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Many Christians don’t sing Christmas carols till December 24th. Not because we are Scrooges, but because we are in a church season known as Advent: from the mid-6th century, the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas were kept as a time of expectation, often as a mini-Lent.
What are we expecting during Advent? The birth of a baby, yes. The advent calendars I had growing up opened little doors toward the expectation of Christmas morning—baby Jesus, sure, but mainly presents!
But Advent as it has been understood, for example in the great Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” has words mid-9th century Christians used for the Christ they expected—” key of David,” “branch of Jesse’s tree”, “desire of nations” etc. Their longing was for Christ to return and right all wrongs, bringing justice and peace to the earth.
The season of Advent holds stark paradoxes— between a mini-Lent and a holiday frenzy. Between the tenderness of a manger scene and the second coming of Christ portrayed in Tympanums in the great cathedrals of Europe. Those great art pieces—sculpted or painted above doors to confront all– showed grisly images of those who, at Christ’s second coming, were weighed in the balance and found wanting, and sent to eternal damnation.
I guess it’s little wonder most advent calendars don’t include that aspect of Advent, don’t show images of the damned in torment… open this little window and voila! This is what will happen to you if you don’t tidy your room….
Advent calendars must have been invented because waiting is hard. We know this, from times we’ve waited for a follow up call from a doctor, for the birth of a baby, or for….
Or for the end of a pandemic.
We know what it’s like, this time of year, to be waiting in the dark, uncertainty the only certainty.
In the uncertainty, we pretend we can manage things, plan our futures, exercise our way to immortality. And of course, those hopes are dashed. Reinhold Niebuhr writes that our despair comes from our failed attempts to control, to pretend we are not subject to life’s ups and downs.
Advent offers us more than sparkly lights and shopping—it offers hope in the darkness, the sure knowledge that in the end all shall be well. No, it’s not “all good,” as people like to say, but in a cosmic sense— taking the really big view– all shall be well.
Here’s the prayer Episcopalians use on the first Sunday in the season of Advent:
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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