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Advent finishes with the advent of the Christ child. At the pivot of midnight, the hand of God moved forward, and creation's new beginning began.

Infant holy,
Infant lowly,
For His bed a cattle stall;
Oxen lowing,
Little knowing
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Swift are winging
Angels singing,
Noels ringing,
Tidings bringing,
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

Flocks were sleeping,
Shepherds keeping
Vigil till the morning new,;
Saw the glory,
Heard the story,
Tidings of a Gospel true.
Thus rejoicing,
Free from sorrow,
Praises voicing,
Greet the morrow,
Christ the Babe was born for you!

 

 

Promises made and kept, but not the way we thought.

Prophets foretelling and forth-telling the truth as they saw it.

Empires on the make and populations on the move. 

Mary and Joseph, angels and shepherds performing the first scratch nativity.

A baby born in underprivileged circumstances.

A refugee family fleeing the slaughter of the innocents looking for a safe home.

All told, not the greatest story ever told.

Every day the story is retold in Syria, Myanmar, on the Mediterranean.

Advent is when Eternal love intersects with human history,

when reconciliation, peace, justice and hope

came gift-wrapped in swaddling cloths.    

 

Don't know who Anonymous 15th C was. But they were content with wonder, paradox, mystery. Some facts have no known precedent. Advent by definition is a first, and last.  

Wit Wonders

A God and yet a man,

A maid and yet a mother:

Wit wonders what wit can

Conceive this or the other.

 

A God and can he die?

A dead man can he live?

What wit can well reply?

What reason reason give?

 

God, Truth itself doth teach it.

Man’s wit sinks too far under

By reason’s power to reach it:

Believe and leave to wonder.

(Anonymous – 15^th C)

 

Over the centuries Christmas Eve has become encrusted with sentimental images and our own ideas about what was all going on, that mish-mash performed annually in nativity plays. So a gentle but necessary caveat: 

"Yes, plenty of angelic fireworks supercharge Luke's Birth Narrative, but these are more background special effects than bedrock significant events. The sign of God's salvation , the main event to see and know, is that of a flesh-and-blood infant boy swathed in cloth strips made from plant fibres and lying in a wooden feed-box for working animals. We cannot know God fully unless we know God there."¹

1. Luke. Two Horizons Commentary F Scott Spencer, (Eerdmans: 2019) page 69-70, emphasis original.

Yesterday at the Community Cafe Carol Service we were singing our way through the carol sheet. Asked for a favourite the pre-school contingent demanded 'Jingle Bells' – as antidote to the sacred stuff! 

Yes Jingle Bells lacks theological gravitas; yes Santa Claus and Jesus get a bit mixed up when you're four years old. But Advent is about surprise, expectation, excitement, and gifts. Because love really did come down at Christmas, we give presents celebrating God's presence here, now.

There is an adult seriousness that shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of believing in this God of inconvenient surprises!

A poem. Joseph wonders what in Gabriel's name he's got himself into!

 

I am Joseph

I am Joseph, carpenter,

Of David’s kingly line,

I wanted an heir; discovered

My wife’s son wasn't mine.

 

I am an obstinate lover,

Loved Mary for better or worse,

Wouldn't stop loving when I found

Someone Else came first.

 

Mine was the likeness I hoped for

When the first-born man-child came.

But nothing of him was me. I couldn't

Even choose his name.

 

I am Joseph, who wanted

To teach my own boy how to live.

My lesson for my foster son:

Endure. Love. Give.

(U A Fanthorpe)

Choosing carols for the Community Cafe was easy. Traditional, no unexpected alterations to well known words. No need for novelty or clever demythologising of such obvious eyebrow raisers as "Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes."

'Away in a manger' survives as an Advent and Nativity hit song not because of its theological precision, or historical verisimilitude. But because it evokes memories, provokes emotion, plugs in to those deep places of longing in danger of being disconnected by a culture that thinks such an inner ache should be erased by retail therapy. Advent validates aching hearts and hope long awaited.  

Election is about who is chosen, and who chooses, and means more than political decision-making. Mary is chosen, elect of God, as mother of the coming Messiah. 

"Hail Mary!" is the most outrageously empowering greeting to a young teenage woman. No wonder 'she was greatly troubled'.

"May it be to me as you have said." There are hinge moments in every relationship that push beyond the superficial now, pivotal points when choices are made that have forever consequences.

Advent is about that precarious moment of time, when an angel waited, what seemed like an eternity, for a young woman's 'Yes'.  

"Many poets betray in their work or their lives some original wound their art tries to heal."¹ Isaiah's Advent poetry displays 'original wounds' of exile and lost identity.

What do you say to people whose identity is being erased, their religious roots torn up, homes dismantled, and their gardens and fields left to waste? Now in an alien land, under foreign power, scared of God, afraid to hope? 

Something like this.  

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.

^{1. Lachlan Mackinnon, Obituary for Seamus Heaney.}

Advent joy is the powerful undercurrent which drives forward the history of God's love affair with the world.

Advent joy arises from the deep conviction that God is for us, and with us.

The Emmanuel promise refuels our hopes,transforms our worldview, and opens us to the risk of trusting God.

Advent joy is the default setting of the Christian heart towards Christ, the Prince of Peace. 

Advent joy has an air of defiance, teaching us to look on life at its darkest, knowing that out of the darkest hours in the life of God, came resurrection and new creation.