When you greeted each other here in church last Sunday, did you say, “Happy New Year?” It would have made liturgical sense to do so: since the 8th and 9th centuries in the western, Roman tradition, the church’s year has begun with the Sundays of Advent, which we now celebrate as a season of four Sundays leading up to the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord on December 25. Thus, the first Sunday in Advent is New Year’s Day for the Christian community. January 1 is a day without much liturgical significance for the Christian community – the theme of the day is the naming of Jesus. The Christian calendar has no standing in our secularized world, although, of course, it did have considerable power during the centuries that the Christian church enjoyed the privileges of establishment in the west – that history we call “Christendom.” Those of us who are older will remember that until recently we counted our years as “years of our Lord.” But now, our Christian calendar represents the peculiar perspective of a faith community that is progressively more and more marginalized in our public culture.
I suspect that the traditions of the church’s liturgical year may not be a big theme for some of you. There are many Christian churches that pay no attention to these ancient practices. But you have invited me to address you on the theme of Advent which indicates to me that this is a community that, in one way or another, does pay attention to the church year. I have learned to do so, but that’s not how I started my Christian pilgrimage. In the large Presbyterian congregation in which I grew up on the west coast, there was no particular attention given to church seasons such as Advent, Epiphany, Lent, or Pentecost. Our holidays were Easter and Christmas. It was when, at the age of nineteen, I moved to Germany as a theology student that I first encountered these traditions. And through those many years in both Lutheran and Reformed congregations in Germany, I began to discover that the church year could be a powerful resource to shape the Christian pilgrimage in response to the Gospel. I would like to explore with you what that might look like.
The earliest phase in the development of the church year was the ancient church’s decision to celebrate Easter. The resurrection of our Lord is the climactic and revolutionary event which turns all history around and establishes fines the meaning and purpose of our living as Christians and as a Christian movement. If Jesus Christ is truly raised from the dead, is truly the ascended Lord to whom all authority is given in heaven and on earth, then there is no aspect of human life and history which is not profoundly transformed. This claim that Jesus Christ is the risen Lord and Savior who embodies God’s inbreaking reign in human history is what defines who we are and what we are for as Christians. The earliest Christians moved their weekly celebration from Saturday to Sunday to mark the centrality of Easter faith. Every time we gather on Sunday for worship, we are continuing the celebration of Easter. And the celebration of Easter in the spring became the theological magnetic center for the liturgical development of the entire church year. Over time, the ancient churches in the western tradition developed a season of preparation for the celebration of Easter, which became the practices of Lent. Following Easter, they celebrated the meaning of this great new reality of the risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ in the Sundays of Eastertide that lead up to Pentecost. That celebration focuses upon the Holy Spirit’s empowering of the Christian movement to witness to the good of news of Christ “in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The celebration of the formation and sending of the witnessing church completes the Easter cycle of the church year.
It was somewhat later that the church turned its attention to the birth of Christ, but did so with continued emphasis upon the centrality of Easter. No one knew or knows what the actual birthday of Christ was. But in the western churches, which gradually centered on the traditions observed in Rome, the tradition emerged to observe the Feast of the Nativity, as it was called, in connection with the shortest day and longest night of the year – the winter solstice. First indications of such a Christian observance can be found in the period between 243 and 336. It’s intriguing that, in 275, the Roman emperor Aurelian instituted the celebration on the winter solstice of Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun. The emphasis was upon “the symbolic rebirth of the unconquered sun as the days grow longer.” Pope Leo the Great, who lived in the first half of the fifth century, shaped the emerging patterns of Advent and Christmas observance by emphasizing in his liturgical writing for this season the themes of light, of overcoming darkness, and Jesus as the light that has come into the world.
