The Three Layer Dip of Advent
We traditionally think of Advent as the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas that prepares us for the birth of Christ, but that isn’t the whole story. Advent is a nuanced and layered season of preparation and focused reflection that stretches includes images of apocalypse and nativity scenes. How do we prepare for the birth of Christ, the return of Christ on Earth, and the birth of Christ within ourselves?
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Transcript
In the name of the Father
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
So we have a lot of shifts that we’re going through right now stepping into Advent One. And I thought it would help just to situate ourselves a little bit. We really, this day, this Sunday, is the start of a very long stretch of time that in many ways goes all the way to Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, which is around the first of June. So if you think about it, we’re going into this arc of time when we will move all the way through several different seasons, each of which builds on the next one. So it always helps a little bit coming off of that long stretch of ordinary time, just to spend time and ground ourselves and look and see how we got to where we are and where we are right now.
So to start, I’ll tell you this. We just got back from visiting our family in Arkansas, and we drop off our Christmas presents each year when we go because we don’t go back, because I tell them it’s my boss’s birthday and we’re in charge of the meal, so we can’t go back. So we drop off our presents. And I called my grandmother because she made us brickle bread, and we wanted to find out how she made it. So when I called her to find out what “butter extract” was, which is a thing we found out. When I called her, she lowered her voice and said, “don’t tell anyone I did this, but I went ahead and opened up the present that you left for me.” And I told her, “well, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble if they find out.” And she said, “I saw the yarn in there and I wanted to use it.” Which sums up where we find ourselves in so many ways right now. And she and I laughed about this.
We don’t like to wait. None of us like to wait. And in so much of the world around us, it’s already Christmas. In some parts, in some stores it was Christmas on Halloween, but for the wider world right now at least, we’re caught up in this. And at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, they tell you “now it’s Christmas,” but it’s not.
We find ourselves in this fascinating time for these four Sundays this month, where we’re called to do something so radical. We’re called to wait and prepare, and we don’t like doing that. We don’t like doing that. We want to jump ahead and go ahead and get to that day. But what the faith tells us to do is to actually take time and pause and pay attention and to prepare ourselves. So this Sunday, I want to spend just a little bit of time looking around what Advent is, as a season for that, how it is that we shape our lives this way, how we pattern our days and mark time over these next four Sundays.
So to start, where Advent came from, the short answer: no one actually knows that’s the truth. No one can actually put their finger on a point in time and say, “it started here and it started this way.” Jesus did not start Advent. I know that’s a shocker. Jesus did not start it. What happened early in the church’s life was that people became conscious that they needed time to prepare themselves, but it might shock you to learn what they actually prepared themselves for. It was not Christmas. Advent, in its earliest forms, was a preparatory time to prepare for Epiphany, which is January the sixth. January the sixth. Epiphany is an older feast day than Christmas. The earliest church did not celebrate this as we do now. They celebrated that feast day, Epiphany, which means manifestation, which is the coming of the light into the world. And so they needed a period of time to prepare themselves for the coming of the light into the world. And so they marked off a period of time.
Advent has not always been only four weeks. There is a long stretch of time when it was six weeks, and it started on the feast of Saint Martin of Tours. I hope you’re taking notes because there’s a quiz. It started on the feast of Saint Martin of Tours, which is November eleventh now, and it was known in some parts of the world as Saint Martin’s Lent, but they shortened it down to four weeks to what we have now. And they shifted it a little bit to Christmas season, they stretched it into twelve days, which start on the twenty fifth and end on Epiphany, on the fifth, on that night.
So it grew and evolved, but throughout all of it, it’s been this season of time that we take advantage of the opportunity to prepare ourselves, to slow down, to pay attention and to ask ourselves, “what is the work that we need to do within our spiritual hearts, to actually be ready for the coming of Christ in our lives?”
Add another layer, if you notice the readings, if this is, if you’re coming from a certain background like I did, and you come into church on this day, it makes no sense to you whatsoever that we have this gospel reading about the second coming of Christ leading up to Christmas. It sometimes really surprises people and they think, I’ve had people tell me, “it’s so sad they read the wrong text, but they just kept going.” No. We start on the first Sunday of Advent, preparing ourselves for the coming of Christ. But here’s the trick about Advent: Advent actually happens on three different levels at one time, not just one. One level is the birth of Jesus, which is the most common one. But another level that Advent happens is the second coming of Christ at the end of days. And so all of the hymns that we sang point to that on this day. And Jesus pulls his disciples to the side, in this morning’s reading, and gives them a secret teaching over to the side that the others don’t hear. And he tells them this is what it’s going to be like when I come back.
