I have two challenges when it comes to the Christmas season.
First, having grown up in the church, I’ve heard the Christmas story many, many times. We celebrate the Christmas season for all December – roughly 4 weeks a year – and I’m 47, so that’s somewhere over 180 Christmas-themed sermons. Toss in Sunday school, Bible study, devotionals, and you have hundreds of Christmas messages over just 2 or 3 chapters of Matthew and Luke. It can start to feel too familiar, and I can start to tune it out and rush to the end.
Second, I just get too busy and don’t pay enough attention to Christmas. Part of this is that it’s a genuinely busy time of year – Thanksgiving (the Canadians really have the right idea, celebrating Thanksgiving in October to spread things out a bit) and decorating and holiday parties at school and work and shopping for gifts and travel.
Part of it, though, is just choices that I make. On the face of it, there’s no reason why I should be busy. I have an 8-to-5 desk job, instead of a sunup-to-sundown farm. I have a microwave oven and a washing machine and power tools – all these time-saving implements. In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that, by now, we’d be working 15 hours a week, thanks to continued improvements in productivity. He was right about the continued improvements in productivity, but, instead of pocketing those gains, we’ve decided as a society to continuously spend them in ratcheting up our standard of living. And entertainment, news, and social media have figured out that attention is money and have gotten very good at taking any time they’re given. And I let myself go along with that, giving my time and energy to productivity and entertainment and the rest, and sometimes find it hard to slow down and appreciate the season.
Tradition
The tradition of Advent can act as a remedy to both the problem of familiarity and the problem of busyness. Traditions force us to slow down, to consciously engage in a practice, rather than staying busy. (I’m honestly not a fan of Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving – slowing down and waiting for the traditional time feels like a way of honoring this.) And Advent in particular is an antidote to busyness, for reasons we’ll get into below.
And traditions gain meaning from familiarity. Each Christmas as a kid, we’d drive from North Carolina to Johnson Bible College – now Johnson University – here in Tennessee, to visit my grandparents. This was pre-cell phones, so my grandparents just knew the approximate time we’d arrive. They’d be sitting in the kitchen overlooking the driveway, waiting for us, and as soon as they saw our car, they’d run out and greet us on the sidewalk. I never thought, “Oh, here we are again.” Instead, the repetition meant I could look forward to it, and it was a repeated demonstration of my grandparents’ love for and enjoyment of us.
Christians have a rich body of traditions around Advent, going back almost 2000 years. I feel like we don’t do a lot with that. Some of that’s American culture; we’re individualistic, we look toward the future, we came over to the New World and started a new country to throw off the traditions of the past. Some of it is our churches. My whole life, I’ve attended the independent Christian Churches / Churches of Christ (sometimes called the Restoration Movement churches), which saw that tradition often became a source of division and distraction as Christians argued over which tradition was correct and at times mistakenly elevated tradition alongside Scripture. But tradition at its best is a rich source of meaning; we take the Holy Spirit’s working through faithful believers of the past and join with them, recognizing our unity with them. And, just like the tradition of our Knoxville drives, the repetition gives it meaning.
So, this season, I’m trying to deliberately lean into these traditions.
Interestingly, the first Christians weren’t too interested in Jesus’ birth. They correctly saw Easter as the more significant event. They started trying to pin down the date of Jesus’ birth around 200 AD, maybe as part of emphasizing that Jesus really was human. December 25 was a feast day by the 4th century, and over the period from the 400s to 1000 or so, they developed the idea of treating the four Sundays leading up to Christmas as Advent.
Jesus’ Coming
The word “Advent” means “coming.” It comes from Latin. We celebrate Christ’s coming at Christmas, and so we prepare for his coming at Advent.
Ancient Israel was waiting for the Messiah. Jerusalem fell in 586 BC, and they were carried off into exile in Babylon. They got to go home in 539 BC but remained under foreign rule – first the Persians, then the Greeks under Alexander the Great, then fought over by the Ptolemies and the Seleucids after Alexander’s death. (The Seleucids took over in 198 BC.) In 167 BC the Maccabeans rebelled against the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes – this is the event that Jews celebrate as Hanukkah – and for a while regained Jewish independence.
But that ended in 63 BC; the Maccabean, or Hasmonean, rulers fell into civil war, and asked Pompey, the Roman general, to intervene. He intervened by taking over Jerusalem, stripping them of their royal titles, and putting Judah under Roman rule.
