Advent is the season of preparation. In liturgical history it arose after Lent was established as the period of penance and preparation for Easter. But unlike Lent, Advent doesn't carry the idea of self-denial, the tradition of giving up meat for the duration (little practiced anymore even for Lent), and it is almost lost in the secular race to Christmas Day in a frantic rush to buy gifts for "everyone on your list," or to attend and give as many parties as can be squeezed in between work and three weekends (most people having retreated home by the day before Xmas Eve). There are a lot of misunderstandings about Yule and Xmas and their relationship to Christianity, and Advent threatens each year to disappear in the almost-manic need to make the "holidays perfect."
Advent is not about perfection. It's not about getting "right with God," or "ready for God." If you're part of a church community that observes Advent, it should be about preparing, as a community, for the celebration on December 25th. When I was a pastor, I tried to keep "Christmas songs" out of the services in December so they were a special treat on Christmas Eve and the Sunday (or two) after Christmas Day until Epiphany Sunday. Kind of a communal "giving up" for the period. It never really worked out that way, and I usually included Christmas hymns in the services by Gaudete, and on the Sunday before Christmas Day.
We rush to Christmas every year, anxious to have the joy and goodwill and memories of happiness we've known (well, most of us; some of us do need a "Blue Christmas") since childhood. And more often than not we arrive at Xmas Day exhausted and drained, physically, spiritually, fiscally. And then gear up to do it all again next year, because the lure of the day, the payoff for our anticipation, is so great in our hearts we can't see any other way than how "we've always done it before."
This is what I've always done before: try to bring the sense of Advent here, because by the time I started this I didn't have a church anymore, and I soon lost connection to the church altogether. I like to keep something alive, because I think it's worthwhile. I also think we deserve more from December than a mad rush to balance the books of our year before we start a new one with resolutions meant, in large part, to wipe out (if never atone for) the year just ended. And usually ended not with a bang, but a whimper.
Posting just snatches of poetry or scripture or essays, as I've done in the past, is to leave things, I think, a bit too out of context. This isn't a drama or a comedy, but too much commentary is rather like "maid and butler dialogue:" far more exposition than anyone wants to be burdened with. So what we have here is not, I hope, a failure to communicate. This is the start of the days of Advent, which are punctuated by the Sundays of Advent (which is truly how it is measured, much like Lent, which actually starts with the Sunday six weeks out from Easter Sunday; but we think of it as starting with Ash Wednesday. Similarly, despite Advent Calendars with 24 slots on them, Advent isn't necessarily 24 days long, and it begins on the first Sunday to fall four Sundays before Christmas Day; which, unlike Easter, is always on December 25th, whatever day that is on the Julian calendar.) It seemed appropriate, this year, to start the day with the topic of war; because, as Karl Barth said, a preacher should hold the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other. His times were even more fraught than ours, though we seem determined to either recreate his Germany, or declare our state of affairs to be even worse and more perilous.
Advent is never an escape from life; but it should be an alternative to what the world offers; whether that offering is war, or just getting and spending.
From Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World
"Peace is more than the absence of war. It cannot be reduced to the maintenance of a balance of power between opposing forces nor does it arise out of despotic dominion, but it is appropriately called "the effect of righteousness" (Isaiah 32:17). It is the fruit of that right ordering of things with which the divine founder has invested human society and which must be actualized by humans thirsting after an ever more perfect reign of justice.
"Peace cannot be obtained on earth unless human welfare is safeguarded and people freely and trustingly share with one another the riches of their minds and their talents. A firm determination to respect the dignity of others and other peoples along with the deliberate practice of love are absolutely necessary for the achievement of peace. Accordingly, peace is also the fruit of love, for love goes beyond what justice can ensure.
"Therefore, all Christians are earnestly to speak the truth in love (cf. Ephesians 4:15) and join with all who love peace in pleading for peace and trying to bring it about. In the same spirit we cannot but express our admiration for all who forgo the use of violence to vindicate their rights and resort to those other means of defense which are available to weaker parties, provided it can be done without harm to the rights and duties of others and of the community.
"Insofar as all are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until the coming of Christ; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and they will make these words come true. 'They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not life up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.' (Isaiah 2:4)."
Isaiah shows up a lot in Advent, for what seems like obvious reasons. Sometimes, however, the reasons may not be as plain as we expect:
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.--Isaiah 2 (KJV)
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made:
And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty.
The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:
And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,
And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up,
And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall,
And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.
And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
And the idols he shall utterly abolish.
And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;
To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.
Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?
When the time comes (and it will), remember Isaiah 2; and think of it when you hear Mary's song in Luke's nativity story. Or when you read "The Waste Land" (does anyone read "The Waste Land" anymore?)
--T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
Advent isn't all broken images and stony rubbish until Gaudete, or worse, Christmas Eve. If it was, it would be unbearable. It is alternative. That's the best place to start with it: an alternative to what the world offers every year about this time.
--T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"
Advent isn't all broken images and stony rubbish until Gaudete, or worse, Christmas Eve. If it was, it would be unbearable. It is alternative. That's the best place to start with it: an alternative to what the world offers every year about this time.
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.
Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
--Reinhold Niebuhr
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