Let the Church exult and sing
praise at the birth of the Birth of the Most High
For both heights and depths stand illumined at His Epiphany.
Blessed is He at whose birth all receive joy!
– Mary and the Magi, Anonymous
“The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12).
Advent has always struck me as a strange time. The season straddles past, present, and future with dizzying effect. We pray for things we’ve already been given. We expect things that have already happened. We (more or less overtly) put ourselves in a present that’s not our own, celebrating the birth of Jesus as though it were today. We declare “peace on earth!” with the heavenly throng as wars rage and anxiety reigns. Of course, time has the power to render the strangest things mundane. The hymns, the symbols, the stories, the rituals—they’re all quietly displaced from their native multichromatic and textured landscape to grey, vague nostalgia (or utility!).
The strangeness of Advent isn’t accidental, a bridge we can cross with a little more context or moral fine-tuning. Rather, it’s essential. The birth of Jesus puts us in this situation. It inflexibly determines the space we occupy. The apostle Paul writes, “You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). This metaphor seems simple enough: you’ve been asleep during the night, but it’s close to daybreak and time to wake up. The difficulty comes in that “sleep” here is the entire present arrangement (“this world” or “this age” as he puts it earlier; Romans 12:2). It’s difficult to imagine—life without an overwhelming appetite for things rather than God, without strife woven into the fabric of our biology, our day-to-day, our society, and our world, even our Church. However, that’s precisely the strange situation in which the birth of Jesus puts us. The day will soon break upon the dream in which we’ve been lost, so we need to wake up! Paul writes, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). It’s difficult to imagine, but the coming dawn undoes the limits our imaginations place here. The way to God is open and the road to peace paved in Christ.
This Advent, I invite you to meditate with me upon Jesus. Let’s posture ourselves toward the coming day, waking up from our self-centered ways of organizing the world, opening our eyes in faith to the situation we are in before him.
Further Reading: Psalm 122; Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44
Written by Guest House Theologian, Tim Morgan. These reflections are a complimentary addition to our Advent Blend Coffee Bags. Scan the QR code each day to read the most recent reflection.
More Advent reflections can be found here.