Advent Faith

A man named Dan Wakefield was on a downhill spiral with drugs and alcohol. In his book, Returning, he tells the story of his mid-life return to church and a spiritual path -- as well as a new life of health. Journalist Bill Moyers says Wakefield's book is one of the most important memoirs of the spirit he has ever read. Here is what Wakefield says about his experience returning to church:

Once I began going to church, the age-old religious rituals marking the turning of the year deepened and gave a fuller meaning to the cycle of the seasons and my own relation to them. The year was not only divided now into winter, spring, summer, and fall, but was marked by the expectation of Advent, leading up to the fulfillment of Christmas, followed by Lent, the solemn prelude to the coming of the dark anguish of Good Friday that is transformed in the glory of Easter. Birth and death and resurrection, beginnings and endings and renewals, were observed and celebrated in ceremonies whose experience made me feel I belonged -- not just to a neighborhood and a place, but to a larger order of things, a universal sequence of life and death and rebirth...

Going to church, even belonging to it, did not solve life's problems -- if anything, they seemed to escalate again around that time -- but it gave me a sense of living in a large context, of being part of something greater than what I could see through the tunnel vision of my personal concerns. I now looked forward to Sunday because it meant going to church; what once was strange now felt not only natural but essential.ⁱ

There's another way to describe this phenomenon as well: One of my favorite spiritual mentors, Eugene Peterson, calls it "Being in a Story". It is the story of the Biblical witness. If you were part of the Bible study program Word and Witness here at Holy Cross some years back, you are familiar with the three legged stool that under girded that program: The legs of "Your story, My story, and THE story." THE story is the Biblical witness into which your story and my story fit. Without that larger context, without that vision of something greater, "our lives fragment into episodes and anecdotes", Peterson says, "a succession of jerky starts and gossipy cul-de-sacs." But in the church, we're in a story. A story in which "everything eventually comes together, a narrative in which all the puzzling parts finally fit and years later we exclaim, "'Oh, so that's what that meant!'"

Observing the seasons of church year is the means by which we collectively participate in that story together. Respecting the distinctions between the seasons of the church year is how we rehearse that story together. Today we begin a new church year with the season of Advent. As your bulletin says, today is the first Sunday in Advent, which is, in effect, "New Year's Day" for we who have chosen to live our lives in this larger context. So we could say "Happy New Year" to those of us who want help seeing through the tunnel vision of our personal concerns to something greater. Each season of the church year, in fact, has its own gift to give us as we surrender to being shaped by that larger context, to being shaped by THE story. "Being in a story," Peterson says, "means that we must not attempt to get ahead of the story -- skip the hard parts, erase the painful parts, detour the disappointments... God is telling this story, remember. It is a large... story. God does not look kindly on our editorial deletions. But he delights in our poetry..." says Eugene Peterson.ⁱⁱ

Advent is perhaps the most challenging part of the story, and the most difficult season of the church year, for us to practice with integrity. In a culture where Christmas decorations are put up in October, we've lost Advent completely or we've confused it with the Christmas or Holiday season in general, even in the church. But Advent and Christmas are not the same. Ironically, Advent and Christmas couldn't be further from being the same. The disciplines of Advent are watching, waiting, preparing, and hoping with both restraint and a quiet, confident joy. Observing Advent with integrity allows us to practice these disciplines together, in community. In a culture of instant gratification, observing Advent, especially during the "holiday" season, and practicing these disciplines at this time of year, is completely counter-cultural. When I try to truly observe Advent in December, I often feel like I might as well be Muslim or Buddhist, culturally speaking. Pastors who try to maintain the integrity of the Advent season during worship this time of year are often misunderstood to be "scrooges." One pastor suggested we resolve this by moving Advent to November. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it sure is a struggle.

And yet, the gift of a collective, communal observance of the church year with integrity -- the gift in this -- is that we learn together the disciplines we will need to carry us through when these seasons hit us over the head in our day to day lives. Knowing how to do Advent, for example, knowing how to wait, watch, prepare, and hope, comes in awfully handy during times of uncertainty: during pregnancy, for example, or even more, infertility; when we're waiting for that word of diagnosis; waiting for word on a potential job; preparing to finish a degree; when we're in the midst of transition and interim times; when we're planning for the future; when we're waiting for that loved one to return home; even, when we're waiting, as the Siegert family knows only too well after this past week, when we're waiting for that loved one to die; and when we find ourselves waiting to be reunited with loved ones on the other side of this life.

Today, then, on this first Sunday in Advent, I would like to explore together, very briefly, what Advent faith is like. The way I want to explore Advent faith with you today is the way I would explore it with children: very simply, very briefly, and through the five senses. What does Advent faith smell like? What does Advent faith sound like? What does Advent faith taste like? What does Advent faith feel like? What does Advent faith look like?

