HAPPY NEW YEAR!
A bit premature, you might say. We haven’t even celebrated Thanksgiving. New pastor is a nutter. Been here five months and thinks he can change the calendar on us!
But Advent, from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming,” marks the beginning of a new Christian year. The season of Advent is the four Sundays before Christmas where we wait and prepare for the birth of Jesus. Purple is the color for Advent and the Advent wreath is lit in hope and expectation: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” By ancient tradition, Advent was a time of fasting and penitence, underscored by the expectation. The Lectionary for Advent often points toward the Second Coming of Christ while remembering the First Coming at Christmas.
All of this, of course, is part of the liturgical tradition that is Advent. But a provocative contemporary description of Advent by Gertrude Mueller Nelson comes in a book entitled, To Dance With God, where she writes: “It is Advent, and we are a people pregnant. Pregnant and waiting.” To some of you this may be an appalling thought, but stay with me.
We all know Jesus to be reason for the season. Without Christmas, we would have no marker for the day when God joined us in an act of prodigal love. What a gift! So to treat the day as simply the end of a season and a high holy day is to miss the point. Perhaps instead we should use the Advent season to feel the life stirring within us and await the joyful arrival of new life. Yes, there will be birth pangs. Yes, there will be moments of anxiety. But we are waiting for Jesus and we should be in pregnant expectation. “Be aware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come,” says the Gospel of Mark.
So how do we prepare the way? How do we anticipate the Lord’s arrival? Before we get caught up in the seemingly inevitable rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we should take some Advent time, some kairos before chronos: time to worship, pray, study Scripture, ponder the pregnant moment of joyful anticipation. Jesus is coming! Oh, and happy new year and a blessed Advent!
Pastor Mel +
