As a house we decided we wanted to do more self-guided spiritual reflection, so I offered to go first. I wrote this reflection on the advent season, and I conclude with a brief history of the “O” Antiphons which inspired the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel. The interesting history of the O Antiphons can be found via the Presbyterian Mission Agency, but I thought I would post my reflection separately.
Christmas is almost here, and I for one am very excited. I am excited to go home and see my family, to have a break from work--no matter how enjoyable the work may or may not be--and to celebrate the birth of Christ into world.
But no matter how much or how often Starbucks, Target, and the media machine tell us that this is the Christmas season, we know it’s not. This is the season of advent, the season of the coming of Christ, and for we mere mortals, the season of waiting, of anticipation, and of preparation.
I think I can assume that we are all fairly familiar with waiting. We are familiar with waiting for the results of a test--be it educational or medical, with waiting for a college admittance letter, with waiting for the final call after instant replay review, with waiting for our work placement in Chicago, with waiting for election results, with waiting to see what the world will be like next. We have waiting in the bag.
We’re pretty good at anticipating too. Anticipating how much we’ll need to make for dinner, anticipating whether or not we can cross the intersection before a car, anticipating how people will act in the future, anticipating what it will be like to join our families after so much time away. We are all intelligent people, anticipating what will happen isn’t that hard.
Then we have preparation. Preparation is a little harder. Preparation involves actual work! It’s not just waiting for dinner to finish, but anticipating how much you’ll need, then finding a recipe, getting the ingredients, and making the food. Preparation isn’t just waiting for an event to start, it’s guessing how many people will attend, how much space you’ll need, and then it’s finding a place to host the party, finding time to decorate, getting the food together, and finding people who will work instead of celebrate.
To prepare our hearts and minds and the world for the coming of Christ is even harder than that. We have to follow the teachings Jesus gave us the first time he was here. We have to love God and our neighbors and ourselves. We have to love even when we don’t understand God or God’s plan, which is quite frankly, most of the time. We have to love when our neighbors are pot-dealers, gangbangers, or elitist white snobs. We have to love when we feel stupid, angry, afraid, embarrassed, or guilty because we have God’s love even if we’ve never done anything to deserve it. Anyone who’s really loved knows that loving isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s work, and it takes everything you have to keep going.
Advent isn’t just about waiting for Christmas or anticipating what will happen when Christ comes again but preparing ourselves for the return of God. It’s a monumental task and on our own we probably wouldn’t get very far. That’s one of the reasons we have church, kirk, house, community, whatever you want to call it, to help support each other as we wait and as we prepare. Amen.
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