It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Advent: Part One
Thank you to those who are reading this post having borne with the long interval between it and my last post. This article’s title alludes to a song that I’ve found myself humming as I began my job as a Christmas temp recently. Yes, that’s right, Christmas temps start work in October. We haven’t yet had Halloween. We haven’t yet had Bonfire Night, Armistice Day, or, if we’re American, Thanksgiving. We haven’t had Advent. And yet the Christmas elves like me are already on the shop floors and let me tell you the decorations have gone up. It is on Advent that I wish to dwell here. To make a case that in Advent’s absorption into the ever-lengthening Christmastide we’ve lost something of great value. In future posts I hope to make suggestions about how we can change the way we practice Advent in order to get the most out of this season. However, I am aware that for many the idea of practicing Advent will be entirely alien, as it was for me until recently. As such, this post is my attempt to convince you that the practice of a liturgical year is helpful for our discipleship. This falls into three sections; the general reasons for a liturgical year, the Old Testament precedent for memorial seasons, and the reasons for Advent in particular.
Why Another Year?
I did not grow up in a church that placed a heavy emphasis on the liturgical calendar. Lent was only marked by a mention on the first Sunday of it some years, Passion week, Easter and Pentecost were marked, and Advent was marked by the use of an Advent wreath and occasionally a sermon series themed around the meanings ascribed to the candles of the Advent wreath. Other than that, it was filled with the Christmassy accoutrements of decorations, carols, and a Christingle service. As I remember it there was no great emphasis on Ash Wednesday, Ascension Day or Epiphany. The only concessions to the liturgical year that I recall at my university church were a particularly on point sermon series in Isaiah during the Advent period and a yearly carol service. There was also a remark from the lectern that since Advent is a season focused on Jesus’ return Advent calendars should really feature a picture of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.[1]
So why would I be advocating a use of the liturgical year? I can already imagine certain of my friends pointing to the influence of my year at an Anglican Bible college. However, I was actually made aware of the liturgical year in a compelling way before that, through an Advent sermon series from a Southern Baptist church. And it is the explanation they give which I think best conveys the potential value of practicing the liturgical year. They suggest the purpose of the liturgical year is ‘to reorient our hearts and minds away from the false stories of the world and back toward the one true story of the Bible — the Christian story’ via the use of rhythms, rituals, and other practices to form the time and space we inhabit into a reminder of that ‘one true story.’ Thereby helping us ‘live in that story every day as the people of God.’[2] We are living in a time when we are surrounded by other stories; by incessant advertising and an increased amount of television, even during our commutes. Therefore, the measures we take to reorient ourselves around the true story of the world are of immeasurable value. Indeed, we seem to recognise the value of focused periods used to re-centre ourselves around specific elements of that story in our ongoing practices of celebrating Christmas and Easter. In like manner, the other periods of the liturgical year and the associated practices can help us as embodied creatures to remember the truths underlying the world in which we live and our identity within it.
Festivals: A Thing of the Former Covenant?
The usefulness of embodied practices of remembrance is seen in the festivals of the Old Testament. The deliverance and exodus of God’s people is remembered with the Passover meal and a week-long abstinence from products containing yeast (Exodus 12; Leviticus 23:4–8). The giving of the Law is celebrated alongside the celebration of the first fruits of the agricultural year (Ex. 19:1–6; Lev. 23:15–22). The time spent in the wilderness is memorialised during the feast of booths (Lev. 23:33–43). The weekly practise of Sabbath reminds the people of the Lord’s rest after the work of creation was finished which humanity was intended to enter into (Ex. 20:8–11; Lev.23:3; see also Hebrews 4). In this way the religious life of the Old Testament people of God seems to reflect the value of physical practices and seasons as teaching implements to build up the people.
However, some might wonder whether these things, as part of the Old Testament cultic practices, are a part of the things which are no longer necessary because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, perhaps pointing to Galatians or Hebrews. Indeed, I want to affirm with these letters that these things are not necessary for our salvation. Indeed, as Romans 3–4 and Hebrews 10 suggests, they never actually were. But this does not negate their value as things which within Christian liberty might or might not be taken up as helpful. As New Testament scholars, such as Morna Hooker, have observed the fact that we see the Jerusalem church in Acts continuing to attend the Temple (Luke 24:50–53; Acts 2:46; 3; 21:17–28) is highly suggestive. Making it likely that the reason Hebrews reminds it readers of the superiority of Christ’s priesthood and sacrifice is not to command the reader to cease involvement in these things. Instead, it is probably intended to encourage them that when persecution cuts them off from them they have not lost out.[3] Indeed, the continuing value of embodied practices, such as Sabbath, can be seen in the reference to the Lord’s day in Revelation 1:10, and in this practice’s continued week in and week out use within the Church even to this day. Furthermore, the value of embodied practice as an aid to remembrance is also seen in Jesus’ institution of a physical meal as a remembrance of his sacrifice.
