With Thanksgiving not even 24 hours in the past, and with the Black Friday tradition increasingly being resisted by would-be shoppers and merchants (God speed the return of the day when what we look forward to on Thanksgiving night is turkey sandwiches and leftovers and not how we have to get out for early Christmas shopping), it is time for us who pay attention to the sacred rhythms of the Christian calendar to set our sights on Nazareth and Bethlehem.
But before rushing headlong into the stable behind the infamous Inn, the 4-week season of Advent affords us an opportunity to more mindfully approach that great mystery of the Incarnation of God in Jesus the Christ. "Advent" is the English word for the Latin adventus which means "coming". And adventus is, in turn, a translation of the Greek word parousia, which most Christians understand to refer to the second coming of Christ. What I find helpful about this understanding is that it pushes us not to indulge in an over-sentimentalized observance of the events in Bethlehem some two-plus millennia ago now, getting stuck in the past, but to look for the Incarnation with anticipation and expectation today.
So, the events surrounding Jesus' birth that Luke and Matthew depict so picturesquely in their Gospels, far from being one-dimensional narratives and subject to contemporary skeptics' views as to their historicity - as if that alone determined their meaning - function at the level of metaphor, as well. That is, they point beyond themselves, giving us a "launch pad", if you will, from which to blast from the past into our time and place looking for the manifestation of God among us in terms as tangible as "a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger". Do you and I anticipate the appearance of the Christ so concretely in our world? Adventus or parousia calls us to!
If we would describe our sluggishness to perceive the Incarnation in our midst in Biblical terms, we might say with Isaiah that we are "a people sitting in darkness" who have the potential of seeing "a great light". One of the roles of Advent is to serve as the bearer of that light - light that can have many manifestations.
Picturing a slow progression of such light from the global to the local, from the general to the specific, I think of the Lights of Advent (our Advent worship theme in the traditional services over the course of the next month) in terms of Search Lights, Fog Lights, Street Lights, Stable Lights, and Candlelight. We'll be exploring certain aspects of each of these ideas as the Sundays of Advent unfold and lead us toward the manger of Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.
This Sunday, Dec. 1st, we'll be focusing on how Advent functions as a search light, beckoning all who see its light in the distance, combing the far reaches of our perception, to draw near. To come in out of the darkness. To see how it is that the light of the Incarnation of God in Christ can save us from peril. This focus will not be as you might initially think; it is based in a story of a nighttime trip in a light airplane that turns into what could be the last such trip the pilot and his traveling companion would take.
See you Sunday - or listen to the sermon on our website later in the day on Monday, Dec. 2nd.
The blessings of Advent be yours this season,
Steve
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