IN ADVENT WE BEGIN AGAIN …
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Have you ever skipped a holiday? I bet more than a few of us have had to do so at least once because of work or travel at sometime in our lives. On Friday, December 31, 1999, I was the headwaiter for a very popular restaurant in Fort Worth and didn't get home until well after the fact that the world was not going to end after all. While in the grand scheme it may seem like Y2K was much ado about nothing (as my computer did indeed turn on the next day), what I missed out on was the many rituals that are part of the annual event of New Year's Eve that form our identities and by which we form meaning.
The cantina bar had a TV, but the staff was too busy to watch the ball drop in Times Square. Some tried to sing Auld Lang Syne, but it made a bad duet with the restaurant's playlist blasting over the speakers. There was no playing of games, watching movies, dancing with friends, kissing your loved ones, or anything else that defined how we celebrated the transition from one year to the next. Instead, I successfully brought home the cheddar – all over my work clothes, along with the aroma of sizzling fajitas and no little grease. What was it like to celebrate Y2K? I couldn't tell you because I missed out.
In a completely different experience, however, I had to work the week of Thanksgiving one year but had Thanksgiving Day off. Unable to travel, I went to the house of one of my TCU School of Music professor where every year he would host all the “Thanksgiving orphans.” Not only was there an incredible feast (including my first holiday goose), but we told stories of our various traditions, made terrible jokes that doubled us over with groaning, got out a rag-tag collection of instruments and songbooks switched parts every song playing through them, formed community, affirmed our value as chosen family, and found new ways to be grateful – even and especially under less than desirable circumstances and feelings of loss, loneliness, and disappointment. And it was one of the best Thanksgivings I have ever had.
After more than a year of our habits and rituals of family, faith, and fun being interrupted, it is all the more important that we embrace the annual rituals of Advent as we begin again to tell the story of God's love in Jesus Christ.
Holiday rituals are important. They shape our experiences and expectations. They form our identities and inform our perspectives. They support, enable, and challenge us to grow. They are means by which we come to know ourselves as individuals and as a community and society. And holy-day rituals are means by which we know ourselves as beloved of God and one another.
This past weekend, we the community of faith known as Union Avenue, once again marked the beginning of a new liturgical year celebrating the love of God that is transforming the world with the season called Advent. From the Latin word adventus (meaning “beginning” or “coming”), Advent is the ritual time that marks the beginning of our following of Christ throughout the year and becoming vessels of God's love. Both in-person and online, we'll light purple and pink candles around the Advent wreath, sing ancient and new songs about Emmanuel, pray together in ancient rite, and share in stories about God breaking into human history (both then and now) with gifts of hope, peace, joy, and love, so that the we who have been enshrouded in gloom and sorrow may begin to see light breaking over the horizon ahead.
After more than a year of our habits and rituals of family, faith, and fun being interrupted, it is all the more important that we embrace the annual rituals of Advent as we begin again to tell the story of God's love in Jesus Christ. Amidst the competing busyness of our secular activities and the desire to “get back to normal” or at least “make up for lost time,” let us make sure to center ourselves in the gift of Emmanuel's coming and let the ancient and familiar rhythms of Advent and Christmas guide us once again along the way that leads to life. For God is up to doing something amazing and powerful and new, if we but take the time to perceive it and participate in it … for the life of the world to come.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Rev. Michael