Advent 1
November 30, 2008
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7,16-18
I Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37
I guess by now you have noticed the Christmas lights which adorn the streets of our towns and our shopping malls. Now that I’ve lived in the Berkshires for more than two years now, I can be assured that Christmas lights will adorn such places well into January. There is a good reason for that, I believe, but I don’t believe the reason is altogether associated with Christmas. You see, we are in the darkest season of the year; and the shortest day of the year is still more than three weeks away. Now, if you are like most people, you undoubtedly complained when we turned our clocks back only to have darkness begin to descend on us one hour earlier in the afternoon. And truth be told, we don’t like the darkness infringing on our light. In fact, we don’t like the darkness at all except, perhaps, for helping us get a good night’s sleep.
Well, people in ancient times didn’t like the darkness, either. But they did not have the means to create artificial light, so they just got through those days and weeks and months of darkness until the Winter Solstice arrived; that day when the sun began to rise again and the days began to lengthen. And do you know what they did? They had a huge party to celebrate the event. And these many centuries later, we still celebrate the coming of the light at the deepest, darkest time of the year. We call it Christmas. Except that, we don’t wait for the day of the Winter Solstice; we don’t even wait until Christmas to turn our lights on. It’s not that we hate the darkness any more than ancient people did; it’s just that we have the means by which to light up our world long before the Winter Solstice and the day of Christmas arrive. Long before we celebrate the light of the rising sun and the Light which came into our darkness more than 2000 years ago.
Now, I love lights. I have taken walks through our little town in the evening and I have so enjoyed seeing them. They certainly brighten my night and they make me anticipate Christmas. But I need to be very clear here about what I am anticipating. I am anticipating a secular celebration of Christmas, not a religious one. Such lights inspire me to go shopping and decorate my own house. And my anticipation heightens as I think about exchanging gifts and the good times I will have with family and friends. This secular celebration of Christmas is a good thing, I think. It is a time when we become alive with things to do and places to be in preparation for the big event; the day when Santa Clause will arrive, along with many other people to share our joy in the celebration of Christmas traditions which have come down to us through the ages. But we need to be clear about this. Many of our Christmas traditions did not come to us through the church; they did not come to us as a way of celebrating the birth of Jesus. Rather, they came to us through pagan traditions which developed around the celebration of Winter Solstice, traditions which Christians have borrowed and adapted for our own use and purposes. Simply stated, the celebration of Christmas in our world is primarily a secular event, not a religious one. There have always been attempts to blend the two events, and while that has served to make us both more comfortable celebrating sacred and secular traditions together, it also makes us uneasy. Religious people would like to put Christ at the center of our Christmas celebrations, and people who are non-religious and non-churched would just as soon exclude him from their holiday festivities.
It always interests me to hear Christians complain about our secular celebration of Christmas. “We need to put Christ back in Christmas,” you will hear them say with an air of contempt. But from its inception, the church had no intention of associating the birth of Jesus with a pagan celebration. In fact the early church didn’t celebrate the birth of Jesus at all. The only and ultimate celebration for the church was Easter. Eventually, however, the church felt pressured to establish the birth of Jesus to coincide with pagan festivities of Winter Solstice. Why? Because too many Christians loved this pagan celebration and the church had a difficult time keeping church members from reveling in it.
It was centuries after the birth of Jesus when the church decided to do a very practical thing. They decided they would celebrate Jesus’ birth around the same time as pagan celebrations of Winter Solstice. This would give followers of Jesus their own reason to celebrate the coming of the Light into their world; the coming of Jesus. The celebration took place during a special worship which they called “Christ’s Mass.” Still, the church had its work cut out for them as they tried to keep parishioners focused exclusively on the birth of Jesus. After worship, Christians still ran off secretly to enjoy pagan pleasures of food and dance and plenty to drink. So, what came next was inevitable.
Over the next several centuries Christian nations throughout Europe and Scandinavia began to adapt pagan symbols and traditions of Winter Solstice to celebrations of Jesus’ birth. Worship at Christ’s Mass began to extend into a celebration of Christmas at home and in the community. You might be interested to know, however, that public celebrations of Christmas did not begin to take root in the United States until the late eighteenth century. And we can blame that, to a large degree, on the Pilgrims and Puritans who settled this country—right here in Massachusetts. Worship which honored the birth of Jesus was allowed in our churches, but it was a rather solemn event. And anyone caught trying to make a party out of it was punished severely. There were even laws on the books prohibiting the celebration of Christmas making it a criminal offense.
But this was not going to last in a country where more and more Europeans came to settle. They were Christians of various faith traditions who brought well-established Christmas customs which were clearly adapted from pagan symbols and traditions. And they have only become more lavish over the years. I have heard people say that if the world did not have such a celebration as Christmas, we would have to invent one. But it seems that the world has always had such a celebration, and Christians did not need to re-invent the wheel; they needed only to adapt it to our religious and secular cultures. And despite the fact that our Christmas celebrations seem to become ever more secular, Christians like us can be glad that they are still tied to our religious celebration of Jesus’ birth.