What does Advent faith smell like? Every year as Thanksgiving approaches, I vow I'm not going to cook this year. We're going to go out, or maybe we'll splurge and order our Thanksgiving dinner from Schoolcraft College's American Harvest restaurant. And then the thought of not having the smell of that turkey roasting on Thanksgiving morning drives me to surrender. Advent faith smells like the house on Thanksgiving morning, with the smell of turkey permeating the air, with the turkey already in the oven, but not yet on the table, creating that sense of anticipation, making our mouths water as we look forward to sitting down together at the Thanksgiving feast.

What does Advent faith sound like? Our organist, Barb Myers, is going to help me demonstrate this. {Barb plays a modulation progression from one key to another.} What Barb just did was move from one key to the next. In music, there is a process to follow when there is a change in key. Often, when you move from one key to the next, you gradually progress to a chord that has elements common to the previous key as well as elements common to the next key. This is called the "pivot chord." (Play the pivot chord.) The pivot chord, like Advent, includes the "already" of the previous key as well as the "not yet" of the next key. On the First Sunday in Advent, we anticipate Jesus' second coming, even as we know he has already come. So this pivot chord is what Advent sounds like. (Play it again.) And just to put it in the context of the larger musical story, I'm going to ask Barb to play the entire chord progression from the old key to the new, pausing on the pivot chord, so you can hear how Advent fits into the larger story, in which everything eventually comes together. (Play progression.) Advent faith sounds like the pivot chord when the music is changing keys.

What does Advent faith taste like? Whenever we celebrate Holy Communion, we participate in what we call in our song a "foretaste of the feast to come." Even as we trudge along in this life, we are privileged to gather around a holy table that abides beyond the boundaries of time and space and allows us to step in to the "already and not yet" of Advent. Advent faith tastes like a simple wafer and a sip of wine.

What does Advent faith feel like? If you were here last Sunday in time for the "Thanksgiving for Baptism," if you got sprinkled by the Bishop with water from the Baptismal font, you know what Advent faith feels like. It feels like getting wet -- wet with the pregnant promise that comes to us in the waters of Baptism -- the promise of freedom from the power of sin and freedom for life in Christ. Advent faith feels like the waters of Baptism.

What does Advent faith look like? Advent faith looks like the Swanson family, gathering here today at the 11:00 service for the Baptism of newborn twins Peter and Andrew. The birth of these babies was far more than a nine month wait. Their presence with us today is the culmination of years of practicing the Advent disciplines of watching, waiting, preparing and hoping -- years of struggle with infertility even as they endured the suffering and death of the babies' paternal grandmother, Harriet, from cancer. Today, we glimpse how everything eventually comes together. And yet, today, even as we all see how the puzzling parts finally fit into the larger story, this family practices the Advent faith they have learned so well. Sometime shortly after the first of the year, our choir will have the privilege of wearing beautiful new robes given to the church by Frank Swanson in memory of Harriet. Today, Grandpa Frank, throughout the baptismal rite, will be holding the candle his wife Harriet received when she was baptized. It will be burning with the eternal light of Christ. Grandma Harriet's good friend, Audrey Powell, will light baby Peter's and Andrew's baptismal candles from Harriet's candle, bearing witness to the eternal light and life we all inherit through the promise of Baptism. Advent faith looks like the Swanson family.

Maybe you've figured out by now, as I have over the years, that the season of Advent is really very much like the season of life itself. Advent is a microcosm of life. We live constantly in the tension between the already and the not yet. Always watching, waiting, preparing, and hoping for something or someone. And so learning the disciplines of Advent, rehearsing collectively this part of the larger story, can be quite useful, especially when we find ourselves trapped in the tunnel vision of our personal concerns. The gift of Advent, as well as the gift of that larger context or the BIG story, ultimately, is that in all the seasons of our lives, we are not alone. Immanuel -- that word we will be hearing over and over again these next several weeks in familiar Christmas Carols, literally means "God with us." It is that larger context -- the big story of "God with us" that makes the puzzling parts finally fit. It is "God with us," -- Immanuel -- for whom we begin to watch, wait, prepare, and hope today.

Pastor Dana Runestad

First Sunday in Advent

28 November, 2004

Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Livonia, Michigan

ⁱ Quoted in Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, New York: Scriber, 1996, pp. 478-9.
ⁱⁱ Euguene Peterson, "Being in A Story," in Living the Message, San Francisco, Harper, 1996, p. 327.
ⁱⁱⁱ This suggestion appeared some years ago in an article in Lutheran Partners magazine.

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