So you have the birth of Jesus. You have Jesus coming at the end of time. And the third strand of Advent, which we pick up on the fourth Sunday, is the birth of Christ within each one of our hearts. Each one of us is called in the deepest, most mystical and wonderful sense, to pattern our life after Mary and to ask ourselves how we are called to give birth to the presence of Christ in each of our lives.
So Advent is not just one thing. Advent is three things. That happens a lot in the Bible, if you’re keeping track. Three things. Three tracks. And to do that, to prepare ourselves during this season, we use different tools. We use different spiritual technologies, if you will. One of them is the colors. The colors shift. So if you grew up in a Roman background, it was always purple. Episcopalians, it will not surprise you, are different. That’s a shocker. The blue comes from Salisbury Cathedral, it’s known as the Sarum Rite, and it came out of that school because it was set apart from Lent to give Advent its own distinctive feel, its own focus. Lent has its own focus, and Advent has its own. And so it’s a way that we can mark time. It’s a more solemn time, but it’s different than Lent. But it goes hand in hand in so many ways.
The other tool that we use is the Advent wreath. So the Advent wreath, this may really shock you, is actually not very old. The German Lutherans developed it in the late nineteenth century. That’s as long as we’ve ever had this. I know it’s shocking, but Jesus did not build the first Advent wreath, and he did not use three purple and one pink candles. That came much, much later. But it came because humans, being the humans that we are, we need things to hold. We need ways to mark the time. And so the clever German Lutherans made a clock out of candles. And that’s what this wreath is. It’s a clock. And each Sunday when we come back, we’ll be able to see, even if just a little, the candles go down. And it’s a way to mark the passage of time and to tell ourselves we’re getting closer, but we have a little farther to go until we go through this whole month.
So we have these layers, layers and layers that have been built over the centuries, all asking ourselves what it means to prepare. Prepare our hearts, our souls for the coming of Christ into the world. And the collect, if you take out your bulletin and look at the collect for this morning, the opening prayer, there’s a line that’s pulled straight from the reading, from the Romans, from the letter to the Romans. And in this call to prepare ourselves, we’re called, as this line says, “to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” And so we can ask ourselves, “what are the works of darkness that we’re called to cast off?” And in the letter to the Romans, it lays out several of them. It’s like a grand hits list of sinfulness, debauchery, and something called licentiousness, which I’m not actually sure what that is, but I hope I’m not guilty of it. But there’s a whole list of things. But when we get to the end of that list, we can add several more of our own. That’s not an exhaustive list.
So we’re challenged to ask ourselves, “what does it mean to prepare for the birth of Christ?”, “for the coming of Christ?” And then we’re given this image to cast away the works of darkness. But then the curious thing to ask ourselves is, is there something underneath that list that is given? If we’re honest and we sit with ourselves and we dig down, is there something underneath that list that we’re called to pay attention to? And for me, it’s fear. Fear. For me, fear is always when I drill down deep, it’s always the thing at the bottom that causes me to grasp on to power. Wanting more control. Wanting some sense of certainty that I feel I don’t have. And I think all of the things on that list, one way or another, can be traced back to fear. And we live in a season of fear. Fear has become a marketable commodity, and many around us use it and leverage it.
And so Advent, as a season, calls us to pay attention to that pinch and that feeling of fear in our lives. That’s why when every time there is an angel who comes to visit someone in a story, what’s the first thing that they say? “Do not be afraid.” Because the angel is saying this: “God does not trade in fear.” So from the outset, the message that I bring you is not one that is rooted in fear, but it’s one that is rooted in hope. And that’s why every time an angel speaks, that’s what they start with. Master Yoda said the same thing in his own way. “Fear leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.” So if you don’t believe the angels, believe Master Yoda. Because at the end of the day, we’re all called to pay attention to that pinch of fear in our lives as we prepare ourselves for Christ to come into our life, for the light to come once more, and for us to give birth, to bear that light in the world.
I’ll close with a poem that came out of a meditation last week. Just sitting with this pinch, sitting with this feeling and wondering if I dare to trace it back. How far am I willing to go in my own practice? So that’s the name of it. The Practice.
If I do not meet you with compassion,
our souls kissing,
we will not know we are one.
If I do not walk with grace,
I cannot meet you with compassion.
If I do not breathe,
I cannot walk with grace.
If I do not pause,
I cannot breathe.
If I do not trust
that the Spirit holds us all,
I cannot pause.
If I do not name my fear
and let my heart embrace it,
digesting the energy within myself,
tasting wholeness and peace,
I cannot trust.
Perhaps now I can see
the root of my practice.
Perhaps now I can see
what I am meant to do–
what it means to live.
Amen.