The following is Rector Joe Hensley’s monthly opening message from our weekly e-newsletter the St. Georgian. If you’d like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, sign-up here.
We often think of the four Sundays of Advent as a countdown to Christmas. It was not always so. In the Middle Ages, this season was more about preparing for the apocalyptic second coming of Christ. Nowadays with Christmas decorations going up earlier, it feels like Advent is more of a “nesting” time, like a parent preparing the home for a newborn. Slow down, be quiet, ponder Christ entering the world while gazing at the Advent wreath or Christmas tree.
In our world that is rushing about madly, we do need to slow down and be quiet, but not only to think about Jesus being born a long time ago. Jesus is being born again in us. Christ is incarnated, embodied in the world through us. Are we prepared for that?
A lot of what we do in Advent feels like we are decorating the nursery for baby Jesus. Are we getting ready to celebrate the incarnation of Christ in our community? When God inhabited a human body, God blessed humanity. The embodied God sanctifies our bodies as part of Christ’s body. This state of being Christ is not meek and mild, not predictable or safe but truly awesome, full of wonder and even risk. We have been warned already. The way of Jesus leads to the cross, and along the way there will likely be suffering, rejection, healing, grace, and opportunities to love in the face of fierce resistance. In short, letting Christ be born in and through us is nothing short of an adventure.
The words “Advent” and “adventure” come from the same root. What if we saw Advent as more like preparing for an adventure and planned accordingly? Consult maps and guidebooks. Listen to the stories of people who have encountered such things. Get in shape. Practice the skills needed. Pack provisions with sustenance.
One of my favorite Annie Dillard quotes reads: “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” I wonder if she might also say that it is madness to merely light candles and open calendars at a time when the savior of world is coming to turn everything upside down (just saying though, I fully support women wearing hats in church if they choose to!).
In this new liturgical year (year A), on the fourth Sunday of Advent we will hear the birth of Jesus story told through the Gospel according to Matthew where we meet not mother Mary but step-father Joseph. Joseph has a dream in which an angel tells him not to be afraid, that his virgin fiancée is having a baby who is actually the son of God. Later in the Gospel, Joseph and Mary meet strange astrologers from the East who have followed a star. The holy family flees their home by night to travel to a faraway country to save the baby from slaughter. Talk about adventure.
Part of how we prepare for the adventure of a lifetime is by slowing down, being quiet, contemplating what it will require and whether we have what it takes. Of course, we do not have what it takes. That is why Christ is coming, to lead us to places we would never have gone on our own and to give us grace in our bodies, minds, and spirits to go there. In the quiet of Advent, we might do well to look over the territory ahead and consult those who have traveled this way before. Listen to the Gospels and the prophets, ancient and modern. We might stretch and strengthen those parts of our inner selves that do the heavy lifting of love, compassion, and spiritual endurance. Identify the daily sources of nourishment for the journey, practices and inspirations that fuel the fire.
Christ is coming. How are you preparing for the advent-ure?
+Joe
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