Fall is my favorite season that, for me, culminates with Thanksgiving. Amidst its vivid and profound themes of color, beauty, and change, are fun things like A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day—one of my daughter’s and my favorite holiday traditions and something we now share with her two boys as well.
As I write this, it’s Black Friday and, after hosting two family celebrations back-to-back with close to 20 people each, including eight grandchildren, we’re just now getting our house put back together! Sunday is the beginning of Advent and I’m not quite ready to transition to a different mood and theme. Growing up in independent and nondenominational settings, I once knew little about this rich tradition. As I’ve grown older, however, I’ve leaned into it. Each year, I learn new things. For example, this year I learned that the practice of celebrating Advent together with Christmas goes back to the seventh century. I also learned that our modern take on it is a little more sanitized and positive than it used to be. On this and in reflecting on 45 years of ministry in the Episcopal Church, Flemming Rutledge recalls: “I have personally been present when new names for the candles of the four Sundays in Advent have been proposed along the lines of Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope. This presents quite a contrast with the medieval Advent themes of death, judgment, heaven, and hell—in that order!”[1]
Although I’m more a fan of the modern titles and themes, I wholeheartedly agree with Rutledge that “Advent faces into death and looks beyond it to the coming judgment of God upon all that deceives twists, undermines, pollutes, contaminates, and kills his beloved creation.”[2] In other words, we do well not to rush toward hope too quickly without looking first at the medieval and biblical themes. But how? With only three days this year between Thanksgiving and the start of Advent, how do we make such an abrupt transition? More importantly, how do we make the switch when the circumstances of life force us to in painful and violent ways? I’m talking about transitions like the following:
- Snoopy wrestling with his lawn chair vs. wrestling with the ravages of sin on our planet.
- Counting our blessings vs. contemplating our fleeting existence.
- Getting ready to pick out a tree vs. getting ready to pick up one’s life after burying in a loved one.
- Deciding which holiday movies to watch vs. deciding what more, if anything, we can do to care for aging parents.
- Piglet’s sweater unraveling vs. watching our best-laid plans do the same.
Again, if Advent begins in the dark, how do we make the shift between our fun and favorite things—the celebratory feast experiences of life—and those that include darkness or judgment? Well, after taking a looooong nap, here are three things I’m thankful for in anticipation of Advent:
- God’s fierce and holy love will one day come to purge and cleanse. I often think of God’s holy love when it comes to making sense of a scary and ugly topic like hell. I’ve learned from individuals like N.T. Wright that it’s because God loves with a fierce, steady, and “unquenchable passion”[3] that he hates things like the Holocaust, Sandy Hook, or 911. It’s because of his love that he hates political corruption, the wars in Europe and the Middle East, or the destruction of the coral reef. Wright reminds us that “if God is not wrathful against these things, he is not loving… And it is his love, determining to deal with that nasty, insidious, vicious, soul-destroying evil, that causes him to send his only, special son.”[4] Indeed, “Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel!”
- God will come again to make all things right. Rutledge points out that “all the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God’s righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his ‘making right’ (verb) all that has been wrong.”[5]
- God’s purposes will prevail regardless of what I or others do or don’t do—including whether we plant or uproot, build or dismantle. Rutledge reminded me this week that “in Christian proclamation, there can be no suggestion that the outcome hangs in the balance, dependent upon how human beings behave. Rather, the way human beings behave is determined by the mysterious grace of God that justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5).”[6] Rutledge goes on to say, “If there is one foundational truth that I have learned from apocalyptic theology, it is this: God is the subject of the verb. God doesn’t need us to help him make his ‘dream’ come true; God is on the march far ahead of us, bringing his purposes to pass… The right word for the connection between the purpose of God and human activity is ‘participation.’ We are participants in what God is already doing, but this is by grace alone; we should always beware of sermons that sound as if God is standing back waiting for us before anything can be accomplished.”[7]
[1] Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 23.
[2] Ibid., 22.
[3] N.T. Wright, Lent for Everyone: Mark, Year B (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012),.
[4] Ibid., 86.
[5] Ibid., 22.
[6] Ibid, 18.
[7] Ibid., 26-27.