It’s popular to claim that the Christian church “adopted” the pagan celebration of light and of the sun in the winter, transferring it to Christ, the light of the world. It is very unlikely that the early Christian church would actually adopt a pagan celebration, since the church at that time constantly defined itself by emphasizing the radical difference between Christianity and the religions of the Roman world. But there is undeniably an analogy between the perception of Christ as the heavenly sun, s-u-n, which brings God’s light into the world, and these cultural patterns honoring Sol Invictus in pagan Rome. That linkage to the theme of light is a constant theme in the ever growing and constantly changing patterns of Christian celebration of Advent and Christmas with the emphasis upon light. We experience it in many ways, including candles, advent wreathes, Christmas trees with lights, the burning Yule log, and in the modern world, millions of white and colored light bulbs of all sizes.
What makes this tradition especially important is, as I suggested already, the fact that the Christian new year does not coincide with the calendar we otherwise live by. There is a profound disjuncture between the world’s calendar and the Christian understanding of the passage and meaning of time. If Christ is our reigning lord, then there are no other lords to which we may submit ourselves. If Christ the Lord embodies the truth of God’s love and healing, then all the other alleged truths that seek to claim us are revealed to be lies. Following Christ, we march to a different drum. We live by a different calendar. Our reality is defined by the fact that God has entered into our lives and history in the life, death resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. “Advent” means “coming,” and the emphasis in our observance of Advent is on the fact that God has come to us: the word has become flesh and dwelt among us. The night of human existence without God has now been radically transformed into the new day, into which we are awakened by God’s Spirit to recognize and respond to the reality of the living Christ.
One of the classic biblical texts preached on during Advent is in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter thirteen, beginning at verse eleven:
“…you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
During Advent, we testify to the fact that Christians are enabled to know what hour it is. We know that God has come into the world and thus to us in Christ, and that we have been awakened to the newness and the alternativeness of the life which the risen Christ now makes possible. We focus these weeks in Advent upon the biblical narratives of God’s coming in the past and the certainty of God’s coming in the future. At the heart of our celebration, especially as we come to Christmas day itself, are the events of the incarnation: the actual history of the nativity of Jesus as recorded in Luke and Matthew. But our encounter with this story is profoundly shaped by the fact that we know where these events will lead. These events, as narrated in the gospels, mark the beginning of the earthly life of Jesus, which reaches its climax on Golgotha and at the empty tomb. What happened at Easter casts its light back to the season of Advent and centers our attention on the purpose of the birth and earthly life of Jesus. Jesus was born in order to die. The magi’s gifts of myrrh and frankincense were an anticipation of the burial that would precede that Easter morning resurrection. But the victory of Easter will overtake that darkness. The lights of Christmas, the radiance surrounding the angels who surprised the shepherds near Bethlehem, the star that led the magi from the east, the halos imagined by Christian artists illuminating the faces of Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus – these are all confirmations of the fact that the night is far gone, the light has dawned, the Kingdom has come near, and Good Friday will move on to Easter.
That is the different drumbeat to which Christians march as we move through Advent to Christmas. We are celebrating the beginning of the inbreaking reign of God, as we proclaim that this infant in the manger is, in fact, the Word become flesh, the self-disclosure of God to his creation in and through his Son. We celebrate the Son whom the Father has sent because it is his purpose that no one in this sinful world should perish, but rather that all should receive the gift of new and eternal life. And it is only through our response to God’s self-giving in Jesus Christ that we can participate in that good and healing reign which is intended for all nations.
In a few days you will celebrate Advent with the performance of the Christmas section of Händel’s Messiah. Händel certainly understood that different drumbeat when he concluded his musical proclamation if the Christmas Gospel with the jubilant Hallelujah chorus. If we translate “hallelujah” from the Hebrew, then we recognize that we are singing an anthem based on the great heavenly songs in the book of Revelation: “Praise the Lord for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!” The reign is now – Christ is in command now. To make that point all the more emphatic, the chorus continues: “The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!”
Johann Sebastian Bach captured the distinctive understanding of Advent and Christmas looking towards Good Friday and Easter when he concluded his great Christmas Oratorio with a jubilant chorus at the end of the sixth section of the cantata. The chorus is introduced by a recitative with these lyrics:
What hope hath hell’s own terrors now,
What harm will world and sin us do,
While we in Jesus’s hands rest sure?
