Advent Expectations
Homily for the first Sunday of Advent
Welcome to Advent. Though for us Christmas doesn’t really start until the evening of December 24, the secular holiday season is already in full swing. A few weeks ago Erin noticed that Kohls was playing Christmas music. This was before Thanksgiving, so they were easing into the season gently, with less jingle bells and snow, more, as she put it, “Christmas relationship problems.”
The main reason for the music of course is commercial—to remind people that Christmas is coming and they need to do their shopping. However, the music also says something about what Christmas means to our culture. Everyone knows that the winter holidays are supposed to be a special time for family, friends, celebration, giving. Yet, at the same time, the holidays put a keener edge on poverty and want. We try to remember especially at this time those families who struggle to put food on the table, presents under the tree. And poverty at Christmas isn’t limited to those who are poor. A deeper spiritual and emotional poverty—loneliness, broken hearts, broken families—is behind many of the most popular holiday songs.
Mariah Carey sang “All I want for Christmas is you.” This represents the romantic aspirations of the season. But other songs tell the other side of the story. More often than not, these romantic hopes don’t work out. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,” sang George Michael in the ‘80s. But sure enough, he got used and dumped, though hope springs eternal. Maybe this year it’ll be different. More recently pop star Ariana Grande approached the same theme with even less optimism and more Gen-Z realism. “Santa, tell me if he really cares / ’cause I can’t give it all away / If he won’t be here next year.” Santa, of course, is silent, though the relentlessly cheerful music jingles with sleigh bells.
The eternal optimism of Hallmark Christmas movies—another seasonal favorite, with their cosy stories and predictable outcomes—is very popular, but even their biggest fans understand that they are a form of escapism. We don’t really live in that world. The holiday season as we know it overpromises and underdelivers. Even when everything is going well for us, our lover is by our side, the kids are home for the holidays, the presents are under the tree and nostalgia is turned up to eleven, we can still feel the emptiness within, asking for something, someone, to fill it.
That’s why, amid all the tinsel and twinkle, the cookies and mistletoe, the Christian faith has a bigger and a better story to tell.
Sometimes people talk about “modern alienation” as if it were a problem unique to the modern world. And I agree that it’s gotten worse. But alienation is really the oldest human problem—older even than death.
God created us, human beings, to live in fellowship with him. Impossible as it may now seem, we were made to be friends with God! Just as the Holy Trinity exists in an eternal relationship of love between its three equal and eternal persons, human beings were made to reflect the glory of this love by living together in community, and man and woman in particular share a unique relationship of fruitful love.
And yet from the very beginning this all fell apart. We became estranged from God through sin, and the knock-on effects of this sundering alienated us from ourselves and one another. Humankind is scattered, suspicious, and separated. Men and women still desire one another, but often fail to find true intimacy and trust. Deep friendships are rare and risk betrayal. We don’t know what we want, and when we get it, we still aren’t happy.
Just turn on the radio at Christmas—this is the story you’ll hear.
But there’s much more to the Christian story. Even as Adam and Eve are leaving the garden to make their own way in the world, God promises that he is working on a plan to save them, and their children; a plan to restore us to the friendship and intimacy with God and one another that we were created for.
As his way of doing this, he chose a childless old couple, Abram and Sarai, and told them that he would create a family from them that would bless the whole world. In his time and in his way, he brought this to pass. Their descendants, the children of Israel, became God’s special chosen people, chosen as a witness to the world of what friendship with God could be.
Of course, Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants didn’t live up to this high calling. Neither do we. Nevertheless, God was (and is) faithful to them, and to us. The prophets proclaim this reality of God’s faithfulness to an unfaithful people, and call on him to fulfill his promises, to restore the world to wholeness and love.
We listen to the Hebrew Scriptures to know what we’re hoping for; we look to the New Testament to see it being fulfilled. The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ, the Baby of Bethlehem, the Rabbi of Galilee, the Crucified and Risen King of the Jews, as the one by whom and in whom all of these promises are made real for us. Paul writes of this, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The fellowship of his Son—that’s another way to say, friendship with God, that for which we were made, once impossible because of sin, now possible again, and accomplished for us by Jesus.
It’s all done. He’s done it all. And yet his work is not complete. In Advent we look ahead to his final return, when he will finish the job, when “the hopes and fears of all the years” will be answered once and for all. This will be a happy ending of such weight and magnificence that not even Hallmark movies would dare to hope for. “They will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
