“Does Advent even matter when the world is on fire?”
The title of this article really grabbed my attention earlier this week. I wasn’t sure where the author, Sarah Bessey, was going, but I thought, “She’s got a point, doesn’t she?” I mean, who do we think we are going about lighting our candles and singing our songs and hanging the greens when the crises around the world and the grief in our own lives refuse to let up. It’s not like wars take a hiatus for these four weeks of holy anticipation, right? The chemo treatments and hospital visits don’t consult our Christian calendar. Our bad dreams and rocky relationships, our aches and pains, don’t seem to make space for this season of Advent.
Sarah Bessey writes:
In these days, celebration can seem callous and uncaring, if not outright impossible. But here’s the thing: we enter into Advent precisely because we are paying attention. It’s because everything hurts that we prepare for Advent. It’s because we have stood in hospital rooms and grave-sides, empty churches and quiet bedrooms that we resolutely lay out candles and matches.
Does Advent even matter when the world is on fire?
We don’t get to have hope without having grief. Hope dares to admit that not everything is as it should be, and so if we want to be hopeful, first we have to grieve. First we have to see that something is broken and there is a reason for why we need hope to begin with.
There it is. THAT’S our “step one” this first Sunday of Advent: WAKING UP. Let’s start by waking up to what is broken: by being honest about how we’re still grieving, by beginning to notice how often we say or do things out our selfishness and pride, by being willing to confess and change our ways in order to serve and love another, by having the uncomfortable conversations for the sake of healing in Jesus’ name, by naming the systems of injustice in our families, our city, our country.
Step one: wake up to what is broken.
Let’s take a minute to take notice. Maybe pull out a pen and write down a few things. Maybe share them with your neighbor.
Ok but then what? What good does Advent do in the midst of that kind of brokenness?
Advent is an invitation to stubbornly holding onto hope. Advent is our way of saying, “Oh yes, we know. We are absolutely waking up to the brokenness in our lives and in our world, but we are also holding onto the hope of Jesus like it’s our job. We are shining a light on the ways Jesus is bringing healing and wholeness, building His Kingdom in our midst. We are paying homage to the Christ Child who was born to incarnate (to put flesh on) Love itself; to set us free from sin and death. And we are staying awake to the unexpected return of our Messiah who will one day establish the fullness and goodness and majesty of God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
Step two, then, is to STAY AWAKE.
Jesus himself said in our gospel reading, “Stay awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matthew 24:42).
He offers an example to the disciples that they knew well. I imagine this would be like someone bringing up the Civil War or 9-11 or Pearl Harbor as an example. All of us can recall what we’ve read and seen and heard about these historic events. These are parts of our nation’s fabric, woven into our history in a way no one will forget. It was probably like that for the disciples when Jesus started talking about Noah and his gargantuan ark.
For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Matthew 24:37-39
For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Now, I’d like to point out that there’s nothing horribly wrong with eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. These are normal parts of human existence. But those people, everyone except Noah’s family, were not awake to what was going on around them. They did not heed the word of the Lord or the words of Noah. They just rolled their eyes, turned their heads, plugged their ears, and lulled themselves into a spiritual coma. They fell asleep to the reality of God’s Kingdom.
So first Wake Up and two Stay Awake. But three, HOW?
My friends, this is where the Contemplative Stream comes in. This is why we are immersing ourselves in the prayer-filled practices of Christian tradition during the season of Advent. Pray wakes us up and prayer keeps us awake. When we pray we are saturating our broken world in prayer just as Jesus did. When we pray we are following the contemplative example of Mary, having our hearts awake and alert, ready to hear a message as jarring as the Angel Gabriel’s, poised to respond to a commissioning as life-altering as opening ourselves to the birth of the Son of God.
Step three: pray.
How’s your prayer life? How do you pray? How well do you listen? What types of prayer are you practicing?
If I asked you what you’re praying for what would you say?
If I asked you what you were hearing from God’s Spirit, what would you say?
I can tell you with complete certainty that a prayer-filled life is the foundation of spiritual health and spiritual growth. A prayer-filled life will see with supernatural clarity the Holy Spirit at work all around. A prayer-filled life is awake to brokenness, gutted with Christ-like devastation at the news of death and cancer, wars and protests, human trafficking and detention camps. A prayer-filled life sees the physical realities and spiritual realities with eyes wide open. They are able to point out glimmers of God’s Kingdom being built even in the midst of the chaos. A prayer-filled life is like seeing an alternative universe. A prayer-filled person doesn’t give up hope, they are stubbornly anchored to the hope of Christ’s birth, to Christ being born in them today, to Christ coming again to make all things right.
And a prayer-filled person becomes more and more like Jesus simply because they are spending every breathing moment with Christ.
As Richard Foster says,
“Put simply, the contemplative life is the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us.”
Foster, Streams of Living Water
So in this season of Advent I invite you to join me in living a contemplative, prayer-filled life. We’ve explored ways to pray over the past year and we’ll continue in the weeks to come. But regardless of the practices of prayer, let us inhabit the space of Jesus. Let us follow him so closely he nearly trips over us. Let’s be toddlers “underfoot,” breathing the same air as Jesus, sitting as closely as we can at every moment, never wanting to let Christ out of our sight.
Let us “stay awake, therefore, for we do not know on what day our Lord is coming.”
