Advent

Yesterday began Advent. To celebrate this most auspicious occasion, Joe and I went to Target, the place where dreams are made and realized.

During Christmas, as you know, the most wonderful places on earth are:
1. Target
2. Starbucks
3. The North Pole
4. Whole Foods
5. Church

in that order.

There were these giant ornaments hanging from the ceiling, and sparkly lip gloss, and snowman cookie jars, and candy canes in a billion flavors, and body wash that smelled like eggnog. It was magical.

Pope Benedict XVI says that "the purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope. It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope."

Well, my memory of goodness was certainly awakened whilst smelling lactose-heavy alcoholic-holiday-drink-scented body wash.

Advent is the cousin of Lent: they are both times for increased awareness; they are times when we are instructed to "Wake up! Stay awake!" and realize the blessings and love we have received. During these times of preparation we are to reflect, ponder, discover, become, transform, as we await in excitement and wonder.

It is strange that we spend a whole season waiting for a helpless baby, and stranger still that we would devote a season to awaiting his death. Neither one gives us the complete answer; neither one brings ultimate fulfillment to our time on earth.

The Jews awaited a Messiah who would bring final world peace, the rebuilding of the Temple, and restore the homeland in Israel.

The Messiah who came did none of this. The Messiah who came enjoyed fishing. He was also kind of a chatterbox. He worked on construction projects, got sick, and became well again. He ate food and took baths. He told people to take care of each other--to feed and love each other no matter what. He told us to stop judging other people. Then he died.

In fact, the three Wise Men who came parading into town on camels all the way from Persia just to pay a visit to the baby Messiah brought gifts foreshadowing Jesus' life:
a) gold, shockingly enough, was of very high value and symbolized kingship on earth
b) frankincense was a symbol of high priestship
c) and myrrh, an embalming oil, symbolized death.

Jews expected the Messiah to arrive with a lot of pomp and circumstance, or maybe a big laser light show in the sky, or probably a flashy musical number with sequined blazers and miniskirts made of fringe.

Instead, his birth was announced by a lone star over Judea, in the midst of much tumult and mourning.

While he was expected to bring immediate peace and end to suffering, Christ's birth instead inspired the local king, who was a serious d-bag, to kill all baby boys under the age of two.

Recently I read an essay written by the father of a girl my age who was hit by a truck and killed while biking home from her job at a coffee shop near my apartment. The father wrote five pages of memories of his daughter, from the time she was a baby up until this year, and concluded by lamenting that he was not able to stand in front of the truck and protect her.

"I ache," he wrote, "I howl."

"I howl" reminded me of this nature show I watched once about elephants. The show claimed that elephants experience powerful emotions, which is most evident when they are in mourning. After one of the elephants was killed by poachers, the entire herd immediately gathered around the body in a large circle. Then they started stomping their feet and crying, only their cry was enormous and lingering, a unified sobbing like the howl of wolves. It didn't sound like any noise you'd expect could come from an elephant; it was so loud and terrible and sad.

I imagine that all of Judea erupted in howls from mothers as King Herod's army killed these baby boys; I imagine a chorus of howls that soared into the sky and pierced the clouds and brought down sheets of rain for days and days.

I imagine the baby Jesus, safe in the arms of his parents who escaped the massacre by fleeing to Egypt; I imagine his soft whimpering against the faint echoes of the howling audible all the way from Judea.

This is not really what the Jews were bargaining for when they asked for a savior.

And this year, Christmas will not bring final peace to the many wars that many nations are fighting around the world, it will not end AIDS and poverty and violence, and despite the marketing efforts of department stores and malls, it probably won't heal our sulking economy. Though Advent leans, aches, aspires toward Christmas, Christmas will not be the be-all-end-all of our year's suffering and fear.

However, Advent will open the doors of hope, and Christmas will charge in, with bells on. Christmas renews our faith that Christ was born, Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

Even though Advent technically prepares us for Christmas, it really prepares us for Easter, when Jesus ascends to heaven and assures us his enduring peace. The Christmas story begins in a place called Bethlehem, Bet Lechem, which translates to "House of Bread." And the Christmas story ends during Easter, when Jesus breaks bread for us, then his body.

Much like the expectant Jews, we have no idea what Christ's return will actually look like. I have a friend who believes it will occur when all of humanity creates the living image of God on earth, when the physical earth is restored to a place of unity, love, peace, and other words you might find in the form of Chinese symbols as tattoos.

I have other friends who believe that the Second Coming will look a lot like that scene in "Waiting for Guffman" when Eugene Levy, dressed as a Martian, comes down from the sky in a UFO with an erie green light in the background. The townsfolk think his vehicle is "one of them new feed storage bins" but soon realize it is a spaceship from Mars, as Eugene Levy breaks into song about how boring life is on The Red Planet and the whole town does The Robot in unison.

We don't really know. We do know that there will someday be a time of everlasting peace. We may see it in our lifetime and we may not.

So, we continue to live our lives in expectation; life itself is an Advent. We live our lives in vigilant waiting of the final coming of Christ. We are free to live in joy, we are free to live without judgment or fear. We are free to mourn, and free to know that our souls have known a better life than this one. We will not make the world perfect, we may not see its completion, but we are free to love and give and shower blessing upon friend and stranger alike until we see fulfillment and peace.

During Christmas we are joyful, despite that we live in the midst of suffering, howling, ache. The world is not as it should be, but the coming Christ and his presence among us give us reason to live in hope: we are loved, and we are never alone.

When God appeared in our grieving world dressed in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, he did not bring finality to our fragile earth but a beginning: the beginning of a time when the soul felt its worth, and the weary world rejoiced, for yonder broke a new and glorious morn. And just as loud and powerfully as the howling from Judea, angels erupted into song, their hallelujahs heard throughout the world and skies.

Fall on your knees, o hear the angel voices! O Night Divine, when Christ was born!