Gaudete? Really!?!

It's Advent again.  Advent began on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  In the sermon that day, I talked about how disorienting a transatlantic flight can be.  You start out at home, fly 10-12 hours, and end up half-way around the world and seven hours ahead of the people you left behind.  At least when flying across country, you can look down and see things that you  imagine are familiar.  In the day time you might see a patchwork of fields or a mountain range and think, "that's Iowa" or  "that's Colorado," but when you fly over the ocean, there is no topography, no familiar terrain.  And when you land, you have to keep reminding yourself that while you're eating lunch, the folks at home are just waking up.

It's interesting to watch how airline passengers deal with the time change.  Some people change their watches as soon as they sit down.  Others wait for take-off.  The ones who are reluctant to deal with change wait until they land.  And even some who try to change with every time zone.

The time change that is Advent is disorienting too.  For centuries, the church has been saying "Wait," but every year, the marketplace begins celebrating earlier and earlier.  On Halloween this year, I heard two local radio stations playing Christmas music round the clock - that adds up two months of Christmas music. 

It's said that familiarity breeds contempt. I don't know that overexposure will lead to contempt for Christmas, but like overexposure to the elements, it can leave us numb and unfeeling.  The main focii today seem to be spending and nostalgia.  The marketplace wants us to spend more and more, and it's hoped that nostalgia will induce us to do so.  Instead of worshipping the newborn king, we'll be worshipping our memory of that Red Ryder BB Gun or a sled named "Rosebud."

But those of us in liturgical churches find ourselves in the season of Advent, at least while we're inside the walls of our worship spaces.  Advent is not so much as season of penitance as it is a season of solemn waiting and preparation.  But John the Baptist doesn't always play by those rules.  The last of the prophets, Johnnie B. shouts that we're all a brood of vipers.  The irony is that this happens on Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday when we light the pink candle on the Advent wreath.  Gaudete is Latin for rejoice.  Meanwhile John hurls insults and threats.  It's all a little disorienting.

The prophets that came before John were speaking to a disoriented people. The people of Israel were the people of the covenant.  God promised to make them a great nation. But they kept wandering away from God.  Renigging on the deal with God, over and over, Israel was eventually led away into captivity, into the disorientation of slavery.  The people who had been asked to set their lives to Kairos, God's time, found themselves in the Babylonian time zone.

As our Eucharistic prayer says, again and again God sent the prophets to call us back.  And eventually, when that didn't work, God sent his son.  But even as we prepare for our holy rememberance of the breaking of God's kingdom into the world, we look to the future when that Kingdom will be fulfilled.  Again, all a little disorienting.

Herbert O'Driscoll writes about this season of expectation:

Advent is a season when Christians prepare to recall something that happened long ago.  But why go on recalling a memory?  Because this particular memory is of something or someone who by entering past time changed the meaning of time and gave us a new way of thinking about the future.  This memory on which Christian faith is founded (in this seaon the birth of Jesus Christ) creates for us the hope of a time when what we saw come true in him (ultimate love and the capacity to conquer death) is what we will see come true for the whole creation.  That is the mystery and the hope, the dream if you will, which the whole season of Advent expresses.  Its scriptures, its psalms, its hymns, its homilies or sermons are all trying to express at least of facet of this hope.

Ironically, what the world needs is not nostaligia but hope.  In fact, maybe all this nostaligia is simply reflecting a yearning for a time when we did feel hope.  For those of us who try to keep Advent, the running theme during the darkest days of the year, during the coldest months, is hope.  Hope that tells us that, indeed, the Word was made flesh and dwellt among us, and dwells among us still.

Note:  The second image is of Salisbury Cathedral during their Festival of Advent Lessons and Carols.