(c) 2009 Timothy Paul Jones
Once upon a time, there was a season in the church year known as “Advent.” The word comes to us from a Latin term that means “toward the coming.” The purpose of this season was to look toward the coming of Christ to earth; it was a season that focused on waiting. As early as the fourth century A.D., Christians fasted during this season, although the ancient fasting concluded not on Christmas Day but on January 6, with a celebration of the arrival of the wise men or the baptism of Jesus. By the late Middle Ages, Advent preceded Christmas by forty days in the Eastern Orthodox Church and by four weeks in western congregations. For many of us, the most familiar sign of Advent is the lighting of candles—two purple, followed by one pink and another purple—during the four weeks leading up to Christmas.
Advent seems to have fallen on hard times, though. In the Protestant and free-church traditions, the loss is understandable, though no less lamentable; we Protestants are, after all, quite fearful of anything with potentially papal or patriarchal origins. Many Protestants divested themselves of the church year in the aftermath of the sixteenth-century Reformation and still quake at any attempt to derive anything of value from such traditions. When I instituted Advent celebrations as a pastor in a Baptist congregation, I was asked more times than I care to recall, “Don’t Catholics do that?”—as if that automatically prohibited us from even considering such a practice. Yet, even in congregations that echo more ancient liturgies, the meaning of Advent seems in danger of being misplaced, eclipsed by the crèche in the lobby, the tannenbaum in the hall, and the list of Christmas parties in the church newsletter.
Why this loss of Advent as a distinct season of the Christian year? Perhaps it is because, for believers and non-believers alike, calendars are not dominated by the venerable rhythms of redemption but by the swift currents of consumerism and efficiency. The microwave has saved us from waiting for soup to simmer on the stove, credit cards have redeemed us from waiting on cash in hand to make our purchases, and this backward extension of the Christmas season liberates us from having to deal with Advent, that awkward season of waiting. And so, even before the last Halloween costume has been returned to the warehouse, halls and malls begin to be decked with plastic holly and crimson ribbons. Thanksgiving provides us with a pre-Christmas test run on basting turkeys and tolerating relatives—but, most of all, Thanksgiving supplies a convenient time to gather for the consumer feeding frenzy known as Black Friday. Christmas is about celebration, and celebrations can be construed to move products off the shelves. Advent is about waiting, and waiting contributes little to the gross domestic product.
In a religious milieu that has fixated itself on using Jesus to provide seekers with their most profitable lives here and now, Advent seems like a particularly awkward intrusion. Advent links our hearts with those of ancient prophets who pined for a long-promised Messiah but passed on before his arrival. In the process, Advent reminds us that we too are waiting. Even on this side of Christ’s first coming, there is brokenness in our world that no cart full of Black Friday bargains can fix; there is hunger in our souls that no plateful of pumpkin custard can fill; there is twistedness in our hearts that no terrestrial hand can touch. “The whole creation,” St. Paul declared, “has been groaning together for redemption.” In Advent, Christians embrace this groaning and recognize it not as hopeless whimpering over the paucity of the present moment but as expectant yearning for a divine banquet that is already being prepared. In Advent, believers proclaim that the infant who drew his first ragged breath between a virgin’s knees has yet to speak his final word. In Advent, the church admits, as poet R.S. Thomas has put it, that “the meaning is in the waiting.”
When I recall that there is meaning even in times of waiting, the question that occupies my mind as I stand in line at the supermarket is not whether I’ve chosen the quickest line but how I might invest this waiting in something weightier than my own agenda. When I sit in traffic, I am not merely anticipating a shift of color from red to green; I am awaiting the coming of Christ, and there is meaning in this waiting. When I walk hand-in-hand with a dawdling two-year-old who stands in awe of common robins and random twigs, there is every reason to join this toddler in worship, for there is holiness in his waiting too.
I am not contending that lighting a few pink and purple candles will somehow trigger a renaissance of patience in our culture. Nor am I suggesting that everyone should dismantle their yuletide trees and mute every carol until Christmas morning. But I need this yearly reminder of the meaningfulness of waiting. Left to myself, I turn too quickly from the God of the Gospel and bow to the gods of efficiency—false gods that proclaim waiting a waste, a “killing of time.” Advent reminds me that time is far too precious to be killed, even when that time is spent waiting. Advent is a proclamation of the Gospel through the discipline of patience. Just as the ancient Israelites waited for the coming of the Messiah in flesh, we await the consummation of the good news of God through his return in glory. Malcolm Muggeridge once suggested that “all happenings, great and small, are parables by which God speaks. The art of life is to get the message.” Advent trains us to get the message that God speaks even in the waiting.
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