I guess it takes a church wonk like me to notice that most of December is NOT the Christmas season. We are in the season of Advent; it is the time to prepare our hearts to receive Christ in the world. We are to have a mindset of prophets predicting the coming messiah and calling for repentance, not necessarily joy . . . yet. If you ask scholars, the first gospel was Mark, and it had NO Christmas story; the stories of the birth of Jesus were added later by Matthew and Luke, so even as early as the first century, the scope creep of the Christmas marketing machine was already starting up. Fred Craddock said in a sermon once, "You can't have any fun when there are scholars around." The fact that we work so hard to celebrate Christmas when it isn't even Christmas yet is kind of a paradox, and it got me thinking of a whole bunch of related paradoxes.
Advent is the beginning of the church year, but because of the circularity of the calendar, we've just had the ending of the church year. Christ is coming into the world for the first time at Christmas, but Christ just came into the world for the second time on Christ the King Sunday. In normal times, the church must struggle with the fact that the kingdom has already been accomplished, is already at hand, and at the same time is not yet fully accomplished. This time of year, that already/not yet struggle seems extra exaggerated since we already celebrated the second coming while we're looking forward to the first coming. At the same time, we already have the assurance of our salvation in the faith of Jesus Christ that makes us Christian to begin with.
The royal purple robes of Christ the King become our liturgical color in this time of penitence and preparation, like Lent. We think we want the baby Jesus to come at Christmas time, but if we took seriously what we say in the creeds, we'd know that when Jesus comes, Christ will come in judgement. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and when we turn the Christ into an impotent baby who is here to make us feel good, we are forsaking that wisdom.
During Advent, we talk about the hope, peace, joy, and love of the season as we light the Advent wreath candles. Then we look at the world. This is why Advent is a season for preparation; the world is fallen too, and not the way God wants it to be. Is there enough love in the world? We wait for Christ to come into the world, but in the meantime, WE have to be the love of Christ in the world. We have to examine our own hearts and repent of the sins of demonizing the other and purge ourselves of any hints of disgust when we think of people not like us. We have to examine how to do reconciliation in our relationships in order to receive reconciliation from the coming Christ.
Is there joy in the world? Does the facile joy of retail marketing and instant gratification count? We have to examine ourselves and what motivates us; we have to be sure our joy is true before Christ comes in the world. We also have to make room for those who grieve in December; people for whom the joy of others is a painful reminder of their own loss. We have to make room for people who are depressed for whatever reason. Whether the stress of their lives or just plain medical biology, we can't imply that they are bad or deficient in any way if they are not feeling the exuberant joy expected in this season. If Christ came for us, then certainly Christ came for them, too.
There is certainly a lack of peace in the world. We have to tease out how to accomplish the lasting peace we say we want by working for justice. Otherwise, our peace is a fragile moment betrayed by our nervous vigilance as we wait for the next trauma.
Where is the hope in all this? We have to prepare our hearts to hold onto hope so that when hope comes on Christmas, we'll be able to receive it. In all these ways, it is a paradox to talk with confident positivism of the hope, peace, joy, and love of Advent while looking at the despair, broken relationships, hypocrisy, and cutoff in our lives.
Here's the thing about paradoxes: they seem like they can't exist. Things can't both be true and false, can they? Declaring something to be a paradox is to embrace the contradiction, to assert a BOTH/AND acceptance of the contradiction. Our salvation is BOTH accomplished AND we are waiting with fearful hope for the completion of the coming of the kingdom.
Advent isn't the only paradox; Jesus is a paradox. The eternal Word was there in the beginning, creating all things. Jesus is the Creator and King of the Universe. Jesus is both the King of the Universe and a poor Jewish man who lived under the farce of kingship that Herod and Pilate represented. And in contrast to these so-called powerful kings, when Christmas comes, we will also see that Jesus is a baby. Jesus is the end, the telos or goal, of Advent. Jesus is what we are preparing for because Jesus is our hope, the coming kingdom; Jesus is our peace, the one who broke our injustice by suffering through it and creating a lasting peace between us and God; Jesus is our joy, our liberation from want and sinful self-satisfying greed; Jesus is our love, the love we can now have for all of creation, the love of a mother looking in the face of her newborn baby.
I wish you a measured season of preparation this Advent, but also a profoundly merry Christmas at the end of it.
--Chas
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