Cultivating an Advent Perspective

Cultivating an Advent Perspective

Even if you don’t follow a Church Calendar

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I spent a large portion of my Christian life in churches which paid little attention to the historic church calendar, except for Sunday, Christmas and Easter.  In the last decade I have worshipped in an Anglican Church, where one’s life begins to revolve around the church calendar, like the earth revolves around the sun and brings a series of seasons into our lives on a yearly basis.  Regarding a church calendar I have my preferences and I am sure you have your preference as well, and I am not much interested in trying to persuade or be persuaded.  But we can learn from one another.  I can tell you, if you don’t follow a church calendar how much I have learned from recognizing the season of Advent.  You can tell me how one day is not different from another and that every Christian truth is not just for one day or one season in a church year.  Guess what?  You are right.  So here is why I am writing this blog today.  In my journey through this season of advent, I am realizing that advent is probably only important in the sense that it leads me to a perspective of the Christian life that can characterize how I live life that 24 hour- 365 days a year.  So if you will allow me to describe Advent for someone who doesn’t keep the calendar, I will tell you how it shapes how I think about the Christian life 365 days a year.

            First, I know a lot of Christians that don’t know what Advent is.  There are different levels of not knowing what Advent is.  This isn’t such a big deal in some ways, Christians live within so many differing perspectives of Christian experience that I would not be surprised if you knew nothing about the Advent season recognized by a number of ancient churches.  Some of you probably know that Advent starts sort of right after Thanksgiving and lasts basically to Christmas Eve.  Some of you probably think Advent is a long Christmas celebration.  But historically it was a time to prepare our hearts and souls for Christmas.  That sort of sounds strange to some of you, since Christmas, the one that really mattered already took place and we are living our lives based on the fact that Christ was born into the world more than two thousand years ago.  So why do we have a period of time preparing our hearts and souls for a Christmas Day that in all reality happened two thousand years ago?  A good question, I think.

            Here’s the thing.  Advent is a season where we focus our Christian thought and life on two realities of the Christian life.  The first focus is historical.  During Advent we remember that from the time when our human race first fell into sin until Christ came, humankind waited for thousands of years for God to fulfill His promise of sending his Son into the world for our redemption.  Remembering this helps us to realize that we have been granted grace, mercy, kindness, and life in a Son who being equal with God, was yet willing to become one of us and die as one of us, and die that we might live, and came to be resurrected to life that we might become resurrected to eternal life.  The historical focus is important.  If God had not become man in the person of Jesus Christ, there would be no Gospel of Jesus Christ.  For hundreds and thousands of years, mankind in sin’s grasp looked unto vague promises and hopes for a promised redemption.

            But that historical remembrance is really one aspect of Advent.  Advent is a word composed of Latin roots.  It is made from the Latin preposition “Ad” which means “to” and the Latin verb, “venio” which means “come.”  Advent means “to come.”  The early church recognized during Advent that Jesus had come to set men and women free from their sins.  But Jesus was also going to come again to bring completion to what he began in coming to earth as a human being to free us from our sin.  We recognize not only that Jesus came long ago to be born in Bethlehem to save us from our sins, but also that Jesus is coming again so that when we see him next time, we will see him as he is and will be like him.  That is a beautiful promise to cling to 24 hours a day for 365 days a year.  We remember that like the Old Testament people of God and the various people living throughout the world in the years before Christ that something special and wonderful and glorious took place on that first Christmas morning when Jesus Christ was born into the world to save sinners.  But we do not just look back to that time with a fond historical recollection that Jesus came in the fullness of time to set men and women, sinners all; whether Jew, Greek, no matter what continent or language or color each of us saw as our personal identity, Jesus came to be born to set us free from our enslavement to sin and the injustice of a fallen humanity.  He came to be born in Bethlehem as Charles Wesley said that we might be given a second birth.

But if we look around at the world now, we see lots of things still wrong with the world.  We see deadly wars, diseases, human misunderstandings, injustices, evil, bigotry, and all sorts of things that can depress, discourage, and even destroy us.  That is why that second focus of Advent is so important.  We look forward to when we shall as St. John said, see him and we shall be like him.  We realize when we remember how the Old Testament people of God had to wait patiently and faithfully for Christ’s first coming, how we have to wait patiently and faithfully for his next coming, that coming that will culminate when we will see him as he is and shall be like him.

We wait not passively as if there is nothing we can do until that time in the future, but we wait actively even as St. John says that everyone who has this hope of seeing Jesus in the future has a hope that makes them purify themselves as Jesus is pure.

Jesus, if I understand the Christian life that we live between his first coming and his second coming, has invited us to take an active part in what he is doing to turn the world around, to set us free from our sins, to reshape us towards his perfect righteousness, to enlist us in seeing his justice and mercy brought into our world and perfected in that glorious day to come.  St. Paul described to the Colossians how his sufferings were helping to fill up what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  That almost sounds heretical and blasphemous.  But the Christian is called to be Christ’s co-laborer.  What Jesus came to begin to do in his first coming he will complete in his second coming, and we who are called to be his co-laborers in the Gospel participate in what Christ is doing to turn our humanity and our world from being dominated by sin and death to being a place of love, life, and beauty forevermore where there no longer dwells a hint of sin.  We are called as Christians to prepare ourselves for this sort of life between Christ’s two comings.

So you see, while the season of Advent lasts only a few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, its lessons and applications are meant to be extended throughout the whole year.  We understand that as the world waited for Christ’s first coming, we wait expectantly and actively for his second coming participating in his desire of turning our lives and our world from lives shackled to sin and death, to lives and a world characterized by resurrection, life, and the beauty of Christ’s own perfection.

I am going to close out this blog by asking you to look at a very brief blog that inspired me to write this blog.  A lady named Christie Purifoy introduced her readers to an Advent song entitled “Canticle for Turning” which was written by a man named Rory Cooney.  It is a song based on the words of the blessed Mary as she looked forward to the promises regarding her son that God had given her.  Mary’s hope as she looked forward to her son’s birth has become our hope as we look forward to Jesus’ coming to complete and perfect what he came to do when he came two thousand years ago.  You can read Christie’s very brief blog here, and you can also hear this wonderful advent song here.  I hope you both enjoy and are edified by the experience.