Messiah has been seeking God and serving this neighborhood of Toronto for more than 125 years. We are fresh, informal, and highly engaged. Messiah is the kind of place where the weekly Bible readings are followed by discussion time during services – but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying beautiful music and the fullness of Anglican-style worship.
- Sunday’s regular Service is at 10:30 am in-person.
- We will be hosting a Spanish Language Service on Saturday evenings beginning soon, time TBA
- While we no longer record our services, you can see previous services, music and sermons at our YouTube channel.
- Check out our Pollinator Garden!
SEVEN WEEK ADVENT
Until the 20th century, Advent was a celebration of our hope of God’s coming reign of justice and peace. In the English-speaking world, we filled the season with music like Handel’s Messiah —
and when the Hallelujah Chorus began, we would all stand up together in solemn wonder and delight: “Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever, King of kings, and Lord of lords. Hallelujah!”
But then we discovered another use for Advent. Since the god we now worship is The Economy, and since the business year will end just after Christmas Day, we need the time before it to ramp up the ‘Christmas Spirit’ (the spirit of consumerism). So today, ‘Advent’ is just the religious name for the season of Christmas Shopping and Partying which begins after Hallowe’en. Th e air is filled with music like Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
(On the Sundays of Advent, we want to sing Christmas carols — instead of Advent carols — for we need to put a brave face on this new season of extravagance and exhaustion.) But the good news is that we possess a secret antidote to all this. After Hallowe’en, the appointed readings for the seven Sundays before Christmas Day are primarily focussed on the New Creation promised us in the resurrection of the Lord.
Our new Lectionary reflects the earliest Christian tradition of beginning the new year not in nostalgia but in hope: looking forward to ‘the Day of the Lord’ when God’s plan to redeem our lost and broken world is fulfilled — the eternal moment that makes sense of all our lesser moments. Indeed, Advent was originally much longer, and only zeroed in on the coming birth of
the Messiah at the end of the season.
If we can learn to let the readings of Advent shape our sense of Advent, this season can become once again the vantage point from which we look ahead to the whole year with new hope. The seven Sundays before ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ can be framed by the seven verses of our great Advent hymn, O come, Emmanuel.
This proposal is based on the work of an Anglican scholar, Dr. William Petersen; it can be further explored at http://theadventproject.org.
The readings continue to follow the “normal” three year lectionary we always use, but with a different emphasis and orientation of our imaginations. The real virtue of these changes would be the opportunity it would give us to re-imagine the Kingdom that Jesus taught us to seek first, before all else.
ADVENT III: DESIRE OF NATIONS
O Ruler of the Nations, desire and longing for wholeness, come!
SUNDAY, Nov. 24, 2024 @ 10:30 AM (English)
Please join us for worship IN PERSON at the church.
II Samuel 23.1-7
Psalm 132.1-2, 3-5, 11, 12-13
Revelation 1.4b-8
John 18.33-37
ZOOM Sunday School for Pre-Teens and Teens
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Please email us at office@churchofthemessiah.ca if you have any questions about the Sunday services.