Advent

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him;

Yet the world did not know him.

-John 1: 10

It didn't take me many years as a Teaching Elder to become rather discouraged with the "holiday season." My angst did not arise from people wishing me "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," or even from the insipid "Christmas" music that now starts invading our world even before Thanksgiving. I admit that the raw consumerism that confronts us over the next month is galling, but even that is not really at the core of what I sometimes refer to as the winter of my discontent.

What got me is that, even as we go through this season of Advent every year, we don't seem to really get its function.  And that function is one that is sorely needed: preparation. Charles Partee, who was my Church History professor in Seminary, taught us the subject not by insisting that we memorize dates (he said we probably should know that the Council of Nicea convened in 325 CE, and that the Reformation began in the 16th Century).  What was more important was the evolution of ideas about God, what are the breakthrough moments in our awareness, and who are the major figures who brought us through those moments: The Apostle Paul, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc. What were the changes? And how did the ones who changed things see their place in it?

I am very grateful to Dr. Partee for this approach, it was and is a formative part of my way of interpreting our Christian faith.  But thanks to studying all those times when our faith and understanding of the divine took leaps forward, I found myself disheartened by the way we seemingly repeat the same mistakes over, and over, and over, and over again.  The rhythms of the liturgical year, in fact, seem to entrench us in the practice of repeating patterns over and over again.  The impatient zealot inside of me wants to get off that ride, I want some sort of Pentecost moment where fire tears through the joint, I want some tables overturned and the hypocrites driven away.

Instead, we go through this routine again, we expect Jesus, we celebrate Hope, Peace, Joy and Love, we journey to Bethlehem, we wait for the growing of the light, we participate in this season of preparing for the coming of the Christ.  Yet this part of it is just a sideshow for most, even for many people in the church.  What John said in the prologue of his Gospel turns out to be more than just a description of a certain point in history, but rather it is a statement of meta-historical reality: "the world did not know him."

Honestly, we are never ready for Jesus.  The best we can do is be ready for Christmas as we know it.  At one point I came up with what I thought was a clever, if verbose, description of what Christmas is these days, absent of the actual religious/Jesus elements of it: a pseudo-pagan, mega-consumerist winter solstice festival.  I was trying to be snarky, but ended up just getting depressed at the dawning realization that far too many people I know would be totally fine if that's what it actually was.  I went back and read Ecclesiastes for the 500th time and took some solace in the truth that it's all vanity and chasing after the wind, and that everything that has been will be again, but honestly that doesn't get me out of the funk, it just wallows me in deeper.

Two things helped me, and they are what I would like to give to you if you tend to get the "holiday blues." The first was my children, having little ones (and even teenagers) brings a certain appreciation of some of the nonsense, you find value even in the things that seem like a hassle, because you know somehow that this is what life is about.  Growing kids show you that, even though things to tend to repeat themselves, we do indeed change through the years. The second, and I know this seems a bit obvious, was looking at how Jesus managed these things himself.  One of the first stories after the prologue of John's Gospel is the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus is nagged by his mother into turning water into wine.  There are the hundreds of social engagements and festivals that Jesus himself had to sit through and be a part of, despite the fact that they clearly aren't life and breath to him, he doesn't despise them or criticize their observance.  He values the traditions of his religion, even as he adds to them and transforms their meaning (Passover-Eucharist).

Jesus can clearly be frustrated by the consumerism that encroached even on the very temple, but for the most part he just tries to challenge it with a better example.  He doesn't overturn tables every time he goes to the temple, he just picks his spot.  I try to pick my spot at least once in every Advent season, a place to vent a little about the way we seem to be missing the point, but over the years I find that recognizing all that stuff that pulls us away from God leads to a real repentance and a solid welcome home from the One who started all this in the first place.