Advent is Not Christmas – and it’s a Good Thing Too! (4, Year C 2018)
The
Meaning of Advent
Now we move to
the end of Advent, threshold of the arrival of the Christ-child, the God who
comes. With him comes the fulfillment of God’s plans and purposes. Source of
unending joy and delight. Joy itself is the hallmark of God’s presence and
power. Joy attended all Israel’s expectations and anticipations of this
fulfillment.
Yet when the
Christ-child comes history does not end, everything is not brought into
alignment with God’s design, sin is not abolished, nor are heaven and earth
fully and finally harmoniously reunited. Instead, Jesus engages and defeats the
powers of Sin and Evil in a battle climaxing in his resurrection from the dead.
His victory accomplished, God’s Israel on this side of the cross lives out that
victory going forth to spread and implement its fruits in reconciliation and
new life.
Christ will return
to finally and fully put heaven and earth harmoniously back together. In the
meantime (one definition of Advent, remember) we live in hope and anticipation
similar to Israel’s. We look forward to Christ’s return as they did to his
coming. No wonder Karl Barth claims, “What other time or season can or will the
Church ever have but that of Advent?”
The difference
is, as the writer to the Hebrews put it, though “we do not yet see everything
in subjection to (humanity) but we do see Jesus, who for a little while
was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the
suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for
everyone.” “But we do see Jesus.”
Yes, we do see
Jesus. We don’t go through Advent pretending that somehow we are getting ready for
Christ’s birth. No, we are preparing ourselves for his return, his second
coming. And as we await his return we rehearse, practice, and perform his life
in our world as his people. C. S. Lewis aptly described our situation this way:
“Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the
story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise,
and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage” (Mere
Christianity).
That “great campaign
of sabotage” is our vocation during the long Advent of waiting between Christ’s
first and final coming. We wait for the day when everything is completely
subjected to Christ by living now as we will live then. Such is the waiting
that hastens the coming of the day of the Lord. And in the now that living is
in conflict with those defeated powers which still struggle to keep the word as
they have made it even though their efforts are in vain.
Advent Joy
“But we do see
Jesus.” That vision sustains us in our “great campaign of sabotage.” In
Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Christ-child as the beginning of the
End of God’s plans and purposes. But In Advent we celebrate and anticipate his return
as that divine End victorious and in person. Thus, we begin from the End. And that End brings
us joy. Joy which keeps us keeping on even as it motivated Jesus to carry out
his terrible mission to its gory end (Heb.12:2).
In the meantime,
we live as what I like to call God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement.
Our existence is contested as we seek to implement and augment the fruits of
Jesus’ victory throughout the world. The mode of our struggle is Christ’s own “violence
of love” (Oscar Romero), a cruciform way of life that wins by “losing”:
-by
bearing the hurt and suffering of others,
-by
standing in solidarity with the last, the least, or the put upon,
-by
seeking reconciliation even with those who oppress and keep others down, and
-dying, if necessary, our lives a
sacrament of God’s own love for his world.
Our unalloyed joy
in the anticipation of Christ’s return casts its light backwards over the whole
course of our life as God’s people. Over this conflicted struggle we call the “Christian
life” suffers under the sign of the cross as God’s way of victory as seen in
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This light refracted
through the course of the church’s history yields a peculiar kind of joy,
however. J. R. R. Tolkien called it a “sorrowful joy.” The kind of joy he ascribes
to description of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: “. .
. in the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as
he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a
fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.”
And that joy
will burst forth in due time. In the meantime the “lines of care and sorrow”
mark our journey as God’s people through history. God’s cruciform way of “winning
through losing” entails, as Tolkien put it, seeing history as a “long defeat”—
though it contains (and in legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some
samples or glimpses of final victory.” (Letters 255).
This sorrowful
joy is not a lighthearted, happy-clappy kind of thing, though on occasion it
might be. Sorrowful joy is another name for hope. It is that Jewish-cum-Christian
capacity to look reality square in the face and at the same time embrace
extravagant hope. The latter sustains our ability to endure or persevere through
the former without denying, diminishing, or ignoring them. This joy is a
settled contentedness to live sacrificially for others knowing in this way
Jesus is glorified and God’s mission fulfilled. A sad but not unhappy way of life. St. Paul
exemplifies such sorrowful joy:
“We are afflicted in
every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted,
but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the
body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in
our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’
sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So
death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor.4:9-12).
This is the
end/goal of Advent. The way we are called to live Christmas through Ordinary Time.
We have looked deeply into the darkness, seen a glimpse of light, and strained
forward to see its full brightness. And see it we shall. A light that forever
changes us and our world. And in this way Bonhoeffer’s claim that “Advent
creates people, new people” proves true.
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