(Note: This blog entry is based on
the text for “Still Advent”, originally shared on December 20, 2023. It was the
290th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced
with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Advent may be shorter this year than usual, and that’s a problem. Today, we’re going to find out why.
I grew up in
Wisconsin where it’s said that there are four seasons: Almost Winter, Winter,
Still Winter, and Road Construction. 😊
This year, there are some that seem to feel
the same way about Advent.
Advent is the season of the Church year of preparation
for Christmas.
Advent means “coming”. We celebrate both the
first advent of Jesus at his birth and prepare for the second advent of Jesus
to judge the world, when everything will be made new in its perfection.
For some, it’s all too much.
I often think of
Pastor Ingqvist, at this
time of year. He is the pastor in humorist Garrison Keillor’s mythical
Minnesota town, Lake Wobegon, who began an Advent sermon with a proposal
something like, “This Christmas, I propose that we resist the temptations of
our world to make Christmas about the things that we can buy. Let’s make it
less about the gifts we give and more about the gift God has given us in Jesus
Christ.” And just then his gaze fell to the row in front of the pulpit where
his five children were mouthing words at him. “No! Dad, no! No!”.
I get that children
find that Advent is too long to wait.
Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas,
and for some grown-ups that’s too long to wait. Though I’ve seen some clergy
online who are inexplicably arguing for a seven-week Advent season!
This year, though, some churches will be
cutting Advent to three Sundays instead of four. Why?
Because this coming Sunday is The Fourth
Sunday in Advent. It’s also Christmas Eve.
Some churches are afraid that no one will
show up in the morning, I guess, so they have canceled the morning Advent
service and will only have a Christmas Eve service.
And, even if churches have an Advent service
in the morning, I know that some people will feel that they have too much to
do, so they’ll shorten Advent themselves by skipping it.
Why is that a problem?
First, it raises questions about what we
value.
Christmas is a peak time for visitors, and
they are the least likely to hear about any changes in the regular worship
times. When they arrive in the morning and find no worship service, or one that
is greatly diminished in attendance, it creates an impression that worship
times are flexible and are set for the convenience of the congregation’s members.
This year’s dilemma is like the issue raised
in the question, “Should I force my children to go to church?”
Some people will answer, “No. I was forced
to go as a child, and I hated it. I want my children to decide for themselves.”
It’s not an uncommon response. But it begs some
questions like, “Do you force your children to eat nutritious meals?” “Do you
force your children to go to school? To do their homework? Or, to get enough
sleep?”
Children can tell the difference between
what is important to their parents and what is not.
Children learn some of their most important
lessons by example. That’s why it’s not just important for children to go to
church, it’s important for them to worship with their parents.
I don’t think that parents should use threats
or physical force, but instead communicate a common identity.
It happens through parents who by their words
and deeds say, “We are a family, and this is who we are.”
The whole Church is the Christian community,
but every congregation doesn’t need to be a large community.
I often think of the Anglican vicar who
thought that what his congregation needed was a 6:00 a.m. prayer and Holy
Communion service. Most of his colleagues were skeptical. “Who’s going to come
to church at 6:00 in the morning?”, they asked.
A couple of months later, a few of them
asked him how it was going.
“It’s going great”, the vicar said.
His surprised colleagues asked, “How many
people come out for a 6:00 a.m. prayer and Holy Communion service?
He answered, “Well, me, and my mother, and the
two maiden sisters who come to everything, about a trillion seraphim, a quadrillion
cherubim, and all the hosts of heaven!”
We are important and necessary to one
another. We are a people set apart. We need one another to build one another up,
to share one another’s burdens. To bear a common identity. And we are being
rooted-on by the whole heavenly host.
This is who we are.
Second, it removes an opportunity to hear a
lesson about Christmas that many of us seem to have forgotten.
One of the most popular contemporary
Christian Christmas songs in the past several years has been one called, “Mary,
Did You Know”. I’ve sung it. I’ve found it moving. Maybe you have too.
But it’s also nonsense, and those who miss
worship this Sunday will miss an opportunity to reflect on why that is.
Here’s how the song starts:
Mary,
did you know that your baby boy Would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy Would save
our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy Has come to make
you new?
This child that you delivered, will soon deliver
you
Here’s the reading from the Gospel of Luke
that will be read in vast majority of Churches all over the world this coming
Sunday, in Luke 1:26-38,
26In the sixth month the angel
Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man
whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said,
“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29But she was much perplexed by
his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The angel said to her, “Do
not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in
your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be
called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne
of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house
of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34Mary said to the angel, “How
can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35The angel said to her, “The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow
you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of
God. 36And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a
son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be
impossible with God.” 38Then Mary said, “Here am I,
the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the
angel departed from her.
Yes, Mary knew! The angel Gabriel told her!
Hearing the lessons read out loud gives us
information like this. It also changes lives.
The Bible is the primary way that God speaks
to us, and we share it with millions of Christians all over the world hearing
the very same thing on the very same day in the Church year.
Third, worshiping at the Sunday morning
Fourth Sunday in Advent worship service helps us keep our focus on the
blessing.
We celebrate because we know who has come
and who will come again.
We celebrate the waiting, in which God
speaks at in the first advent and at the last.
We celebrate to keep our focus on keeping awake.
Our struggle is with this world’s secular imitation
of Christmas.
Our struggle is with patience.
Our struggle is an opportunity to practice
patience as we wait for Jesus to come again. It’s a chance to reject the
temptation to cave-in to the world’s “Winter Shopping Festival” that began
months ago.
This is not a burden. It’s a blessing.
Worshiping in Advent, on the Fourth Sunday
in Advent, gives us the backstory to the backstory of Christmas.
We will be prepared in the morning for what
is announced at night.
I saw a meme in three parts the other day.
The first showed advent candles marked “Advent”, the second showed a manger
scene marked “Christmas Eve”, and the third showed a stunned guy marked, “Well
that escalated quickly!”
Christmas Eve will remind us that God keeps
His promises. Even if it takes a very long time. But just as the Law is needed
for the Gospel to make sense, and just as Good Friday is needed for Easter to
make sense, the fullness of Advent is necessary for the fullness of the Christ
event to make sense in all of its meaning.
Without it, we are
like the woman who had come to that point in her life where her extended family
had grown so large that buying Christmas presents for everyone was too much.
She couldn’t keep track of what everyone needed or wanted. So, she wrote a
stack of checks and filled out a pile of Christmas cards, written to everyone,
with the message, “This year you can buy your own Christmas present, with a smiley
face 😊”.
She brought them to
the family Christmas gathering and passed them around.
Toward the end of
the evening, she noticed that people were looking at her funny. Something
wasn’t quite right but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was until she got
home and saw, on her writing desk, was a neat stack of checks, uninserted into
the Christmas cards. All that her family members had received from her was a card
with the message, “This year, buy your own Christmas present!”
Something important had been left out.
It will still be the season of Advent this
Sunday before sundown, both in the sense that it is Advent “still” remaining, and
that it is the Sabbath, a time to be still so that we can hear the meaning of
the first coming of Jesus at Christmas and to contemplate his longed-for second
coming for Judgement in the stillness.
So don’t sleep this Sunday morning, either physically
or spiritually. Be awake and be blessed. Be ready, as Jesus called upon his
disciples to do in Mark 13:37,
37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
Because it’s still Advent.
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