Advent Anticipation

Advent Anticipation

            In my childhood years, our family observed Christmas only in a cultural way. Looking back that cultural way of observing Christmas has actually helped me to appreciate as a Christian the aspect of Anticipation that is so much part of the fabric of the season we call Advent.

            In my childhood years there was a season of anticipation in regards to Christmas. The anticipation began when in those days we would get the Christmas catalogs from Sears and Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, and J.C. Penny. Those were for our family the big three Christmas catalogs. Children in families throughout the United States looked to the toy section and began imagining how they would play with various toys. Eventually there would be one toy that you would begin seeking from Santa Claus or Mom and Dad, or am I repeating myself? In the meantime, as you focused your attention on that toy in the “Wish Book” as some of the Christmas catalogs actually named themselves, in your imagination you played with the toy even before you received it under the tree.

            As a child my play looked both to the past and to the future. In our play our remembrances of the past took on a timeless play. When we pretended to be fighting in a battle in the American Revolution or in World War II, groups of children had to be on opposite sides, the good and the bad, and the outcome of those former wars were once more up for grabs. If I was visiting one neighbor’s house, the neighbor’s daughter who was closest to my age would bring out her tea set and would want to play tea with her little cups and saucers and we would imagine ourselves as adults pretending to talk about the bills and everything else we didn’t really understand about adult life. Question – when do we get to understand what adults do? I’m only 62.

            I think the experiences I knew in anticipating a Christmas next to the tree or the games children play remaking the past or anticipating the future help me to understand the sort of anticipation in which we involve ourselves during the calendar season of Advent on the way to Christmas where he came to meet us, and also on the way to the second coming when he will once more return to see us.

            We anticipate the coming of Christ to Bethlehem. The eternal God is born an infant to the virgin. She has said her “yes” and through her yes the son is born whom the Serpent would bite on his heel while the Son would strike the Serpent’s head. But we first see Mary, full with child, weary and tired, looking for a place to stay and give birth to her child. We discover that there is no room at the inn. Soon every minister, pastor, and priest is asking us “Is there room for Jesus at the inn of your heart?” Each year during Advent we walk the trail in our imaginations to Bethlehem. We make pilgrimage and we consider what it means to make him room in our hearts, in our lives, in our relationships with others.

            Advent focuses on both comings of Christ; the first and his promised return. We have been sealed in a promise. We have been baptized into the water of Christ. We anticipate the changing of water into wine at the great feast that is to come. Christ has begun His work in us. We look to Him to complete the work He began. We are still in many ways wounded, broken, incomplete people. We know there is an awesome day awaiting us. We who are broken fear the day when we shall give account of the deeds we have done in our body, of the words we have spoken, and the vain and horrendous thoughts we have imagined. But we know there is more than an accounting of our ills that shall mark the day we see Christ once more. We know that he will wipe away the tears from our eyes and the former things shall pass away. We shall see him and shall be made to be like him. The former things shall pass away. The wounded and broken will be healed while the incomplete will be made whole. The good work he began in us will be perfected. We anticipate that great day I think as if we are crawling caterpillars looking to sprout wings and fly in the beauty of butterflies.

            As God’s children in our activities we anticipate going to Bethlehem to meet Jesus meeting us. We anticipate the great day as we go to meet Jesus meeting us. We ask ourselves “is there room for Jesus at the inn of my heart?” As we come round to this season each year we wonder if there is more room, might the room be made more appealing for a Savior? Do we pretend with plastic cups and saucers to have tea or does our anticipation take on greater reality with each passing year? If we are going to one day give account of every thought, word, and deed are we already confessing our sins and yearning to hear the word of absolution as He says to our moments in life in the here and now … “Your sins have been forgiven, go and sin no more.”

            As we anticipate that these gifts and graces are not for us alone, but for the multitude which no person can begin to count we begin to understand our anticipation is not for ourselves only but includes our neighbors, distant strangers, and families and tribes at the end of the earth. We begin to realize that I can’t truly anticipate or understand Jesus apart from the humanity which and for whom he entered this world. I can appreciate his Deity and His humanity only if I understand that with each person whom I pass or passes by me – this is one for whom Jesus came, who came to reconcile Deity and humanity. If I am one who is privileged and we all are, we find a way to begin to more and more share what we have been given to help meet the needs of the poor. We use our voices to help speak for the marginalized and forgotten. We seek humility of our personhood, justice for our neighbor, and mercy for all. We do this even knowing we are the caterpillars crawling on this dusty narrow path, and one day we will take flight and fly in the beauty of the butterfly. That is something we anticipate in Advent. That is something which Advent gives to us to become a part of us the whole year through.