Advent: The Reason for the Season
We’ve seen the reasons for having practices which teach us through embodying lessons within our daily lives. Let’s turn to the reasons why it may be particularly helpful to us as we seek to live out our identity in Christ to reclaim the practices of Advent.
The practice of Advent seems to have emerged in the sixth century as a combination of practices from the Western and Eastern churches.[4] Within the Eastern church the festival of Epiphany had ‘strong baptismal connotations.’[5] Thus, the practice emerged of the weeks preceding Epiphany being a period of penitence in which people prepared for baptism. The other factor affecting the emergence of Advent was the tendency in the church of fifth-century Rome to consider Christmas as the first of the year’s festivals. Because the weeks before Christmas were the end of the year’s lectionary of readings ‘the eschatological theme strongly colouring the last weeks of the liturgical year continues to characterise Advent also.’[6] It is this combination of practices which led to the emergence of Advent as a period of penitence focused on the desire for things to come. It is a period of remembering the longing of God’s people for the first coming of the Messiah, which will be celebrated at Christmas. It is also a period of reorientation to await the Messiah’s second coming, waking us from our contentment to be satisfied with the world as it is. At its best Advent should prepare us, like those approaching baptism, to renounce the world, the flesh, and the Devil, by highlighting the inadequacy of this present age and pointing to the glory of the age to come.
You might ask why it is so important to be orientated rightly towards the future. Perhaps one of the most fundamental reasons for seeking to understand what will happen in the course of history is that this element of Christian teaching is foundational within the Bible. Graham Beynon, a minister and author, has observed the centrality of teaching on the future in the New Testament in the fact that only three short letters in the New Testament do not mention the future in some shape or form.[7] Moreover, where it is mentioned it often forms the foundation of the argument being made, e.g. see the mentions of the future in the Sermon on the Mount.[8] Furthermore, even if we aren’t consciously thinking about what the Bible tells us concerning the future we will still be being formed to think about the future in certain ways. The only difference is that the world will be doing the forming.[9] And as the world forms our understandings of the future it will have a different impact on our lifestyle as disciples as our worldview is distorted away from the truth through presuppositions such as YOLO or cloudy caricatures of heaven. The difference between how we face the world when we assume that we only live once and when we assume that what follows this world is, to quote C.S. Lewis’ work, “more like the real thing,” is inestimable.[10] It is for this reason that I want to commend the importance of spending time considering these truths. And, in doing so, to use not just intellectual means of learning but also the practical means of learning which the season of Advent offers to us.
I hope this article has managed to at least pique a curiosity about whether the style of embodied practices teaching specific truths can be helpful within our own patterns of spiritual disciplines. In particular I hope it has inspired you to consider the future coming of Jesus this Advent. In this vein I hope to supplement it soon with two further articles. One concerning an idea for how we might better observe both Advent and Epiphany, the other concerning why we might consider readopting the practice of fasting that has traditionally been a part of the Advent season. I hope that you will join me in these explorations.
Footnotes
[1] My apologies to the churches I have been a member of if my recollections have not done them justice, particularly if I failed to recall how things were when I was very young.
[2] The Village Church, Seasons: Enter the Story of Jesus, (2018), 6–7; https://www.tvcresources.net/resource-library/guides/seasons. For a more comprehensive case for the benefits of celebrating Advent do listen to the podcast by the Village Church on the subject; https://www.tvcresources.net/resource-library/podcasts/40-all-things-advent.
[3] Morna Dorothy Hooker, Continuity and Discontinuity: Early Christianity in Its Jewish Setting (London: Epworth, 1986), 14, 33, 72.
[4] The following discussion draws upon Anders Ekenberg, The Early History of the Liturgical Year, pp.12–13, accessed via https://www.academia.edu/15693997/The_Early_History_of_the_Liturgical_Year.
[5] Ibid., p.12.
[6] Ibid., p.13; Indeed, this eschatological theme of the lectionary for Advent continues to be seen for example in the daily readings laid out in the Book of Common Prayer with the last weeks of the year being devoted to the reading of Revelation and Isaiah, perhaps two of the most poignant books of the Bible for highlighting the false narratives of the world and pointing us to our future hope.
[7] Graham Beynon, Last Things First, (Nottingham: IVP, 2010), p.10.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p.11.
[10] C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, (London: Fontana Lions, 1980), p.160. Chapter 15, first published 1956.
