1^st Sunday of Advent 2023.

(sermon transcript)

“Be on guard, keep awake… What I say to you, I say to all: Stay awake.”

In Greek Mythology, there are deadly creature called sirens. They were dangerous sea creatures who through their beautiful singing would lull weary sailors into a daze or slumber. Their song would lure the sailors into devastation, whether that be by leading them into shipwreck, or drawing them overboard.

Today, I am going to suggest that the Christmas season can become a dangerous siren song. This song begins on November 1^st as our stores change their inventory almost overnight from black and orange to red and green. Winter Wonderland begins playing on the radio; the Hallmark Christmas movies start rolling in; and Black Friday sales begin to bombard us. There is a sense of warmth that fills our souls as we picture Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, sleighbells ringing, or children caroling. But this alluring song of the Christmas season, if we are not vigilant and alert, can lull us to sleep. It can draw us overboard, away from the path that Christ has set for us. It can become a song that draws us into the Jolly and Bright over and against the genuine darkness we experience on this earth as Christ calls us through death into life.

The season of Advent, which begins today and jump starts our liturgical Church year, is a gift that bids us to “Stay Awake!” But if it is a gift, it is not packaged as we might expect, especially considering the Christmas cheer that surrounds us. The first Sunday of Advent is not merry and bright. Instead, it is dark and penitent. It does not fill us with warmth and comfort, but instead, we hear the message of Isaiah 64:5-7

“Behold you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time and shall we be saved? We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us. And have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.”

As Flemming Rutledge says, “Advent begins in the dark.”

Maybe this is a new way of thinking about Advent for you. If you grew up in a tradition similar to mine, Advent might have seemed more like an extended season of Christmas. All I knew of the Advent season was that we began lighting candles each Sunday, Christmas trees would decorate the Church, and our songs shifted to singing about Jesus’ birth. It was a time of preparing for, celebrating, and thinking about Jesus’ birth.

Historically, however, Advent is not simply about the coming of Jesus at his birth, but also his coming at the end of all time. Furthermore, the traditional themes of this pre-Christmas season are the four last things of death, judgement, heaven, and hell. Holly Ordway, in her book called “Tales of Faith”, notes that “these themes, are to say the least, not in the ‘Christmas spirit’ as understood in the wider culture, with its relentless emphasis on jollity (whether you feel like it or not), family togetherness (assuming you have one), and above all, shopping for gifts (with the toxic association of spending money with expressing love). It can be a remarkably stressful and depressing season, and Christmas Day can feel like an emotional letdown after two months of build up. Then, in this modern version of Christmas, the days following December 25 are dull and empty. The holiday is over, and people take down the decorations… but this is exactly the opposite of what it should be… While all the world is shopping and having Christmas parties, we ought to be meditating on our need for a Savior; when all the world is exhausted and stuck in the gloom of gray January, we ought to be in full celebratory swing.”

Don’t hear me wrong when I allegorize this Christmas Craze that surrounds us as a siren song. There are so many things I love about Christmas. I love Hallmark movies, and Christmas cookies, and turkey dinners. I love all the warm and cozy images that come along with Christmas. But I think we lose something when Christmas, especially Christmas according to our culture, infiltrates the Advent season. Advent can lose its significance to Christmas, and vice versa, Christmas can lose its significance to Advent.

Flemming Rutledge notes that “Advent teaches us to delay Christmas in order to experience it truly when it finally comes. Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness.”

And so today, we are going to attempt to take a fearless inventory of the darkness, and to confront this darkness, we must first “wake up”.

At the beginning Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante finds himself in the middle of his life, waking up, lost in this dark forest. His divine comedy begins with this refrain “Midway upon our journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost” and a few stanzas later, he continues “I cannot well repeat how there I entered, so full was I of slumber at the moment in which I had abandoned the true way.” When we fall asleep, we don’t recall what our last thoughts were as we drifted away. In a similar way, Dante can’t recall how he arrived in this forest, because he had fallen asleep as he abandoned the path.  Perhaps some of us today have fallen asleep too and cannot recall when or how it happened.

And so, Dante tries to regain the path by climbing a mountain, only to find his way blocked by a Leopard, a Lion, and a She-Wolf which each represent a different sin. This is when Virgil appears as his guide and offers to show him another way, one that leads first through Hell and Purgatory, before Dante will be ultimately b led into Paradise.

