Advent is about God's mission

Each year in November when the ist dry leaves have scuttled to lie ground, my heart turns toward Advent. As the barren landscape shivers in the early winds of winter, I find myself longing for the lights of Advent.

Not everyone feels the same as I do. Someone told me of a church member who accosted the worship committee and demanded that they eliminate Advent. He wanted Christmas in early December, not four weeks of waiting and preparation for Christ's coming.

I can understand the man's frustration. Something seems terribly out of joint when shopping centres are festooned with sparkling red-and-green banners and reverberate with merriment and jangling bells, while the church is draped in purple and lit by a few flickering candles while we sing our plaintive cry, "O come, O come, Immanuel." It isn't easy to live in such disparate worlds.

No season on the Christian calendar is likely more misunderstood than Advent. At no other time of the year do the church's values clash more uncomfortably with the surrounding culture. So why do we observe this season? Why doesn't the church join the December whirlwind and leap directly to the Christmas extravaganza? What was the ancient church thinking when they set aside four weeks of prayer and reflection to prepare their hearts to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child?

Advent is really about God's mission. The scriptures and songs of the season lay bare the yearning of God's own heart, God's passion for relationship, as was imagined in an 8th century hymn for Advent:

Come, Sun and Savior, to embrace our gloomy world, its weary race, as groom to bride, as bride to groom: the wedding chamber, Mary's womb.

Yet it is so easy to lose the wonder of God's desire for us. We forget how astonishing is the gift of a child who breaks open our prison of isolation and fear and unites us with the Lord of Love and with one another. And living as we do in wealthy North America, we forget how many of the world's poor and oppressed are still desperate for dignity, freedom and release.

And so for a few short weeks we go backward in time to the season of Israel's captivity. We join with the people of God longing for a Messiah who will deliver them from their enemies. With out-stretched arms, they shout, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!" (Isaiah 64:1)

If at no other time of the year, then at least during Advent we stop to reflect on how barren our own lives would be without God's gift of grace and truth in the Babe of Bethlehem.

And in such a pause, a way is opened for a deeper, more transforming celebration of Christmas. A way is opened for the church to see more clearly that this season-and every season-is a time when we are invited to join God's mission of justice and reconciliation in the world. What God is looking for during the Advent season is a people ready not only to receive the wondrous gift of God's own presence and peace, but ready to share that gift wisely and generously.

Mennonites are not required to celebrate Advent. In our free church tradition, no external authority regulates our worship calendar. But the Advent season offers a recurring reminder that, despite our unfaithfulness or unworthiness or even our inattention, God is at work in the world in amazing ways.

A song I sing to remind myself of God's dream for our world is a text by Scottish song writers John L. Bell and Graham Maule:

I will light the candles of Advent in our home-a sign of remembering and gratitude and hope. Will you? -Marlene Kropf

[Author Affiliation]

The writer teaches Spiritual Formation and Worship at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. The song, "Who would think," is #907 in Hymnal Subscription Service 1998:1, available from Faith & Life Resources.