personal gain. (more…)