Last weekend Saturday Night Live re-ran an episode from earlier this season with host Chris Rock. In Rock's opening monologue he rants about how we Americans commercialize everything - even the "Jesus Birthday Season" that celebrates the "least materialistic person that ever lived" with greed and consumerism. (You can watch the whole rant at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYZLKqGhSZs - the Christmas section runs from apx. 4:20 to 6:18). While the observation on consumerism is a wonderful point, it is the highlighting of the "Jesus Birthday Season" that really caught my attention. While we have that season as a culture, we don't have it in the church calendar. Lent, the weeks leading up to Christmas, are about longing for Jesus to come into the world, into our lives, into all the places we have a hard time imagining He can arrive. Advent is about admitting that Jesus needs to come into our world and that the world is not the way it should be - it is about Jesus needing to enter our lives and that our lives are not the way they should be.
Rob Bell in an excellent article, Why Should We Care About Advent? (1), notes:
"Advent, then, is a season.
Lots of people know about holidays—one day a year set apart.
The church calendar is about seasons,
The church calendar is about seasons,
whole periods of time we enter into with a specific cry,
a particular intention, for a reason.
Advent is about anticipating the birth of Christ.
It’s about
longing, desire, that which is yet to come.
That which isn’t here yet.
And so
we wait, expectantly. Together. With an ache.
Because all is not right.
Something is missing."
The idea of waiting is not part of our cultural Christmas experience. The local Christmas music radio station in Anchorage began playing 24-hour Christmas music on November 4 this year. Christmas decorations were on offer in stores and holiday ads were running on TV before Halloween even happened. Our culture lures us into beginning Christmas earlier and earlier so that we can cram all the warm-hearted feelings, good will, joyful celebration, and holiday goodness into the longest possible "Jesus Birthday Season" without the waiting, the longing, and the reality of of our world and our lives needing the arrival of Jesus. We remove a season of waiting for a season of having.
· Alienation
· Disillusionment
· Resignation."
He went on to explain that "Alienation is the result of humans being commodified and thus separated from that which they produce. It also isolates us from one another as we are simultaneously objectified as consumers and subjected to an onslaught of ads that inform us we are not good enough, we don’t have enough and that the thing we don’t have would make us happy-attractive-successful. This leads to disillusionment because we buy stuff, we pay for services, we upgrade, we super-size … and yet it does not satisfy...The final stage is resignation. The machine is too big. It feels like we are just cogs in a giant mechanism of consumption, corruption and growing disparity. The game is rigged and we know it. But we need stuff so we work more than we ever have and are less satisfied. We watch the news and see how bad is out there and we want to retreat into our screens and games. From Candy Crush to Fantasy Football we are active participants relegated to passive spectators." (read the entire blog at: http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2014/11/27/wake-up-its-time-for-advent/)
So as we move steadily into the Advent Season we have a choice - rush to Christmas or linger in Advent. We can wisk away the waiting or linger in the longing for Jesus to come into our world and lives to be Emmanuel, God with us. We can have an Advent season and a Christmas day or the "Jesus Birthday Season." It is our choice.
Joel K
"The Waiting is the hardest part."
- Tom Petty
(2) Listen to the full Podcast at: http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2014/11/26/eat-more-turkey-here-is-some-sermon-prep/
that was great content. Thanks!
ReplyDelete