Advent Word - December 7 - #unity - "In essentials, unity."

The "Advent Word" practice is a daily meditation on a given word and an opportunity to share that reflection on social media with others who are keeping this practice. It's akin to an Advent calendar, but with many boxes to open on a given day. Sometimes the reflections are sincere, and sometimes they're a little silly, but at the end of the day, it's a practice set aside to help us observe the season of Advent in the midst of the world's busyness. With all of that in mind, this is going to be my attempt to observe the Advent Word practice. I wish I could promise a reflection every day, and we'll see where this goes together.

If you came here from my Instagram post, you'll have noticed it made a joke about the "unity" some Alabama friends had in finding a UGA garden gnome as a gift for us prior to our ballgame against LSU. Living down here, there are lots of Alabama people, Auburn folks, and a smattering of the rest of us. It makes for an interesting fall, but it also gives lots of fodder for easy sermon material about loving your neighbor and your enemy, who can sometimes be the same person.

In our tradition, we speak a lot about the importance of unity. We pray from a common book, we eat at a common table, and we drink from a common cup. We might think of these acts as simple acts of routine worship, but what they really speak to are the deep bonds we share with the history of our tradition throughout the world and within our local community. As simple as it might sound, whenever we come to communion, we make a bold statement about our view on the importance of unity in the Church. Mind you, this doesn't mean absolute agreement, because that's an impossible task, but we do hold up the importance of sharing in that meal together.

In the Little Church we have a tradition of everyone staying around the rail until everyone has received communion. In other words, no one leaves until everyone has been fed. That would be a terribly inefficient practice in the Big Church, but the Little Church gives us that chance to make a strong practical statement about what we're doing at communion: we make a profession of our belief in being drawn together, drawn together in unity, to the great banquet of the Lord. At that banquet, there is room enough for us all.