Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
This Sunday, we begin a new liturgical year again, with Advent, the four Sundays that precede Christmas Day. The themes for Advent involve anticipation, waiting, preparing, which are themes abundant in the culture this time every year as people prepare for Christmas parties, gift-giving, and decorating our homes, offices, and churches for the festivities to come!
We should note that these aren’t exactly matches for Advent’s themes—as we anticipate the in-breaking grace of God in the incarnate Jesus, whose presence comes as a threat to kings and a boon to the poor; whose own mother sings, not just of her lowliness, but of God’s greatness to bring the powerful off of their thrones and to level the field for all people. The anticipation of the season is for the arrival of justice and new hope for the world—not toys and Christmas music.
Yet there is a long history of the church being in conversation with the culture. Some of the church’s most famous hymns were drinking songs with new lyrics about the Trinity, grace, or hope in the resurrected Christ. In the same way, our experience of a world transformed, willing to sing “Joy to the World” in public, neighbors wishing their neighbors health and joy and happiness for the year ahead—we can work with this! And we can see the way these anticipations for love and hope and joy can connect with the incarnation, can’t we? That this coming season, with all of its misplaced anxiety and crass consumerism can actually be the perfect place for a birth of new faith, of new justice, of new life.
With love,
Drew