Waiting in the tension
First Sunday of Advent - This Week Along the Way
Sunday, December 1st
It is Advent, friends… The beginning of a new church year and my favorite liturgical season!
The church works in a different time frame than the wider world. It runs on sacred time as it follows the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus through the natural cycles of the year.
In Advent, time collapses. As Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan put it, in Advent, we behold the arrival of God in majesty, history, and mystery all at once. God arrives in majesty at the very beginning and end of time. God arrives in history incarnate in Jesus. And God arrives in mystery right here and now - today - in our own busted and beautiful lives. We rehearse the mystery of the inbreaking of God in the sacrament of Holy Communion in church.
To get the most out of Advent, it helps us to get a clear sense of the world that God moved into. A world of chaos and disorder. A busted world that’s hell-bent on hurting itself.
Advent is a season of waiting in the dark. And waiting is countercultural. We’re not very good at waiting in our doingness-based culture. Waiting can get us crucified.
But in Advent, this is what we do. We don’t just wait until we store up enough energy to do more. In Advent, we await a Savior. Like prisoners locked in a cell, it behooves us to see that the door can only be unlocked and opened by an external force. Yes, we can ready ourselves for when that door is opened. We can prepare our hearts to recognize our current captivity so that when the door is opened, we exit instead of staying put.
God could’ve made this world and stayed out of it. God could’ve kept to Godself in the closed enoughness of the Trinity. God didn’t have to become porous. But God so loved the world that God could never stay away. Not then, not now, not ever.
Before Jesus, God was this swirling thing that created all things and held creation together, but remained unrecognizable… But in Jesus, God risked love and moved in next door. God went from being everywhere in general (and thus, nowhere in particular) to taking up space in a particular time, place, and face. To being born as one who eventually shared hospitality with sinners, comforted the lonely, and humbled the prideful. God became so vulnerable as to allow Godself to be born through the fragile vessel of Mary and cared for and nurtured by her terrified beloved, Joseph.
There’s a lot more to say about Advent. And I will in the weeks ahead. But for now, we practice waiting in the dark. Waiting for Christ to encounter us in the most unexpected places. I hope this finds you waiting well this first Sunday in Advent.
Friday, November 29th
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Ours was lovely. We hosted. We hosted last year, too, but I was ill the whole time the family was here. I didn’t get to visit because I was quarantined in my bedroom. This year, it was nice to be among the living with a seat at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
Though we had people around the table who voted differently in the recent presidential election, peace was maintained throughout the day.
We seem to be used to this - living in the tension together.
I don’t like tension. I’m averse to it and tend to flee it as soon as I feel it. But my latest spiritual practice is to stay put. To see what God can do while I stay in the tension. And I’ve come to see that it’s amazing what God does in the tension. Just when you think things will break, things shift and morph into something unexpected.
But in Advent, we wait.
In the dark.
And in the tension.
Together.
