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Recommended Resources for Advent
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In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss resources for understanding the Christian calendar and preparing for Christmas during the Advent season. For links to resources, see "Q&A on Advent and the Christian Year." See also "Understanding Advent and the Liturgical Calendar" (previous podcast episode).
These are kind of classics, modern classics, by Martha Zimmerman. She has written celebrating the Christian Year. I would actually start there.
SPEAKER_01Back to Athanasius and the Incarnation. I talk about this all the time because everybody's got to read that.
SPEAKER_02There are a lot of books of prayer. Book of Common Prayer is used by the Church of England, by the Episcopal Church in America, by the Methodist Church, by a lot of Presbyterian churches. If there's a more liturgical Baptist church, they would use that.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_01So let's talk about some resources for Advent, some books that maybe we've read or have found helpful that might be helpful for others.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, there are two kinds of resources that come to my mind. One is for personal enrichment, and the other is as a pastor who is preparing for worship during Advent to lead a congregation. So let's actually talk about those first. I had mentioned a previous podcast, the uh Sing to the Lord hymn book, which uh is laid out uh partially according to the uh Christian calendar. So that's a great resource there. Um and there are a few others I use here. Let me just mention them. They'll be uh linked in the show notes. You can go and find most of these online uh fairly cheaply. But uh there's the worship source book as well, which is just full of just great, great stuff. Uh has uh follows the theme also of the Christian calendar. Uh a couple of others is uh it's it's a small book here, but this is St. Augustine's prayer book that is not sure who the publisher is, but uh it it also follows um you know has special prayers. They're not all from Augustine, by the way, um from the early church fathers, prayers that are uh just appropriate at different times of the year. Uh so I found that really, really helpful. Um if you want to dig into something that's uh a little bit deeper, uh I don't use it much for corporate worship, and it may be more personal enrichment, but there's the Oxford Book of Christian verse. And uh now I do not have the updated modern translation. I have the old, like a 19th century edition, uh, which is absolutely beautiful, but it has been here recently, and at least in the last 20 years, been updated to updated language, but it is absolutely rich. It's it's a book of of poetry, Christian poetry through the centuries. Uh absolutely beautiful. Um, it's not set up thematically. Um, it is set up, I think, if I recall correctly, it chronologically. Uh, but it is uh absolutely beautiful. Uh, if you just read it as part of your own um uh you know just devotional experience, I think you'll come across a lot of useful material. Uh let me mention two more. Uh these are kind of classics, modern classics, by Martha Zimmerman. Uh she has written uh Celebrating the Christian Year. I think that's a 1993 or so book. It's been around for a little while, 1994. Celebrating the Christian Year. Uh I would I would actually start there. If you uh want to orient yourself to what the Christian year is, figure out okay, what are the the highlights of the year, that's a place to start. There's a companion book, or the book after that would be also by Martha Zimmerman, and that's celebrating biblical feasts in your home or church. And uh this is um it's fairly abbreviated and it doesn't it's it's not actually on uh uh all of the feasts that Christians have celebrated or that would be included in the Book of Common Prayer. This is actually uh the Old Testament feasts and how Christians can uh uh can take those, the images of those, and apply it to Christ, and uh understand the Old Testament as pointing to Christ. Uh so that's that's useful, although it that does not, again, that does not talk about the feasts particular to the Christian calendar. Um that would be a secondary source. So those those are some resources, and there are many others. Uh I'm sure there's some free online resources as well. I I I tend to stick with these because there's there's so much there, and uh they're not terribly expensive, and all you know, all of our worship you know leaders, our our musicians, our preachers, our other pastors, they all have access to the same book, so we're all kind of looking at the same material and picking and choosing from that. Uh so those are a few resources.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was trying to pull something up here. And so uh I don't know if you mentioned this or not, but um the Book of Common Prayer is available online, dcponline.org and revise common lectionary, lectionary.library. And we'll put those in the show notes as well. But those are helpful as well for personal uh enrichment, which I guess we're gonna talk about here next, because they include not only weekly readings for the four Sundays of Advent, uh, but also daily readings. And um and you can follow along there, and they're they're uh they usually give you a an Old Testament lesson, um uh either psalm or gospel reading. Usually during the season, it's an additional gospel reading, um, and then something from the epistles, an epistle reading and epistolary reading, and then uh a gospel reading. Yeah. There are a lot of books of prayer.