Then the trumpets and tympani introduce a soaring chorale of praise and confidence as the climax to the entire work. The text describes the meaning of the birth of Christ in terms of the victory of Christ, teaching us to celebrate Advent as Easter Christians. Here is the text of this chorale:
Now are ye well avengéd
Upon your hostile host,
For Christ hath fully broken
All that which you opposed.
Death, devil, hell and error
To nothing are reduced;
With God hath now its shelter
The mortal race of man.
If we listen carefully to the melody to which the choir sings this lyric, we make a surprising discovery. It is the familiar minor melody of the Lenten Chorale “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” a hymn which combines both our sorrow and our gratitude for the cost of our salvation accomplished on the cross. It is the dominant theme of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, to which, at the end of the Christmas Oratorio, Bach builds an interpretive melodic bridge. The harmonies are still in the minor voice, but the music is jubilant and inspiring. The trumpets, the tympani, the choir and soloists are not singing a lament, but rather a victorious announcement of the purpose of Christ’s coming in Bethlehem: that the mortal race of man may now discover that it already has its shelter with God, that death, devil, hell and error are already reduced to nothing, that Christ has indeed fully broken everything which has opposed and condemned us. This is what Advent proclaims and celebrates.
I claimed a few minutes ago that the church year could be a powerful resource to shape the Christian pilgrimage in response to the Gospel. I have contended that the purpose of Advent is to celebrate the fact that in Jesus Christ God has come and that he continues to come and that this is good news for us and for the world in which God is sending us. Advent is a celebration that nourishes and builds our faith in the action and sure promises of God. It is a confession of confidence that God is present and at work in our history together and our personal histories, continuing the history to which scripture witnesses. I have suggested, further, that the fact that God’s advent radically redefines our reality means that we march to a different drum in our concrete and particular contexts. We are living under the reign of Christ, in the confidence that “he who has begun a good work in us will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ.” If that is true, then what kind of difference should this make as we begin our new year together?
Paul provides us guidance to respond to that question. As those who know what the hour is, who know that the times are fulfilled now, we are enjoined to be fully awake, to live in the awareness that salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. There is movement, change, discovery, growth in the Christian life that celebrates the continual coming of Christ. The appropriate observance of Advent is to be awake and alert to what God’s coming already means now and how its meaning continues to unfold. It is the work of God’s Spirit to awaken us, to give us the faith that enables us to lead our lives and to deal with our daily realities, in the confidence that Christ has come, that he has all power in heaven and on earth, and this his reign is near and coming nearer: “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed” and, we might add, when we last celebrated advent together. We now may understand ourselves as advent agents, as people whose lives provide evidence that God has come and made his dwelling in our midst, and that he continues to come.
Paul’s marching orders are clear and realistic as we move along in our pilgrimage of faith: “Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” The search light of the Gospel exposes every kind of human darkness, including the dark places in our lives as Christians. Honesty compels us to admit that we harbor those dark places. This is one way in which our Advent disciplines can shape our Christian pilgrimage: As we hear and focus upon the biblical message of advent, the gospel search light may challenge us to address the places in our lives where we have placed obstacles in the way of God’s advent. In the ancient traditions of both Advent and Lent, the church has emphasized the importance of the practices of self-examination, of repentance, and of cleansing. Included in these “works of darkness” are activities described by Paul as “revelries, drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy.” Certainly we do not have to look far in the long history of the Christian movement to find convincing documentation that these admonitions are realistic: the Christian church is in constant need of continuing conversion. The Advent of Jesus Christ, with his disclosure of what God intended his fallen creatures to become as laid out in his teaching recorded in the Gospels, puts those acts of rebellion in high relief.
So, the disciplines of the church year assist us, as we move every year through these major passages of emphasis upon the gospel and its meaning, to recognize where we need further conversion. We can recognize, as we look back to advent a year ago, that in our walk with Christ we have experienced real change and growth. But we may also need to admit that we have avoided possible change and growth. We may acknowledge gratefully that God is enabling us to become more useful agents of his coming into the world, but we may also have to admit that, although we cannot change our vocation as witnesses to Christ, we might not be very credible ones.