The point of this isn’t to study a history lesson and to memorize dates. The point is to understand what it means that the Jewish people were longing for a Messiah. The year 63 BC means that within living memory of Jesus’ birth, Jewish dreams of independence were crushed by civil war and siege, and a Roman general entered the Holy of Holies and desecrated the temple. In 6 AD, when Jesus was maybe 10 years old, Quirinius – the same guy we read about in Luke as governor during Jesus’ birth – ordered a tax that so angered the Jews that Judas the Galilean (not Judas Iscariot) revolted. He co-founded the Zealot movement, and his fellow rebels burned tax collectors’ homes, before the Romans crushed the revolt and (according to at least one source) crucified Judas. (This Judas is mentioned in Acts 5:37.)
So imagine what it’s like to be a 1st century Jew. Within the past generation or two your kingdom has been conquered; within living memory you’ve seen a revolt crushed by some of the cruelest means possible. You’ve grown up knowing in your bones that you’re part of God’s chosen people, hearing that your God is the God of the universe. You know the stories of the Exodus – how God delivered his people from slavery and oppression in Egypt. You know the stories of the Exile – how, because of your people’s sins, God’s glory left the temple (as seen in a dramatic vision in the prophet Ezekiel) and you left the promised land for Babylon, in a sort of national death. (It’s not for nothing that Ezekiel receives a vision of a valley of dry bones representing the exiles.) Now you’re back, but the exile in a sense continues – the temple has been rebuilt, but the glory of God that so spectacularly descended on the temple in Solomon’s day has not returned, and the nation is still under foreign rule, and so the people’s sin must still be ongoing. You’re waiting for God to deliver you as he did at Passover; you’re waiting for the people’s sins to be forgiven; you’re waiting for the exile to be truly over.
N.T. Wright sums up their mindset,
The Jewish people have always believed that the God they worshipped was the one true God of all the earth; so what happened close up, in their own history, was seen to be of universal importance… In Jesus’ day, Israel was in deep trouble. The people were living under the rule of the pagan Romans, with heavily compromised local politicians, and sliding deeper and deeper into debt. Not surprisingly, a number of groups arose, usually led by a would-be prophet or king. They weren’t just after a change in the political leadership; they had a much bigger vision. They were hoping and praying that at last Israel’s God himself would come and set the people free, bringing in the time of peace and justice. Usually such prophets and messiahs didn’t live very long… The world is full of injustice: if there is a God, he must care about that; if he cares, he must do something about it; and since this was the lowest point of history as far as Israel was concerned, he must do something right here and right now.
But remember that Christmas - Advent - is a time of celebration. Waiting for the Messiah was not easy. But God’s people had reminders – traditions – of God’s faithfulness. Each year, they celebrated the feast of Passover, when God delivered them from Egypt, and the feast of tabernacles, when he provided for them in the wilderness. They heard the Law and the prophets read in the synagogues, hearing how God guided his people for centuries and remained faithful to them despite their failings. They were waiting, preparing for the Messiah to come, and so, when he arrived, those who saw him were filled with joy.
Jesus’ Second Coming
Not only do we remember and prepare for his coming at Christmas, we prepare for his second coming.
The Greek word for “Advent” or “coming” is “parousia”; if you’re a Bible/theology nerd, you may have seen that discussed. Almost everywhere the Bible uses that word, it’s referring to Jesus’ second coming.
Like God’s people in Jesus’ day, we can look around us and see darkness. Distorted ideas about God and humanity, political corruption and turmoil, violence and terror in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza and Sudan.
Then John’s disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don’t fast?” Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn while the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast.
– Matthew 9:14-15
Fasting was a sign of sorrow. I understand this to mean that Jesus was taken from us at the Ascension, and it’s okay to be sad that Jesus isn’t here.
Philip Yancey, in The Jesus I Never Knew, talks about the Ascension and how it challenges his faith: “What was it like for Jesus, who saw with piercing vision the terrible consequences of what he had set loose in the world, not only for himself but for the huddled few around him, his best friends in all the world? ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child… All men will hate you because of me…”” Yancey compares this to “a parent consigning her children to the gangs, a general ordering his troops into the line of fire” (p. 227).
Jesus and the New Testament promise that he is returning to make everything right:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist, and the sea existed no more. And I saw the holy city—the new Jerusalem—descending out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence of God is among human beings. He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.” And the one seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new!”
– Revelation 21:1-4
As J.R.R. Tolkien put it, everything sad will come untrue.
And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say: “Come!” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge… The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
– Revelation 22:17,20
Our Christmas songs talk about this, even though we may not be conscious of it:
No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found, Far as the curse is found, Far as, far as, the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove The glories of His righteousness, And wonders of His love, And wonders of His love, And wonders, wonders, of His love.
O come, Desire of nations, bind All peoples in one heart and mind; Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease; Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.
No more thorns, Jesus ruling over the nations, the world full of peace - these things haven’t happened yet. We’re waiting for and preparing for his return.