SPEAKER_02So the Lutheran Church, for instance, has uh not a uh theirs is called the book of prayer, right? Um so different traditions have uh various books. The book of common prayer is is used by the Church of England, by the Episcopal Church in America, by the Methodist Church, by a lot of Presbyterian churches. Um if there's a more liturgical Baptist church, they would use you know that. Uh the Lutherans have their own uh book of prayer. Um you know, the Roman Catholics, you know, produce their missals and their different various various books of prayer as well. Uh Eastern Orthodox, same thing. So there are a lot of different resources out there. And then there are just some generic uh prayer books that are like an anthology or a collection of prayers through the centuries. Um I have some, and they're usually set out thematically. They don't necessarily follow the Christian calendar, but those themes would be there as well. Uh, those are really helpful as well. I've I, in fact, I especially found that useful during uh COVID uh because it had a whole section of lament and prayer for healing and prayer for you know sorrow over sickness and death and and loss. And I found those prayers just really, really meaningful. And I I share, I would pray those publicly with our people. Uh so you can find all sorts of books. Uh I found them at Goodwills and and you know, little used bookstores here and there. Uh if you can pay a few dollars, you'll you'll definitely get your money's worth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so much of this is available online. Um I uh really enjoy praying through the Daily Office uh from the mission of St. Clair. There's an app, um, and there would be some things that you know theologically might be some minor differences here and there, but but you know, you can pray through that. You don't have to follow it, you know, really strictly, but it's really helpful. And there's a morning prayer, a noonday prayer, an evening prayer, and a prayer for right before you go to go to bed. Um and this comes back to this idea of observing Advent as a period of waiting and not just us talking in prayer, but listening to God. And so it goes back and forth between reading scripture and then praying, reading scripture and praying. And the idea is that you're having a conversation with God. You're reading his word to you, and then you're responding to him. So you have an opening sentence, you have a hymn, and it has the music embedded right in there. You can sing it. It has a prayer of confession, uh, it has uh prayer of jubilation, it has a psalm, it has um uh uh the glory of pot tree, sung, prayed multiple times, Old Testament lesson. I mean, it goes on and on and on. And I mean, to pray this, I mean, it can easily take you a half an hour. I mean, it's it provides you a pretty structured, you know, approach to prayer. And what I found is it has not at all turned my prayer time into this just kind of like, I don't know, following, reading things and just kind of not really my kind of mindless. It's it's really the opposite. What it actually does is it keeps me focused. Um I've I struggle with my mind wondering. I struggle with you know focusing. And what it does is is if I lose focus, I come right back to it. And what usually happens is I read something that that um that just moves me, and I end up just praying spontaneously from what I'm reading in scripture or from the written prayers. Um so I think uh Advent's a great time to observe something like this because it really calls you to um to listening uh and not just not just uh praying yourself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that reminded me of an app that uh I use on some occasion as well, and that is uh it's called Lectio 365. Uh so Lectio is the Latin word for reading. Uh Lectio 365, they have uh Old New Testament reading old and New Testament readings, sorry, and evening and morning readings, along with prayers and uh just really nice uh you can just listen to it. They there are people on there that are reading this in a just a very uh warm, quiet way uh that is meaningful. You can get through those in about 10 minutes, just about 10 minutes of audio. Um and and there are places there where you know you can stop and uh you know reflect on the scripture they've just read, uh, and then you continue. Uh so that's Lectio 365. Um downloading it now. That's great. Yeah, yeah, definitely recommend it. Uh and I think you mentioned, yes, the the uh Book of Common Prayers on is is on uh the website. For a church resource, I use uh the Vanderbilts uh lectionary. Uh it is uh lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu. Um that's what we use every week for our uh our bulletin. Uh we we put in um material from there. So I recommend that for pastor if you want to know, okay, what is this coming Sunday on the Christian calendar? What what is it? Uh that will tell you, that will keep you up to date. Uh they they keep that up to date. So that's a great resource as well. Uh yeah, so so let's talk about some personal reading. Um oh, yeah, yeah, and for for personal enrichment. Uh so Travis Johnson, and I think you just shared this on Holy Joys. Travis Johnson put together about a five-hour Advent playlist of music. If I remember right, it's over five hours. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_0175 songs, five hours.
SPEAKER_02Beautifully done. Uh so shout out to our board member uh Travis Johnson for doing that. Uh, I've already started listening to it and uh really, really appreciate that. I'm always looking for good, peaceful, uplifting music that goes with the season. Uh definitely recommend that. And and Travis also has mentioned uh he does this every year. I don't do this every year, but uh that is he reads uh Athanasius on the Incarnation, which is a fairly short work. I think you said in the print edition, it's about 60 pages. Um I have it on Kindle. You can find it online.
