Exploring Advent with Luke: A Spiritual Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christmas

Luke the Evangelist was a brilliant storyteller who used two powerful rhetorical tools in his birth narrative: questions and poetry. In the first chapter of his gospel there are four moments where a question is asked by a character in the story, and those questions are designed subtly by Luke to reach off the pages, transcend the ages, and speak to the very heart of his reader/hearer. The four questions form the steps of a kind of a spiritual pilgrimage to the cradle, and walking those steps allows Advent to lead us to the heart of the Christmas season.

The other rhetorical tool Luke uses adroitly is poetry: there are four poems, or poetic songs called canticles that Luke uses in his birth narrative, and each one functions in the manner of a song in a musical: at a poignant moment the action stops for reflection, to be sure the audience understands the moment.

Timothy Clayton, author of the new book Exploring Advent with Luke, presents a webinar that brings Luke's two rhetorical tools clearly into view. Clayton will guide the participants' interaction with them in order to facilitate a spiritual pilgrimage to the heart of the season of Advent, resolving many of the issues that hinder the joy of Christmas.