Advent and Defiance

This coming Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas Day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ into our world.

Advent means “coming” or “arrival.” During these weeks leading up to Christmas, we live in anticipation of Jesus’ arrival. While it is tempting to run ahead to the celebration, to walk in the spirit of Advent means to temper our impatience, to slow down, and to live in the time of waiting.

            

A long time ago, God promised a Savior to the world. The book of Isaiah records that this Savior would come “out of the stump of David’s family” and would be “a banner of salvation to all the world” (Isaiah11:1-2, 10). And so, God’s people waited, and waited, and waited for this light to come to the broken world.

            

We also know from Scripture that David’s family line turned from God, and became greedy, fallen, lovers of money and sin. Their lives were ruined. They were unfaithful. But God keeps His promises. He is faithful even when we are not, and so even out of the unfaithful He brings forth the Savior of the world.

            

For us today, in Advent, we reflect on being in the in-between time. We look back, and we sit in waiting with God’s people who waited anxiously, painfully, and often unfaithfully for the Savior of the world. They ached, sin crushed the world, and they waited. And we ache and wait along with them.

           

Yet we know that Christ has come, and we know that God was faithful to bring a conclusion to the waiting. So we reflect on God’s faithfulness, we marvel at our promise-keeping God who follows through even when we don’t, who comes with redemption even when we wander away. We know that in Christ, God has begun to restore all things.

            

Looking forward, we are waiting for the return of Christ. This is our in-between time, the time in which we remember the waiting, and we remember God’s faithfulness, and we hold onto that faithfulness because it is our confidence while we wait for Him to come back.

            

This season we reflect on the fact that the one and only thing the world needs is coming and has come – Jesus Christ Himself. God, coming to us, a gift to us, coming to reconcile all things to Himself. This season we say yes Lord, be born in my heart again, and again, and again.

          

 So much more could be said. What a magical season, a time when the Christian can be soaked, saturated, filled, and completely swept away by the mystery of God’s grace.

            

Or – it can be missed. Entirely missed. Dear Christians, have you ever stumbled through Christmas while missing Christ? Because I have. And I’m not doing it this year. I’m not doing it.

            

One thing I understand well is defiance. They say that stubbornness, pointed in the right direction, can be a powerful force for good. I am taking a defiant stand for good this Christmas.

            

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and the world is already spinning, already shopping, already spending and planning and eating and whirling. Holiday sales have already made the stores feel like crack dens. Calendars are already filling up. It already feels out of control, like it is already overtaking you in its loud sparkling chaos.

            

Okay, maybe you don’t feel like that at all. If you are someone who floats through holiday chaos with no sense of resistance then I applaud you and you need read no further. But for the rest of us –

           

This is my act of defiance: I’m not doing it. I’m not missing out. I will not let the miracle of Christmas get buried in stress and anxiety. I will not let the presence of Jesus and the mystery of the incarnation get lost in the whirlwind of a world which chases everything while needing nothing other than to look that mystery straight in the face and fall in love.

            

This is my defiance, heels dug in, unmoved, pointed in the right direction. This year I don’t want to just survive, I don’t want to just get through the holidays gritting my teeth and taking shelter in sarcastic humor. Nope, I want more.

I want to know God more. I want to stop and stare at the nativity, and I want to meditate on its wonder. I want to understand the Old Testament passages which are attached to our Jesus but of which I have no understanding of whatsoever.

I want to not pretend away my ignorance of this season and all its majesty. I want to feel the pain of Israel and I want to taste the hope of Jesus’ return. I want to believe that every tear will be wiped away by God Himself.

           

I want to reflect on God-made-man, fully-divine fully human, born of the Virgin Mary. I want to get lost in the thought of infinite God born as tiny sweet baby, having the sweet baby smell, needing His mommy. I want to be swept away entirely in the soft light coming from the Christmas tree while basking in the Word every night.

            

I want to share the wonder as it sparkles in the eyes of my children. I want to really see them this year. I want to tell them about Jesus. I want to help them learn how to be a defiantly different person in Christ against the tidal wave of our culture. I want to linger in the romantic light of the Christmas tree, I want to see the snow sparkle, and I want to see Christ in all of it.

            

I want to go deeper with this God who came here so that we would have the option to do so. I want to stand with other Christians in worship every week and sing about Jesus’ coming. In Sunday school, I want to read and discuss the coming of the Event which changed the world and our hearts forever. With Christians around the world I want to say yes, this season is about Jesus, about God’s faithfulness, about hope and light in a broken world.

           

I want to be present to the people around me, and rather than my usual sarcastic thoughts about holiday tolerance, I want to be able to offer the hope and light of Jesus to those who are already feeling exhausted, depressed, hopeless, full of grief, and broken this year.

I want more of this God, this Jesus whom we can’t possibly wrap our infinite minds around, but who was born in a manger and lives in our hearts. I am hungry, I want to be saturated, because the only other option is to starve in the dry and weary land of consumerism and shallow holiday greetings. I am bent on waiting for the Savior to be born in my heart again, to reveal Himself to me again, and again, and again. Anew, and anew, and anew.

If there is one thing God is teaching me right now, it is that He has to be my first priority. Not just in theory, not just because I say He is, but because I will it to be so, I make it so, it is in reality. When this theory becomes reality, it changes how time is spent, it changes priorities, it changes relationships and thought-life, it changes everything. What better season than this?

Carol Carletto writes: The best metaphor for our world of today is astronauts speeding through the cosmos, but with their life-support capsule pierced by a meteorite fragment. But the Church resembles Mary and Joseph traveling from Egypt to Nazareth on a donkey, holding in their arms the weakness and poverty of the child Jesus: God incarnate.

Yes. God help us all to wait, to slow down, to seek, and to expect miracles this season. Help us see clearly that busy schedules and ribbons and bows do not a fed Christian make. Help us not to be so silly that we starve even though we are surrounded by the richest kind of food in Scripture and tradition this season. Come Lord Jesus, come!