SPEAKER_01Get the SVS Press translation if you're gonna do that. I mean it's free online, but for like $15. It's so readable, it's so beautiful. Um, really highly recommend that. John Barr does the translation. Okay, good, good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so definitely recommend that. So that's one of five that that I at least come to mind immediately. Uh On the Incarnation by Athanasius. Uh so that's third century, right? That's uh a uh or or fourth century, I guess. Fourth. Uh fourth century uh piece. Um another one uh a bit later, uh medieval uh work. This would come out of the uh late 11th, early twelfth century is Anselm of Canterbury, his book, uh Why God Became Man. Um is available online as well, uh I believe. Uh sometimes you may find it by the Latin Curdeus Homo. Yeah. It's on CCEL. Okay. All right. So if you go to CCL.org, yeah. Right? Okay, so you can find that. Uh great, great work. Uh I I've read that many, many times. Um now this one I cannot find online. Um if someone can find it, it is very much worth your time. It's not very long. It's it's not over 60 pages, but it is uh Ambrose of Milan, Bishop Ambrose, who's the spiritual father to Augustine. Uh so this is uh fourth century as well, you know, later fourth century, after Athanasius, uh, but the same century, and he writes a letter slash sermon, uh, because he preached it, and then he turned it into a letter to the emperor called The Sacrament of the Incarnation of Our Lord. And it is in the uh Fathers of the Church uh set, uh, which I have. Um this, however, is not very cheap. Uh, I'm sure, uh surely it's out there somewhere uh in PDF or something. But if you can get a hold of that, we're gonna try to find that, and if we can make it available, uh, that is just wonderful. Uh definitely recommend reading that. Uh so quotable, so just uplifting, so clear and and articulate and very appropriate for Advent. Uh a couple other modern books. One would be uh Thomas Torrance's uh Incarnation. Uh that is it's gonna be a little thicker, 400 pages or so, but uh and that's on the life and the work of Christ, so it's not all Advent, uh, but uh the sections there on uh surrounding his birth and and so forth, that would be uh pre-existence and and his birth uh is very enriching. And then and then finally uh Charles Williams, who uh is a was a contemporary of C. S. Lewis, British um uh uh uh literature genius, literary genius, uh very similar to C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams. If you've never heard of him, go look him up. Uh if you like C. S. Lewis, you will like Charles Williams. Um he wrote The Descent of the Dove, I think is his work on the Holy Spirit. And then he wrote a book called Uh He Came Down from Heaven. And um Rich is uh you gotta go through it a little more slowly than what you might some other works, but absolutely enriching. Uh so I'd recommend. I think those are the five, I think those were five sources uh that came to mind. Uh what would you add to that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um this year I'm reading uh Graham Cole's Biblical Theology, The Incarnation, the God Who Became Human, and uh very good so far. Um he has a good balance between biblical theology but also sensitivity to systematic categories and concerns questions. Um resists some speculative theology, but at the same time is willing to engage questions like would have God become incarnate if Adam had never sinned, and actually sides with uh Maximus and others throughout the tradition who have said, yes, yes, God's the incarnation is not only a response to human sin, um, but it is also God reflective of God's desire to be with us, uh, and also of God's desire to um divinize us in a sense. Uh we always get uncomfortable with that language, but you know, we've talked about that before with theosis and and in the Eastern tradition, that being a theme that that is also present in the Western tradition. So uh really, really good. Like it's the kind of book that I would actually say, like, you know, hey, if you want to introduce to the major questions about the incarnation, then it's pretty pretty good, pretty, pretty uh balanced, but really heavy on Old Testament. It's really looking at primarily how the Old Testament prepares us through anthropomorphic language and uh and and anthropomorphic theophanies, appearances of God, in which he's described in human terms, um, you know, for God to really come in the incarnation and to take human flesh as his temples. So uh yeah, would recommend that as well. And a word on to back to Athanasius on the incarnation. I'm just I talk about this all the time because it's like everybody's got to read that. And I I've been working on a list for a while now of like 10 to 15 books that I plan to use uh in a discipleship program that I'm developing where every believer that I disciple will be over the course of five, 10 years, whatever, exposed to these books, read these books. I'll prepare reading guides where they fill in the blanks so that if they're struggling to get through it, they just kind of can look for those sentences and make sure they're getting the main ideas. And this is one of them. This is so good. Again, it's like 60 pages. Read this. And uh, like like Travis Johnson trying to read that every year. Last year tracked the theme of fittingness, this year uh death, trying to look at Athanasius' theology of death, which is really a prominent theme. Uh, and and uh the primary reason why, in Athanasius' view, Christ came is uh because God can't die. He's impassable, and the only way to overcome death was to die on behalf of all. So he takes a body capable of death that he might put it to death on behalf of all and um and and destroys death in his his body. Um and he says through the grace of the resurrection, banishing death from them as straw from the fire. So really beautiful book, and uh highly recommend that. Good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we will try to put some links if there are audio versions of any of these books as well. I know we have listeners who are obviously listening to audio now and would, you know, maybe the next thing they listen to would be one of these resources. So we'll see if we can find some of these on uh some of the typical audiobook um uh resources. And then also there are podcasts that uh of that people have made of them just reading some of these classic works. Uh so we'll do some searching on that. Uh, I've not done that, didn't even think of it before uh we started recording, but we'll do some research on that and see if there's something already. Uh there's always new stuff coming out, so in subsequent years uh we may be able to uh find some of that if it's not out yet, as we'll try to provide some audio resources.
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