It wasn’t until I was grown that I remember hearing the word Advent. Advent is the four Sundays before Christmas. The “Advent story” of my faith tradition was full of angels, shepherds, wise men, a bright star shining on a dark night and Santa at the church door handing out bags of candy after the Christmas Eve service. When I came to the University of Illinois more than 40 years ago to work in campus ministry, I attended a church that went all out on celebrating Advent. In particular, church leader Barbara Linder instilled an appreciation for Advent that still grips me. More than 30 Advent books line the shelves of my library, and I have bought two more in the last month.
While you will not find the word Advent in the Bible, it is a time-honored tradition in many churches around the world. Advent comes from the Latin word adventus that means “coming” or “visit.” During Advent Christians watch for the coming of Jesus, keeping in mind both Advents, the first in Bethlehem and the second yet to come.
Advent wreaths typically have four candles. Three purple candles often represent
royalty but also repentance and even lament and sorrow. The pink candle denotes joy. Often during the first two Sundays of advent purple candles are lighted as the faithful consider the pain of their own sin and the sorrow from so much heartache in the world. Using words at the end of the book of Revelation they cry: “Come, Lord Jesus. Come!”
The first Advent I ever remember feeling palpable sorrow and tension was nearly 40 years ago. One early December afternoon sitting in the Illini Union cafeteria, I read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.” It is his first-hand account of 6 survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Printed in 1946, it never has been out of print. I was so engrossed, I lost track of time. By late afternoon, I had not only finished the book, but on my yellow legal pad had written several pages of thoughts about war and human depravity, including my own, and what it means for humankind to try and live at peace on the same planet. Was it even possible, I asked? When I left the student union, it was already dark. Walking across campus I kept repeating, “What in the Sam Hill is going on down here anyway?”
Driving home, I thought of Charles Wesley’s Christmas hymn, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.” The first line stuck in my mind. “Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free.” Had people truly been set free? That afternoon it didn’t feel like it.
A decade and a half later I had a similar experience, albeit one with an indescribable personal anguish I didn’t feel when reading Hersey’s book. My son Ian died at age 21 just weeks before Christmas. My family and I decided to leave the country and fly to Cozumel. We didn’t want to make merry with anyone. For reasons I don’t remember I carried along a book by Os Guinness titled “Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil.” Guinness argues that every life gets put to the test, and he ponders how people of faith might stay the course when facing seemingly impossible challenges tinted with evil. Never had I imagined that at age 50 I would be a parent thrust into the club of those whose child preceded them in death. For days I sat on the Cozumel beach, staring at the ocean, reading Guinness’s book and wondering what kind of faith, if any, I would keep in light of my son’s death and in view of the pulsating pain and sorrow I saw wherever I looked.
This Advent, like so many in the world, I am pondering the intransigent struggles in Israel and in the Middle East. My heart is heavy as I try to pray for peace and justice. I don’t like imagining what may lie ahead. I am reading Kelley Nikondeha’s “The First Advent In Palestine—Reversals, Resistance, And The Ongoing Complexity Of Hope.” She writes, “The first advent was about the arrival of God into a world of woe.” Every Advent since, we are invited to grapple with what Jesus’s coming means to the fraught landscapes holding our world together.
Advent is unfolding for you, and for me, and for those in Israel, even as Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs mourn their thousands of losses from the last two months. The gate to Egypt is shut. Pursued as they were by Roman soldiers in first-century Palestine, by God’s grace and mercy the Holy Family somehow made it to Egypt. We are here watching and longing and looking and hoping for the arrival of God’s son—not as a baby in a manger but in the clouds as heaven opens up for his second coming. The words emblazoned on his dazzling robe will be obvious to all: “King of Kings and Lord of Lords!”
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