Don't Forget About Advent!

Christmastime is here / Happiness and cheer / A time that all / The children call / Their favorite time of year

Those are the lyrics to a classic Christmas song from a classic (and my personal favorite) Christmas film... A Charlie Brown Christmas. For many years growing up this cartoon marked the beginning of the Christmas season for me. My thought was, "If A Charlie Brown Christmas is on TV then it must be Christmastime!" And why wouldn't it be since the song starts off with the words: “Christmastime is here?!?!” Although my young mind was being influenced (and not necessarily in a bad way) by this holiday favorite, at the same time it was also being formed by a certain time in the church year known as Advent. Each year I noticed a certain transformation that occurred after all of the Thanksgiving leftovers had been eaten... a transformation both in my home and in my church. In both places the advent wreath was hauled out and was placed in a prominent spot. My Lutheran grade school teacher would bring out her advent calendar and each day she would pull this little slip of paper from the banner-like calendar and read a story pertaining to that particular period in the advent season. This season also included extra church services that we attended on Wednesday nights that began with a classic Midwest-Lutheran tradition... a soup supper. It was during this time that I heard familiar advent hymns, like my favorite, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” All of these things reminded me that it was not “Christmas-time” that was here; rather it was “advent-time” that had come upon us!

The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming.” Advent is a time of waiting. It’s kinda like the "I can't wait!" type of waiting that kids express during this time of year, as they eagerly anticipate the coming of Christmas morning and all of those brightly wrapped presents that will be waiting for them beneath the tree. As Christians there is definitely an anticipation in this waiting... an anticipation that culminates in another type of wrapped gift. But this wrapped gift is not wrapped in brightly colored paper with ribbons and bows; rather it is wrapped in pieces of cloth. This gift is also not found underneath a decorated tree; rather it is found in the most unlikely of places... a feeding trough for barnyard animals.

During advent, Christians gather in churches to symbolically reenact the waiting that the people of Israel, in the Old Testament, engaged in as they looked forward to the coming of the Messiah... the Promised One. Isaiah 40:3 records one of the more familiar advent prophecies: “A voice of one calling: In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” Isaiah is also famously known for another advent proclamation found in chapter 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Why is it important for the church to celebrate this time of the year (or any other for that matter)? One reason is that the church year provides a sort of re-ordering of the way in which we look at time itself. Robert Webber in his book, Ancient-Future Faith says that: “The Christian, in his or her view of time, makes a dramatic break with a worldly view of time and begins to consciously meditate on the aspect of Christ’s life currently being celebrated by the church.”

I think most teenagers (and many adults as well), live lives filled with a great deal of fragmentation and division. Time is something that many of them think they don't have enough of, given their busy lives between school, sports, work, band, choir, family, friends, and, if time permits, church. But there is a deeper issue at hand in regards to this fragmentation. Chap Clark in his book called Hurt, a foundational piece of work on the dual life of teenagers, notes that: "Alongside or, more accurately, beneath the superficial and all-too-often cosmetic layer of high school life, there are dark, lonely corners where the neon light of sanitized conformity seldom penetrates. Just below the sheen of coerced normality are the stress and strain of personal survival in a hostile world." The message of advent, the one where Jesus breaks into the world, is an important message to convey to teenagers and adults alike who desperately need an in-breaking of Christ into their daily lives. And the Christmas season with its busy-ness is a perfect time to both speak and receive a message of "peace on earth." May you have a blessed advent-time filled with the peace that only a loving Savior can bring... and merry Christmas as well.