An Advent of Darkness

This year has reminded me of something important in our Christian experience.

Advent is not Christmas.

It’s so easy to conflate the two, to act as if they are the same. Since October we’ve been seeing Christmas displays in store windows. In November radio stations began playing cheery songs of happiness and joy. Even in many of our churches we’re already singing, “Joy to the world our Lord has come.”

But that is all Christmas. It isn’t Advent.

Advent is a time in which we anticipate, we wait, and we long.

This year reminds us of that, painfully so. Many people will not be happy this Christmas. Their loved ones were killed in San Bernadino, or Paris, or Beirut. Their child passed too soon, they never got to hug their husband or wife that one last time, or authorities they thought would protect and defend their rights have begun being overtly racist, abusive, and hateful.

That is what Advent is all about, and it’s why my favorite song this time of year has always been O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

O come, Thou rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of hell they people save
and give them victory over the grave

O come, Thou dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death’s dark shadows put to flight

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel. 

This is Advent. It’s a time of longing in a world where the poor are oppressed, the marginalized are ridiculed, and the innocent are slaughtered on a daily basis. Advent is longing for resurrection in a world that is marked by death; it’s looking for peace amidst people whose only solution to everything is war; it’s aching for hope when all we see around us is despair.

We shouldn’t rush past that to get to the bright lights and cheery songs of Christmas. Because Advent is here to remind us that we live in the time of the already but not yet: Jesus has already come to earth and inaugurated his kingdom, but that kingdom has not taken hold of every heart of every person yet. We, too, long for Jesus to come; we, too, long for hope, peace, love, and joy in a world that seems to deny us all four.

Before we can celebrate Christmas, we must embrace the darkness. Because only by admitting that the darkness surrounds us and that we are in need of someone to free us from it will we be ready to hear the angels’ proclamation that God is at work among us in the most unlikely of places: a dirty stable among a marginalized clan on the edge of the empire.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.