For the purposes of leaving the night and moving into the day, Paul proposes that we put on the armor of light. A few verses later, he admonishes us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” To put on the Lord Jesus Christ is to submit to his rule, to learn him through the rigorous study of scripture, to desire to be his witnesses, and to be discipled by him for the life of witness. The armor of light that he provides is the amazing news of God’s love and what that love means for our lives and the lives of the neighbors to whom God is sending us every week. It is “armor” because it defends us from the temptation to live our lives in bondage to the dominion of the flesh, gratifying its desires. Thus, we are not defenseless but we are protected and empowered to lead our lives in the light of Christ.
The focus of advent formation is, however, not only on our own spiritual growth and maturing, as important as that it is. The all-embracing definition of the Christian in the New Testament is summarized by Jesus in his farewell words to the disciples on the Mount of the Ascension: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.” Advent continues our formation for our vocation as witnesses to Christ. Paul makes that clear to the Romans when he admonishes them, “Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day.” Our conduct as Christian communities and individuals is the first form of our witness. Our witness is to be “becoming as in the day” – it is to be evidence of God’s love that, in Paul’s words elsewhere, is “worthy of the calling with which we have been called.” And it will stand up under the scrutiny of the high noon sun. Advent draws us into God’s faithful coming to his world in order to shape us to be his witnesses in that world.
There is much bemoaning of the loss of the “Christ” in Christmas, the secularization and consumerization of the holy day. I don’t think that I have ever seen Christmas decorations and products go up in stores as early as this year. But we should not be surprised that our society, marching to its own drum, will have little regard for the distinctive drumbeat of the Advent to Easter community. Rather, we should be concerned with how we can bring some of the light of advent into our darkened world and how we can conduct ourselves so becomingly that something of that light is seen and welcomed. We enter into the world into which God is sending us week by week confident that Christ is already there, already at work in ways mysterious and subtle, and waiting to enlist us in that work so that his love may become visible. When we gather to sing carols and light the church’s tree, we are documenting that God has come and is coming, and this illumined tree is a signal to the neighborhood that this is a place where God’s entering the world in Jesus Christ can be experienced, examined, and joined.
Let me return to Paul’s statement, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” This Romans text is, of course, addressed to a Christian community, that is, to a community of people who define themselves as believers. Paul can assume that they feel included in that “we” when he says “when we first believed.” Paul and the Romans can look back upon a time when they did not believe and when they came to faith. Now, the apostolic word is at work to continue their formation as believers and witnesses. Given the kind of post-Christian reality which characterizes our culture today, it is entirely possible that some of us gathered here and later around the tree outside would not feel included among those who can talk about “when they first believed.” That step towards “first believing” is yet to be taken. Advent makes this comforting and challenging claim: The most essential steps towards your first believing have already been taken. They are God’s actions on your behalf. They are all of God’s ways of working that have brought you here, that have evoked questions or curiosity in you – and far before that, they are the very events we celebrate at advent and Christmas: the birth of Christ as God’s self-giving for our sakes – the event that the angels describe as “peace on earth among all people with whom he is pleased.” What started in the earthly life of Jesus, beginning with his birth in Bethlehem and culminating in his death and resurrection, is the movement of healing, of new creation, of reconciliation which leads to each one of us to make emphatically clear that you are loved; you are freed and forgiven; you are claimed; there is a divine commission awaiting your response that you become a witness to the good news of God’s love announced at Christmas.
If you sense that salvation is nearer to you now, that God is at work in you, then find a conversation partner in this community and explore what this good news means for you. May this Advent season be your celebration of Christ’s advent in your life as you come to him.
That recitative in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio that introduces the great final chorale underlines the confidence that Advent gives us: “What hope hath hell’s own terrors now, what harm will world and sin us do, while we in Jesus’ hands rest sure?” The Jesus whose advent we celebrate, to which we testify, and which we anticipate, is the one in whose hands we rest sure. We may move into our new year from this advent season strengthened and encouraged by this good news, rejoicing as we march to the beat of God’s drum.
May God give you a blessed and joyful new year!