I think this is a helpful Advent image. We wake up out of our slumber, we find ourselves lost in darkness, and we are invited on a journey that must descend downward before we can be led upward.

We think too of Jesus, who descends from heaven, and comes to us hidden in the darkness of Mary’s womb, born discreetly in a stable in the silent of night, only to die alone, in darkness and shame on a cross. Even then he travels further still into the darkness, diving into the very depths of the dead. Flemming Rutledge describes Advent as a fearless inventory of the darkness. The reason we can confront this darkness without fear is because Christ was there first. He is the one who first descended into our darkness. And yet, as John describes him, he is the light of men; the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

While Advent begins in the dark, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a season of hope. This Sunday, in fact, we lit the first Advent candle which represents hope. But as Flemming Rutledge says, “The authentically hopeful Christmas spirit has not looked away from the darkness, but straight into it. The true and victorious Christmas spirit does not look away from death, but directly into it.”

There is a lot of goodness and joy in the Christmas season, but don’t let the Christmas season turn into an attractive siren song that leads us away from the true path of life, a path that must lead down first through death. All of us want to be lifted up out of darkness. We want to forget our suffering, our struggles, our fears, our sin, our pain, our regrets.  But we must confront the darkness and find Christ there first. If the good news of the upcoming Christmas season is to have any bearing on our lives and on the reality we live in, it must be a message that meets us on the ground level. It must descend into the deepest and darkest corners of our existence, and shine light there.

As you all know (and can finally see) Dylan and I are expecting a baby this January. Some of you may also remember that a year ago at this time during Advent and Christmas we were also expecting a baby, who we ended up miscarrying in mid-January. Being pregnant during Advent is really this profound experience for a number of reasons. For one, I have the privilege of experience a deeper sense of affinity with the Blessed Virgin Mary. But furthermore, I think pregnancy is a great display of the already not-yet that Advent is. Already we are with child, but he is still hidden from our sight. We still have this not-yet experience as we await his arrival to us in light and in flesh.

But, especially as I reflect on my experience of losing our first child, I can still feel a little disconnected from the reality that I’m bearing. I can feel him kicking, and I’ve seen him on the ultrasounds, but I said to Dylan this week, “I still feel like I’ll believe it when I see it.”

This captures the season of Advent as well. We find ourselves caught in between Christ’s first coming, and his second coming. Thus, there is a genuine sense in which God is hidden from us.  Even for the first disciples, Christ was taken away from their sight for a time. They experience genuine loss and genuine darkness, and because of that, Thomas, at the announcement of Christ’s return to the other disciples, said he would believe it when he sees it. Amidst the darkness in this world, amidst our loss and pain and sin and suffering, amidst this already-not yet reality we live in, we can risk falling into doubt and despair.

The Christian life is a journey on a path. As we journey through the Advent and Christmas season, there are two ways we can veer off this path. The first, as already discussed, is through escapism. We can seek to absorb ourselves in the Christmas cheer around us for the purpose of disengaging with reality. In doing so, we are being led away from Christ, who meets us in our reality. However, the other way we can fall off this path, is by becoming so absorbed by the darkness that surrounds us that we fall into despair. We confront the darkness, apart from Christ’s light. And though we hear of Christ’s return, that he is coming to make things right, it feels like it’s a distant dream, or a vain hope.

Advent seeks to guard us from both missteps. This is why the season holds together both the first coming and second coming of Christ. We look to Christ’s first coming to us in the flesh, we see and believe, and confess with Thomas “My Lord and my God!” And by encountering Christ in the incarnation, we are led through the darkness, and upward into his light. The last sight the disciples have of Jesus is at his ascension, and their gaze is drawn upward. It is Christ’s first coming that gives us hope and assurance for his second coming.

Thus, to close, I am going to leave us with an excerpt of a sermon by St. Cyril of Jerusalem. It reads as follows:

“At his first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. At his second coming he will be clothed in light as in a garment. In the first coming he endured the cross, despising the shame; in the second coming he will be in glory, escorted by an army of angels. We look then beyond the first coming and await the second. At the first coming we said: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” At the second we shall say it again, we shall go out with the angels to meet the Lord and cry out in adoration: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”