Advent always seems to sneak up on me. I guess it’s my determination to give Thanksgiving its due; I resist the onslaught of Christmas decorations that appear the day after Halloween. In my focus on fall and harvest themes, pumpkins and squash, pots of soup on the stove and a slow extraction of sweaters and coats from storage, the transformation from the settling in of a WNY fall, the winding down of the long season following Pentecost into the expectation—the getting ready-- of Advent catches me by surprise, each and every time.
Advent has long been misunderstood. Advent isn’t a mini- Lent but it’s also not a 4-week wind up to Christmas.
Advent is, by design, a penitential season of sorts—it is a season when we focus on becoming reconciled with God. But it’s not like Lent when we lay ourselves bare before God, stripping ourselves, confessing our sins and awaiting God’s redeeming act of resurrection. No Advent is when God lays God’s self-bare before us---when God comes to dwell among us in the stark vulnerability of a newborn baby.
Advent is when we ready ourselves for the ultimate reconciliation of humanity and God---reconciliation in the person of Jesus Christ.
It’s actually overwhelming, when you think about it, God is coming to us—how can we ever be ready for that?
But here we are, Advent One, the first Sunday of Advent, getting ready for the birth of Jesus, the nativity, the wonder of the incarnation.
And to help us get ready, our lectionary, our readings for this Sunday—and the next two—focus on “end times” imagery. Apocalyptic themes about readiness for judgment, the demand for justice and the hope for Christ’s second coming.
‘Tis the season for avoiding darkness, debauchery, licentiousness and the thief who steals away in the night…
ho ho ho.
This is a season to expect the unexpected to prepare for something we can’t even fathom, Emmanuel: God with us. God as us. God in the flesh.
Advent is about waiting. Advent is about getting ready. Advent is about remembering that we don’t know the day, the hour, or the moment of Christ’s return.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We can plan all we want, making lists and checking them twice, but life marches on, seemingly oblivious to our desires. Life is fragile, unpredictable and wonderfully spontaneous, despite our best-laid plans!
What we do know is that, as we ready ourselves for the commemoration of the first Advent---the arrival of Jesus, we’re preparing for the second Advent, the coming of Christ again.
Our lessons today have a theme---judgment and justice. Darkness and light. We are to resist the dark, and seek the light. We do this by seeking and serving Christ in all those we meet and by respecting the dignity of every human being. We are to beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks. We aren’t to rest until justice reigns on the earth. That’s our task, that’s what is to occupy us from now until the end of time. Serious stuff. Which is why
I think all this Christmas frivolity, the shopping of Black Friday, the parties, the mailing of packages to loved one’s far away, the writing of Christmas cards is….. absolutely fine. Good even. Really good.
The challenge of this season is to look past the presents and the parties to remember what they represent—a way to let others know that they matter to us. That they are important. As long as we spend this season of preparation for Christ’s birth as a time to tell others how much we love them, and to work at making sure the dignity of all human beings is honored and respected then, party away. Shop til you drop---just never forget that with every Christmas card you sign, every stocking you fill and every glass of egg nog you sip is a way to cherish one another.
And cherishing one another is what God wants us to do, because that’s what God does.
On the last day, we’ll be judged for how we’ve lived our lives and the litmus test---the standard by which we’ll be measured-- is very simple: justice. Have we lived justly?
Have we moved out of darkness and into light?
(This is what Advent asks us to do---it’s right there in today’s collect—“cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” )
The darkness of our lives is injustice. And while we cannot overcome all the injustice in the world, we can refuse to accept a world where injustice is ok. We can be a thorn in the side of our elected leaders, of the power brokers of this world. We can make sure that the oppressed are never forgotten.
These readings aren’t designed to threaten us; they’re designed to encourage us. They aren’t telling us that the holiday season is wrong, they’re telling us that all the parties and gift giving isn’t something we HAVE to do, it’s something we WANT to do, because we want those we love to know we love them; and we want those who may not know the love of another to know our love, our concern, our wish for them is that they are able to live with dignity and respect, because that’s the birthright of every human being.
Just as our children and grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, our young friends and family make their Christmas lists and check them twice, I encourage you to count your blessings—check them twice-- let them lighten your world, freeing you from the darkness of worry and want. Let those blessings encourage you to live justly and honorably, respecting one another, as the baby born in that barn in Bethlehem wants us too.
So I wish you all a very happy and blessed Advent. A season of getting ready to receive the glorious love of God, as given to us all in Jesus Christ. Amen.
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