Advent is hard this year, y’all.
I suppose what I really mean is that anticipation of the usual cheer seems hard, although that means, conversely, that some aspects of the season are actually far easier to embrace.
In Advent each year, we play out Christ’s coming. For a time, then, in the church calendar Christ is not actually here yet, at least not figuratively. We are supposed to be in preparation mode, sweeping ourselves clean so that there is room in our lives and hearts for him to come in. Cue half-naked desert nomad with slightly crazed eyes:
Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Matthew 3:2b (KJV)
Or if you’d prefer your Baptizer a bit less Ren-faire:
Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.
(New Living Translation)
There we go: repent is a mystical but powerful spiritual concept; change is much more like an actual thing one must do. But they are both the essence of Advent, which is always about the means — the preparing — rather than the end.
We need the light of Christ in this broken world. Every year, the Advent season reminds us of this fact. We hang the greenery, gild everything in gold, set out the purple paraments — only to get an earful of apocalyptic shouting from our lectionary texts. During week one, the Gospel reading (Matt. 24:36-44) spoke of Christ’s coming as being similar to an unexpected robbery, and in the same breath it reminded us of the destruction of the world in the Flood. Week two brings us trees that are cut down for not bearing fruit, and wheat separated from chaff, the latter thrown in the fire. Crazy St. John goes so far as to tell the Pharisees and Sadducees that being Abraham’s children won’t save them; if God wanted, he could make more, even out of stones.
Most years, this kind of harangue goes in one ear and out the other for me. I don’t feel like a bad, bad person who needs to “repent,” nor do I want to look inward all that much to contemplate “change.” December, with all its shopping and parties and Peppermint Mochas, is not a time for soul-searching; leave that depressing stuff for Lent, yeah? This year, though, I find myself gravitating toward the moody, the minor key:
O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel
This is Easter stuff, almost — driving out darkness with a wave of the hand, making death scurry like a rat or a cockroach at the flip of a light switch.
Yes, Lord. So very many figurative rats and cockroaches.
Right now, I see a lot of darkness pressing in and feel real anxiety from many of the people around me. We’re learning to hold tighter to each other, but it’s slow going and it doesn’t change reality. And my inner voice reminds me that this sojourn of our country into a new world – or rather, an old world of division and hatred some of us were perhaps silly enough to think we’d left behind – is probably just beginning. How does one go about Advent-ing when the world does not seem likely to be shaken awake, blinded by the brilliance of God?
(Or when one is still pretty angry at, like, half of her country?)
I’ve typed out a lot of responses to this question only to erase them. In the end, none are as salient as this, I think: We do it the same way people always have.
I’ve been lucky to live my life in a comparatively free country, and, because I am white, in relative safety. I grew up poor, but I never went without food, clothing, and shelter. Even better, I was loved and cared for by parents who valued me and believed in me. I am used to things being easy, especially this God thing. No one has ever kept me from practicing my faith; in fact, my faith has been enshrined in the cultural life of my country. But for most of the history of the world, and even now for so many, life has been hard, including gathering and worshiping with other believers. For some, there is no light dawning on the horizon — none, that is, except the light of Christ.
I’m not the first to say it’s hard to have a meaningful relationship with Christ when you grow up in church, at least compared with those who encounter God out of nothing and have a real conversion. There’s no compelling reason to hold fast to God if there hasn’t been a sense that one is drowning and in need of rescue. I think first world Christianity is likewise a strange, often cold enterprise, a set of comfortingly familiar but relatively empty rituals rather than real engagement with a profound Truth and Power.
Today, I’m reminding myself that wherever Christians have been, as long as they’ve been there, they have experienced Advent in all the frames of mind and stages of life we can imagine, and many we can’t. These surely include the darkest of days, from community crises — plague, famine, persecution, and war — to personal heartbreaks — worry over a sickness in the family, mourning over a fractured relationship, despondency over a lost job, frustration over a great injustice. Advent is for all of us, especially those who tend to forget how terrible things can be without Him, but it particularly speaks to those who really have been waiting, desperately, for Christ to return.
Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee
Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart
I haven’t always been waiting. One of the elders in the church I grew up in used to include this in every one of his public prayers: Come quickly, Lord Jesus, even today. I imagine it was a deeply personal statement from him, but it was also a gentle reminder to me that I ought to have a longing heart for God. There is so much that Christ can offer to us, all those things the song speaks of: freedom, release, rest, strength, consolation, hope, joy. It’s a lot easier to welcome when you really need it, when you’re bound, exhausted, weak, despairing.
I’m not saying, of course, that living with our crumbling democracy presents the same challenges as surviving war in Syria, poverty in Guatemala, or repression in North Korea. I’m just saying Advent is a little easier for me this year, in part because everything seems so much bleaker than it did a year ago. I’m looking forward to the light. I’m trying to prepare.
Stone-Campbell Girl 