Advent Is...

Two weeks in, I want to talk about Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas.  But first, a few words of explanation:

In the more liturgical traditions, like mine, we use the calendar to help us worship.  The four Sundays before Christmas begin our Liturgical Year--that is Advent, the season of Coming.  Then there's Christmas.  Then the one or two Sundays before Epiphany, January 6 (We used to call them Christmastide).  Then however many Sundays between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, which is 40 days (not counting Sundays) before Easter.  This is the season of Lent, the preparation to celebrate the Resurrection--the real birth of the Church.  Seven Sundays (Eastertide, in the old parlance) later, Pentecost Sunday, followed by Trinity Sunday, and you have weeks and weeks and weeks before Advent again.  November 1 is All Saints Day--when we Protestants celebrate the people who brought us to Jesus, who have gone to be with Him.  The last Sunday before the next Advent is Christ the King Sunday.

We use a Lectionary.  When I first heard of the Lectionary I was outraged.  "They make the pastor use these readings?"  Well, they don't MAKE pastors use the readings, not in United Methodism.  But it turns out that pastors who pick their own texts will go through a whole career and preach maybe 80 verses out of the whole Bible.

Our Lectionary follows a three-year cycle.  If you attend a church that has all four lections read every Sunday, over the course of three years, you will hear something read from every book in the Bible.  When I was pastoring, it blessed me to realize Christians all over the world, of all traditions, in hundreds of languages, were sharing the very Scripture readings my people were hearing. 

And, as one of my favorite seminary professors loved to remind us, "When the Scripture reading ends, the Word of God ends, and the interpretation begins."

The readings for the First Sunday of Advent this year are Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Isaiah 64:1-9; I Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37.  You might take a few minutes and read them before you go on.  I'm going to recount something of the sermon I preached that day, Sunday, November 27, 2011.

What I told that congregation that day was that, as your friend, I wish you a Merry Christmas the way most Americans mean "Merry Christmas".  A "Chestnuts working on an open fire" kind of Christmas.  All warm fuzzies and nostalgia, and presents and holly and all the lovely things that go with this largely secular holiday.  And you need to realize, "secular" doesn't have to mean "evil".  It's a good thing.  But it's almost entirely non-Christian these days.  Not anti-Christian.  Non-Christian.

As  your friend, I want you to have as lovely and sweet a Christian as possible.  But as a pastor, I could care less. 

Advent, in Jesus' Church, is NOT a time for psyching yourself up for warm fuzzies on December 25.  It's not even entirely about remembering preparations for the Coming in that stable in  Bethlehem.

It's also a recognition that he is coming again.  In fact, one of the most fundamental cornerstone doctrines of our faith is that we be aware, constantly, that he is coming again. 

Let me repeat the very best rendering of it I have ever heard.  Are you ready?  Seriously, you need to brace yourself. 

Here goes:

Jesus is coming.

He is on his way.

He could be here any minute.

THAT also is the message of Advent.  And THAT is one of the seven bedrock doctrines of Christianity.  Though you almost never hear it in church anymore.  It's not a doctrine that goes down all that well in times of prosperity.  And these are not hard times.  They are less prosperous than some.  It's not hard times until the problem is starvation, not obesity.  We could be headed that way.  But we're still pretty far from that.

"Jesus is coming.  He is on his way.  He could be here any minute."

How does that make you feel?  Afraid?  Stressed? 

Like December 25 is a couple of weeks away and you still don't have your cards mailed, or your decorations up, or your presents bought, or....

I love the old joke about the little boy, one December, was heard to pray, "Forgive us our Christmases, as we forgive those who Christmas against us."

Funny thing.  That's not what the Scriptures say!  They speak of an oppressed and hurting people who are looking forward to being saved!  It's as if they had the bizarre idea that Jesus wasn't coming red-eyed with rage looking forward to seeing how many people he could throw in hell!  It's as if they thought Jesus loved us, and wanted to help us, and take us away from our pain and our fear and into his eternal joy!

Go figure!

He's coming for you.  He's on his way.  He could be here for you any minute.

If I were you, I wouldn't lose your religion over what is actually pretty trivial.

Have a Merry Christmas.  But don't miss Advent while you're doing it!