Hey Church!

The season of Advent begins this Sunday! Advent means “arrival,” which refers to Jesus’ “once and future” coming. It marks the beginning of a new year on the liturgical calendar and is the only season that looks beyond history to things yet to come. Namely, to Jesus’ return “to judge the living and the dead.” In this way, Advent most closely mirrors our current reality; in this present darkness, we watch and pray for His return and the fulfillment of His final promises. 

Jesus likened our present reality to a doorkeeper who is left to keep watch over his master’s house: 

It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch… “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:34-37)

Since the early centuries of the Church, Advent has been a time for believers to experience a deepened sense of anticipation for Christ’s return. Much like Lent is to Easter, Advent is a penitential season of preparation for Christmas. While most churches today conflate the two, earlier generations believed there was wisdom in first taking a long and frightful look into the dark of Advent before celebrating the light and joy of Christmas. 

Poinsettias, crèche scenes, colorful decorations, lights, and Christmas carols were withheld until Christmas Eve. In their place were songs of sorrow for sin, as would be sung by exiles awaiting deliverance. Instead of Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope, during the Middle Ages, the preferred themes of Advent’s four Sundays were Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. 

The point here is not to suggest that we should capitulate to some other generation’s traditions. It is to say, however, that something profound may have been lost over time which has stripped Christmas of much of its soul-moving power. Advent takes an honest look at the state of our world and our need for a Savior. It is truly Jesus or bust. 

Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest, tells the following story to describe the spirit of the Advent season. 

“In 2017, Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, was suffering from a prolonged crisis as a result of civil war. The government and all its agencies had ceased to operate. All services–medical care, sanitation, food supply, factories, airports, seaports, bridges–everything was collapsing. Parents were desperate as their children began to die of cholera, a disease that is easily treated in the developed world. A man [named] Yakoub al-Jayefi, a Yemeni soldier, had not been paid anything for eight months, and his six-year-old daughter was in dire condition from malnutrition. Waiting by her side in a clinic, he said, ‘We’re just waiting for doom or for a breakthrough from heaven.’” 

Rutledge comments, “This is precisely the Advent situation: doom on one hand, deliverance on the other.”

When the prophet Isaiah cried out, “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down (Isa. 64:1), it is with just such a sense of desperate knowledge that nothing short of divine intervention can arrest the ever-recurring cycle of human misery.”1 

Will you enter this Advent season with a sense of the world’s darkness and desperation? It is revival or bust; nothing short of divine intervention can make things right. Call on the Light of the World to save us!