This brings me to the most important reason why I love Christmas, and why I think you love it too. Because as followers of Christ we get to celebrate two Christmases. We get to celebrate a secular Christmas in our magnificent inventions of holiday lights and food and gifts and all such things. But we also get to celebrate the Christ’s birth, the coming of our Light into the darkness of this world. And while Christians enjoy blending these traditions, we cannot mistake each of them for what they are because they are different, and both have a rightful place in our world in this the deepest and darkest season of our year.
Many people will not celebrate both of these events. Most will only celebrate a secular Christmas. And in a world where two generations of people have become what we call “un-churched,” they are not likely to know much about Jesus’ birth or the reasons why God sent him to us on what we are pretty certain was a beautiful spring day in May. In fact, there are lots of people who celebrate Christmas who don’t even know who Jesus is. But this is not their fault, is it. Nor is it the fault of our secular celebrations of Christmas, either. After all, you and I enjoy the secular symbols and traditions of Christmas. But there is one huge difference for Christians who engage in the religious rites and rituals and symbols of their faith traditions. We also engage deeply in celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus. And the only place that can happen for us is in the church.
There will be many people in our nation who will not celebrate the birth of Christ this year, but they will celebrate Christmas. On the other hand, people will fill our churches for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, and that’s a good thing, I say. We might pine over the fact that we will not likely see them again until Easter or until next year on Christmas Eve, but we can give thanks that these are Christians who recognize the importance of Jesus’ birth in this season when we celebrate the coming of the light. Both the light which grows brighter by the sun, and the Light which grows deeper by our faith.
But on this first Sunday of Advent we must not forget an even more important difference between the way Christmas will come to us in the church and the way Christmas comes to our world. Beginning today we will celebrate four Sundays in the season of Advent. Advent is a penitential season in which we acknowledge important things about who God is, who Jesus is and who we are as a people of God. On this first Sunday of Advent, most of all, we acknowledge that we live in a world of darkness. Not just the absence of light, but the presence of sin, and evil and death. And it is especially a dark time for us, because for the next three Sundays we will not hear from Jesus at all. Jesus will be absent from our gospel lessons and we will not hear from him again until he bears God’s good news to us at his birth. But our scripture readings in Advent will serve an important purpose for us. They will teach us to wait and watch and hope. They will help us anticipate what we can already expect will happen.
Practicing Christians know how much we need this season of Advent. We live in a world where people are no longer willing to wait, and hope and anticipate, especially for things they expect will happen. Because they don’t need to. Our need for immediate gratification has taken away our reason to wait, and watch, and hope. And the lights and frenzied activity of this holiday season make it easy to deny our darkness.
But Advent is our time to put away immediate gratification so that we might contemplate the darkness; the darkness of our life and the darkness of our world. Darkness requires us to be quiet and to be still. Darkness encourages us to think our thoughts and not be distracted by the busyness of the world. In the quiet of darkness we can hear our thoughts and feel our feelings. We face our fears and the things which make us anxious. Like dark feelings of loneliness, or emptiness, or sadness; like experiences of abuse or abandonment. The quiet of darkness makes us look at our dysfunctional behaviors and the impact they have on others. We begin to recognize our limitations and inadequacies and our need of others. Until we recognize our need of something far more, far greater than anything the world can give—and that is our need of God. But my experience of the world, especially during these days of preparation for Christmas, is that people want to avoid the dark places of our life. And one of the best ways to do that, of course, is with lights—lots of them—and to make ourselves as busy and stressed as possible, with so many places to go, go, go, so many things do, do, do, and so many gifts to buy, buy, buy.
This is why our season of Advent in the church is so important to our faith and our life in Christ. People who are willing to come to this season of Christmas by way of Advent will have to conjure with the darkness of this season and the darkness of life without Jesus. And even if it is only for an hour of worship on a Sunday morning, we will take the time to rest and wait and anticipate the Light of our Christmas, even as we busy ourselves with our preparation for the holidays. Our Advent liturgies will lead us through the darkness into the light of that day when our Light is born once again, in us and in our world.
And so, I feel blessed to be able to celebrate both Christmases. I will continue to enjoy my evening walks through town, seeing the holiday lights which anticipate the Winter Solstice. But I will also look forward going back home and into my Church where religious practices of Advent prepare me to be still and quiet and to listen; to hope and anticipate the light of Christ, and the many gifts he brings to me, not just at Christmas, but any time I will receive him into by life. Like the gift of Love which takes away my fear; like the gift of Peace which calms my anxiety; like the deep and lasting gift of joy which far exceeds any momentary happiness I receive in this life; and the many other gifts I receive from a God who is always seeking to redeem the dark and difficult places of my life, if I only, like Isaiah and our psalmist, like Paul and Jesus in today’s scripture, I will pay attention to the signs.
So while I will continue to enjoy the lights which light up our world, the lights I place around my house and on my tree will not be turned on until Christmas Eve. Because I cannot celebrate Christmas without Advent. And I know the reason why. But I quote folk singer and song writer Arlo Guthrie who says it best. “You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.” Advent is the dark God sticks our Light in. Blessed Advent.