S9: Practical Anticipation: Season of Advent
S9: Practical Anticipation: Season of Advent
E1: Hope
Where are you right now? Not your location, but your current circumstances. What word or phrase describes your situation? Happy or depressed, included or lonely, healthy or addicted, joyful or grief, focused or aimless, or something else? Wherever you are, it is precisely from that place where you can begin a meaningful journey through the season of Advent.
Not too long ago, within my own lifetime, I would not have had to ask this question: What is Advent? In a world that has become alarmingly fast-paced and without pause for reflection, the season of Advent can be a ray of hope at the end of a very difficult and different year.
Advent is the four weeks that precede Christmas Day. This year, it begins on Sunday November 29th and concludes the week of Sunday December 20th. There are many and varied traditions that accompany each week, but for the purposes of this blog, I’ll keep it simple. Each week has a particular focus, so I’ll write a series of blogs for Advent with the themes of hope, preparation, joy, and love.
These are not my four choices. They are universal, so as you journey through Advent, you will be joining people “from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Rev. 7:9). During the first week the focus is esperanza, espérer, hoppas, remény, or in English – hope.
I’ve asked where you are right now, how you would describe this place, and I’ve also asked what Advent is. I must ask another question that accompanies the last: how do we journey through the four weeks of Advent?
Well, I will not try to give a complete overview of Advent in all its varied traditions. What I will do is set out a simple liturgical practice in the blog for each week. Because of lockdown and social distancing that have become the hallmarks of 2020, I will offer a personal liturgy as opposed to a group setting. It requires a time set aside from distraction and noise. You will need a Bible, a hymn book (or a browser), a notepad and something to write with. So, on a daily basis through Advent from Sunday 29 through Saturday December 5:
1. Offer an invocation. This is an opening prayer of thanksgiving to God for the hope we have. It also acknowledges the presence of God is with you.
2. Read Scripture out loud so you can hear your own voice.
a. Sunday Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 103:1-11; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
b. Monday Psalm 63:1-8
c. Tuesday Isaiah 55
d. Wednesday John 7:37-44
e. Thursday John 6:22-40
f. Friday Romans 8:18-25
g. Saturday Psalm 84
3. After you have read Scripture for that day, write your thoughts down. Try not to overthink this. Simply react to what the Scripture has been saying to you.
4. Pray for the church the Body of Christ, for others, and for yourself.
5. Read the hymn out loud so you can hear your own voice, “O Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”
6. Take a moment to pause and consider what you have done: Scripture, prayer, writing a few thoughts, reading a hymn.
7. Offer a benediction. This is a closing prayer asking for God’s guidance.
On Sunday December 6, I will post another blog with the theme of Preparation and another simple liturgy to follow during the week. As you journey through each week, you will be hearing God through Scripture, prayer, the words of ancient hymns, and your own journaling.
For this week, I want to return to my question of where you are.
The incarnation is an extraordinary story. John puts it this way, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Paul puts it this way, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Theologians have been discussing this hyperstatic union of the Divine in human form over the past two millennia.
I won’t be so bold. Instead, I’d like us to take a look at a group of ordinary and everyday people that God spoke to just like you and me. They were shepherds. “And suddenly there appeared with the angel a great multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests’” (Luke 2:13-14). We tend to read this text as though the angels were announcing it specifically to the shepherds, but they were not. They simply witnessed it and said to one another, “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15).
God interrupted their daily routine, or where they were at, with something wonderful.
After the shepherds had gone to see Jesus, we are told that three wise men, or kings, went to see the Savior of the world. “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11).
Think about this wonderful point, that after the glorious and majestic announcement by angels and before the arrival of three men bearing costly gifts, ordinary everyday people like you and me heard from God.
Here’s what I’d like us to think about during this first week of Advent. Wherever you are and however you would describe that, Advent prepares you to be interrupted by God with something profoundly simple: unlike the wise men, God wants you to offer yourself, no more or less than who you really are exactly where you are at. This is the gift we bring to Jesus: our own lives.
Advent is not about our own accomplishments but about what God has done for us in sending Jesus our Savior. C. S. Lewis said, “We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” So, what is in you today? Happiness or depression, inclusion or loneliness, healthiness or addiction, joy or grief, focused or aimless, or something else?
Start your journey through Advent today by offering all that you are, all that you have, and all that you hope to be.