Advent is upon us and with it comes the yearly question: How do we enter this time fully and balance this with the cultural assumption that Christmas season somehow begins the day after Thanksgiving (or, worse, Halloween!)?
If this question is confusing, we must be clear on what Advent is and what it isn’t. To have a great Christmas the Church leads us to observe a good Advent.
Advent of course is the four weeks leading up to Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation. Its themes are not as jolly as Christmas, to be sure: death, judgment, heaven and hell. In reflecting on these themes, however, we undergo a “spiritual cleanse.” We are forced to look at things as they are, not as we would have them be.
And there is plenty of evidence to support this as we look around the world or even look within our own selves. We see light and darkness, we see little glimpses of beauty and hope poking through like hearty pansies blooming under a blanket of snow. And yet we are living out the first part of Isaac Watts’ treasured lines, “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.” We live with the impression, if not the fact, of sins and sorrows growing like summer bindweed in the garden or, if you’re from the South, Kudzu – surely signs of living under judgment if there ever was one!
Fleming Rutledge puts it well in her book Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, when she notes that “Advent begins in the dark.”
And yet, we know that Advent points to something hopeful, joyous, and enduring. That is to say, Advent paves the way for Christmas. Advent says that while there are pains and sorrows that act like invasive weeds, the Great Gardener is at work to restore and renew the face of the earth. And He begins with the birth of a baby and the work of that baby-become man, and the eventual return of that one singular human being to set the world to rights.
So, in this way Advent paves the way for Christmas and the birth of Christ Jesus, yes, but Advent points us to the promise of that birth and how Christ’s coming again is a sign of powerful hope and expectation. For to return to Isaac Watts again, “He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.”
Advent puts us in between these two parts of “Joy to the World” - “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground” and “He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.”
I’d like to close with a little vignette that helps us reflect on how best to observe this season of Advent.
Methodist Bishop William Willimon, the former chaplain to Duke University and University Preacher, tells of how his director of music refused to sit in a crowded, loud restaurant. He takes earplugs with him to Duke basketball games.
“You see,” he explains, “when your life is music, when your main tools are your ears, you must be careful. The difference between making good music and making great music is
often the difference between the slightest variations of sound. Therefore, I must guard my hearing.”
Willimon continues, “So maybe that’s why the church, in its wisdom, has the season of Advent in the weeks before Christmas. It we are to see the fragile light which dawns among us in Christ, we must sit awhile in the darkness. If we are to hear the songs of the angels, we must first be silent.”
As the old poster says, “Slow down. Be quiet. Its Advent.”
A blessed Advent to you and yours.
Fr. Chris