ADVENT: a time of waiting, 28 November 2021
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.
ADVENT: a time of waiting
The young woman living in the flat above mine is pregnant, heavily pregnant; she is due to give birth any day now. When I met her on the stairs last week, I looked her burgeoning body and enquired: ‘Soon?’ ‘I hope so,’ she replied, ‘I am tired of waiting now, I want it to be over!’
Advent (from the Latin, adventus, meaning ‘coming towards’, or ‘arrival’) is a time of waiting, a time of moving slowly and surely towards a birth, the most extraordinary birth in the history of the world.
Advent also marks the beginning of the liturgical year in Western Christianity. Originally, this four-week period was a time of penitence and fasting rather like Lent, a time when converts to Christianity prepared for baptism. Now it is the precursor of the much-celebrated anniversary of the birth of Jesus that we call Christmas. It is also (as you have heard from the readings today) the season when we anticipate the Second Coming of Christ.
Many of us will be familiar with the seasonal custom of giving and receiving an Advent calendar. These can be traced back to the 19th century when families would mark every day in December until Christmas Eve simply with a chalk line. The first printed Advent calendar, attributed to the German-born Gerhard Lang, was produced in the early 20th century. Since then, these calendars have become part of our lead-up to Christmas, helping us to count down the days from 1 to 25 December. The first chocolate Advent calendar appeared in 1958, but it was not until 1971 that Cadbury launched its own version in the UK and, by 1993, that they had become a mainstay. Since their invention, the calendars have evolved from having little doors, which concealed a picture or a bible verse, to include gifts, such as chocolate, alcohol, make-up or even cheese.
But I digress… I may even be beginning to ramble…
So, to return to Advent, it is a time of waiting, waiting quietly for a birth as we slowly come toward a pivotal point in the Christian calendar and, if it is sweetened by eating a little chocolate every day as we open the windows of our Advent calendar, who can complain?
Now I have sweetened you up, let us turn to more weighty matters and see what the renowned German theologian Karl Rahner has to say on the subject of Advent in his book The Great Church Year. He cites Advent as a mysterious time both of arrival and anticipation, as he says: ‘in the liturgy of Advent, the present and the future of Christian salvation are mysteriously interwoven. The incarnation of the Word took place in the past and still continues in the present. Christ’s return to judge all men and women and to complete his redeeming work is an event of the future, and yet he is constantly on the point of coming...’
Believing that the birth of Jesus took place once, long ago in the distant past, and that his return to earth will be at some time in the dim and distant future is, he says, to miss the point of Advent. For, as he explains: ‘Advent unites the past and the present…Time itself is redeemed. Advent gives us a focal point that coordinates the living present with the eternal future.’
Karl Rahner describes this time of year very well:
‘As the autumn season fades and winter begins, the world becomes still. Everything around us turns pale and drab. It chills us… More than in other seasons of the year, we prefer to stay at home…
‘Here is the moment to conquer the melancholy of time, here is the moment to say softly and sincerely what we know by faith. This is the season for the word of faith to be spoken in faith: “I believe in the eternity of God who has entered into our time, my time. Beneath the wearisome coming and going of time, life that no longer knows death is already secretly growing”. It is already there, it is already in me…’
But just, as my young neighbour the mother-to-be is discovering, physical birth cannot be hurried – and so it is with spiritual birth. We must learn to sit still and wait for a while. At home I have a King James Bible which was given to my grandmother as a confirmation present by her godmother. Inside the front cover she has written a verse for her goddaughter taken from Psalm 27. It reads:
‘Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord’.
Now, as we are entering this season of watching and waiting, we are like the shepherds with their flocks in the fields by night. We will also have to follow our guiding star and undertake a long and difficult spiritual journey, like the three Magi. But if we ‘put on the armour of light’, we will be fortified by faith, hope and love, and will arrive at the point where Time and Eternity meet, neither in the past nor in the future, where Christ is born in us today.
Amen.
Lindsay Fulcher LLM