Luke 21:25-36
Today is the beginning of the new year. It’s the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the year in our worship life together.
This season of Advent is a time of anticipation and preparation. Advent, of course, is one two seasons of preparation in the church calendar. Two seasons that look forward to great, festive holy days. Advent looks forward to Christmas; Lent looks forward to Easter. But, in many ways, the two seasons are very different. I think of Lent as a call to obligation, to disciplined practice. That obligation is holy and enriching, but it is an obligation. Advent is a gift. A gift of time. A time filled with promise. God’s promise of a coming Savior.
There’s a TV commercial running right now that you may have seen. There are at least two versions of it. It’s for the Wall Street Journal. The commercials show young, busy, important, successful, creative people… juggling all of the demands of their lives… saying, “I don’t have time to read the Wall Street Journal.” Then at the end of the commercial, they are shown reading the Wall Street Journal. And the tag line is: People who don’t have time, make time to read the Wall Street Journal.
I’m sure the Wall Street Journal can be informative, but Advent is way more important than the WSJ. Advent offers you immeasurably more than the Wall Street Journal! No matter how busy you are, make time to keep Advent. Make time. Literally. Open up time in your life for Advent.
Lent is about discipline. About doing faithful practices.
Advent is about time. Make time. Advent time.
What makes time Advent time? How do we fill Advent time? One suggestion is: Don’t fill it. Leave it open. Open time for hope and expectation to grow.
Or some other suggestions for making time for Advent in your lives.
Use an Advent wreath at home. At least once a week sit at the dinner table and light the appropriate number of candles for that week. Or light it daily. At a minimum when you light the candles, say the Advent collect. It’s the one we said this morning. It’s on today’s Scripture inserts. We have materials for making Advent wreaths and fuller directions for using them downstairs in the undercroft.
Or use some sort of reflection for Advent. Use the Living Compass Living Well through Advent booklets. Or I’ve prepared a short list of Advent resources available online.
Sit and listen to music. Music that stirs your soul. Really listen. Not just in the background.
Sit in darkness with points of light. As a girl I used to sit alone in the quiet and the dark with the lights of the Christmas tree shining. That sparkling of beauty breaking into the dark. A candle or two or three or four lit in the dark also works well. Light coming into darkness is a particularly appropriate symbol for Advent.
Go for a walk. Go for a walk at night. Even here in the suburbs the winter sky is beautiful.
At the beginning of Giancarlo Menotti’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, the young shepherd boy Amahl is outside. He and his widowed mother are excruciatingly poor. She tries to call him in to go to bed; he is reluctant. When she asks him what was keeping him outside, he replies:
Oh, Mother….
There’s never been such a sky.
Damp clouds have shined it
and soft winds have swept it
as if to make it ready for a king’s ball.
All its lanterns are lit;
all its torches are burning
and its dark floor is shining like crystal.
The riches of the night sky seen through the eyes of a boy who has nothing.
Make time for Advent.
Open a space in what Luke calls the worries of this life. By God’s grace, hope will be born in that space.
Notice the yearning within your soul of what Frederick Buechner calls the hungering dark. By God’s grace, that is where the light of Christ will grow.
Just stop all the craziness. All the craziness of this season. Just stop. You can. Stop long enough to let God plant a seed of peace in your heart. A seed that, by God’s grace, will grow into the peace that surpasses all human understanding.
Be quiet long enough to hear the voices sing: O, Come. O Come, O come Emmanuel. The voice of your own heart; the voices of those you love yearning for God With Us; the voices of the world in desperate need of a Savior; the joyful angelic voices filled with hope and promise. Be quiet long enough to hear the Advent hymn: O come, O come Emmanuel.
Advent isn’t in the Bible. God didn’t invent Advent (at least not directly). The church invented Advent. Advent, as a time filled with all that is good about this season. The church offers you Advent to illustrate, to teach, to make real in your lives all that is good about this time.
Here’s another way to think about Advent. Advent is the church’s intervention in our selfish, cluttered, materialistic lives. Will you accept the gift of Advent?
If you know the language or architecture of the recovery movement, you know that interventions are acts of desperate love. And hope. Hope for life and health renewed.
Advent is the church’s intervention in the selfish, overstuffed, materialistic lives that are killing us. Will you accept the gift of Advent?
Will you make time for Advent?
