An Alternative Advent Message
Post a responseI am annoyed by most Advent sermons, which can be summarized as “Find some time to be quiet amid the hubbub to find Jesus.”
Yeah, right. I can’t seem to discipline my life for solitude the other 11 months, yet somehow during one of the most religiously programmatic and economically crazy times of the year, I’m suppose to find time to be still. To wait on the Lord. To say no to the self and say yes to God.
Not going to happen. No matter my good intentions after leaving the 11 o’clock service. My disciplines go on vacation, perhaps Cancun, in December; I never start new ones. Or, should I say, it hasn’t happened yet. Perhaps another 44 seasons of Advent sermons will change me.
I think the real Advent message is this: Don’t try to swim against the consumeristic current this Advent Season.
Let the riptide carry you out into the deep, where you can drown in personal debt, a fuller loneliness, and a complete immersion into your self. Give until your physically sick. Push yourself to the limits. Give your kids everything they ask for, and then feel guilty that you didn’t do quite enough. Never say no to any invitation to a party. And always, always – give a gift to everyone, especially to your dog groomer and the assistant substitute Sunday School teacher. Do everything with excellence this Christmas season!
January may be the month when I’m most open to the message of silence, when my distended, bloated sense of self is near the end of itself, like a carnival grinding to a halt before it moves to the next city. January’s spirituality question is, actually, the old Dr. Phil question: “So how did that work for you?”
The hope of Advent may actually be the promise of grace in January.
December 11th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
I’m in denial around this time of year. The way I’m coping with the inevitable consumerist pressure of the season and the heightened redundancy of the normal messages of Advent is by watching WWI documentary. Even there I watched how tha last humanitarian act of the 20th century occurred when the Germans and French exchanged Christmas greetings in the no man’s land in between the trenches of France to celebration Advent and sing Silent Night. There is a certain stress in the air which is contagious if you let it get you. I’m finding the denial working so far. If I can make it one more week, I think I’ll be alright. Then I’ll need to figure out how to spend five hours with eight grandchildren in our home opening gifts, biting each other’s ankles, breaking some antique my wife has cherished for 20 years and complaining at having to eat string beans! Traditionally, the best day of the holidays has been the day I put my mother-ion-law on the plane back home and look out a restaurant window at the Fox River looking at the Canadian air force [geese] and ducks on the ice.
Paul Bischoff
December 12th, 2006 at 7:30 am
We’re praying for you, Mr. Goetz. Praying from the piece of driftwood we’re clinging to in the deep sea of consumer debt.
Merry Christmas.
December 12th, 2006 at 9:30 am
As I said to my wife this morning:
“Christmas is supposed to be all about love, joy and peace. Who has time for that kind of nonsense nowadays?”
December 12th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Oh how your pendulum swings. As an alternative to your negative alternative advent message is your positive act of allegiance. As an assistant to the associate to the substitute Sunday School teacher, I have already received a most precious gift. Your child’s impatient anticipation filled gift of wonder and amazement. Then I send them packing home where they can show their disappointment.
It is easy during this time of year to get swept up in the riptide. I’ve been there and done that and still haven’t learned. Now if I don’t fight it but let the riptide carry me out into the deep where its strength is greatly reduced I can swim away. Yes it might take until January, but without that hope of grace I could end up like one too many as the British Rail’s sign reads “Person Under Train Situation”
December 12th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Every time we have had a child my wife and I have begun to prepare well in advance. Never for the money we need to save or the bedroom space we don’t have. No, we buy blankets and toys, we paint nurseries, we hang cute signs. We fully immerse ourselves in the consumeristic phase of awaiting a child. Then, as I sit in a delivery room watching the struggle pain and eventual mind blowing beauty of a child, my child, God’s child entering this world, I am profoundly moved by the depth of the experience and each time I have instinctively asked the Holy Spirit to guide this child to become what God has planned.
Every Christmas season brings the same pattern for me. I am awaiting the birth of a child, Jesus and, I think, we can enjoy the rush and festivity of the consumeristic Christmas and still understand the beauty and grace of the birth of our Lord. I might even replace consumeristic with ritualistic. We watch Christmas shows that pre-date my own childhood, we take a trip to a tree farm to cut down our tree, we engage in a lot of activities that add to the pace and stress of the season but only a small component of that is buying ’stuff’. The first miracle is the act of turning water to wine at a public party and Jesus’ final public act, before crucifixion, is breaking bread with the twelve: what’s the harm of a calendar filled with Christmas parties?
December 12th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
So….when you are speaking of pushing, loneliness, guilty feelings, and endless parties, are you speaking in regard to church, too? Because, as a committed church member completely immersed in the Advent/holiday season with choirs, pageants, caroling, cantatas, SS parties and more, church activities can be non-stop even for the laity. Thank goodness the retail experts have not completely destroyed Holy Week and Easter.
December 12th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
David,
This article surprised me! After reading your book, I was enlightened about the slow death of suburbia. However, I was also left with the impression that the appropriate response is fight -not flight! Your position seems to throw in the towel at a time of year when we need to fight through the intoxication of our materialistic society and hang onto the only message of hope we have.
The only practical solution that works for me is a “both/and” solution rather than an “either/or.” I enjoy the holiday festivities, buying presents for loved ones, etc – but not at the expense of taking time to truly reflect on the hope that I have been given through the birth of Jesus. In fact, I think our call to be “salt and light” is needed during this time of year more than ever.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Dave, I’m somewhere between the “be still” message and your go-for-all-of-it approach, between ommm and ooomph. I love Christmas. I roll with it, bask in it, laugh off the excess and enjoy it. If it gets too frantic now and then, well, I learned long ago, even when I was editing an international magazine, the sweet pleasure at the end of a pressured day of just letting that last pressured thing go, til tomorrow, or forever. Merry Christmas.
December 13th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
I became a Christian in a rather dramatic fashion 36 years ago on December 23, 1970——no matter how crazy busy nuts Christmas is– I always replay that most precious of Christmas memory of all–when I met the Christ of Christmas–God incarnate. It stays with me always. I don’t bake–I rarely go into stores–I put out a Belated Ground Hog Letter in February and I bask in meaningful music,memditations and memories. We have alot of choices about the expectations and stress we invite into our lives—-so few know how to bask.