We’re waiting in expectation, but waiting with joy - we know that what is coming is better than we can imagine.
The Middle Coming
There’s a third idea in Advent: Not only do we celebrate Christ’s first coming in the flesh (the Incarnation) and look forward to his Second Coming in glory and majesty, we also celebrate his coming in grace and power into our lives (This idea comes from Bernard of Clairvaux, 12th-century abbot and mystic.)
Yancey, in The Jesus I Never Knew, continues about the Ascension: “At the Last Supper… as Jesus disclosed plans for his departure in terms no one could mistake, he said, ‘But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away.’ All along he had planned to depart in order to carry on his work in other bodies. Their bodies. Our bodies. The new body of Christ… The law and the prophets had focused like a beam of light on the One who was to come, and now that light, as if hitting a prism, would fracture and shoot out in a human spectrum of waves and colors” (p. 227-228).
We know that he “is with us, even to the end of the age.” We celebrate his presence and his faithfulness with our own traditions - gathering together to sing about his goodness and to fellowship with our brothers and sisters, celebrating his sacrifice for us and his presence with us at the Lord’s Supper every week.
We aren’t just celebrating his birth and looking forward to his return; we’re also preparing ourselves, seeking after him, readying ourselves so that he can act today, in our everyday lives.
Sometimes this takes the form of something big and obvious. An illness. A lawsuit. A layoff. You’re waiting on God to act. There’s nothing you can do to speed things along. You can trust that God is good and that he’ll take care of you, but you may not know what that looks like. You just have to wait for God and wait for the outcome.
But, besides waiting for God to act in the big, scary areas of our lives, we also wait for and prepare for Christ to act in the day to day:
- Through his Word
- Through baptism, as we’re buried with Christ and raised with him
- Through the Lord’s Supper. We’ve been talking about tradition. Here, every week, is a tradition of remembering his sacrifice for us but also celebrating his presence with us – if this is his body and his blood, we’re sharing in his presence, and we’re sharing a meal with him.
- Through each other, as our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ fellowship with each other
- Through world events, as the church lives out being his hands and his feet in the world
And, again, we’re preparing ourselves for Christ to act. We aren’t doing these things to win his favor or earn our salvation; we’re doing them to put ourselves in a place where the Spirit can transform us, where we can more fully experience Christ and be united with him.
Traditions and Memorials
To sum up…
We celebrate and remember Christ’s first coming.
We look forward to and celebrate his second coming.
We celebrate and prepare ourselves for him to act in our lives.
These traditions can be ways to do all of this. These traditions are, really, memorials. We take conscious actions to remember God’s faithfulness in the past and celebrate his faithfulness in the past, and that helps us as we wait now for God to act.
We’ve been talking throughout about these traditions, these memorials. Passover, where they remember the Exodus. The feast of tabernacles, where they remember God’s protection in the wilderness. Hanukkah, where they remember the rededication of the temple after the Maccabean revolt.
The Lord’s Supper, where we remember Jesus’ sacrifice. Easter, where we remember his resurrection and defeating death. Christmas, where we celebrate his first coming.
There are so many more examples:
- Jacob’s stone at Bethel (Gen. 28:22) – commemorating his vision of God
- Joshua’s altar at the Jordan River (Jos. 4:5-7) – as they entered the Promised Land
- Eastern tribes’ altar (Jos. 22:27) – as a reminder of their unity with the western tribes
- Feast of Purim (Est. 9:28) – remembering how God used Esther to save her people
- Ebenezer (1 Sam. 7:12) – before it was the name of a Christmas character, it was a memorial (whose name means “rock of help”) that Samuel set up to remember victory over the Philistines
- Deuteronomy – the name literally means “second law.” Moses gave them the God’s law once, now he’s going to give it again, because the new generation on the edge of the Promised Land needs to remember.
- Psalm 78 – the second-longest Psalm, a recitation of the history of Israel
- Psalm 105-106 – another history recitation. Why spend all this time repeating stuff that’s already in the Bible? It’s not like you can copy and paste it on your computer; scribes wrote these out by hand for centuries. It’s because it’s a way of remembering.
- Hebrews 11 – remembering and drawing inspiration from “the great cloud of witnesses” in the faith
Last month was All Saints’ Day. We rarely pay attention to it in my circles, but this, too, is a way of tradition and memorial. By remembering the saints who’ve gone before us (and, as the New Testament says, we’re all saints), parents and grandparents and ministers and writers and teachers and so many others, we can honor their faithfulness and draw strength from their example as we strive to live faithfully today.
So, this Advent season, look for memorials, for ways to remember God’s faithfulness in history and in the lives of those who’ve shaped us and in our own lives, as we remember Christ’s birth, wait for him to act in our lives, and look forward to his final coming.