What Is Advent?
The word Advent comes from the Latin word ‘adventus’ which means ‘arrival.’ Its verb form ‘advenire’ means ‘to come.’ The season of Advent is a season of waiting — waiting for one to come. For when he comes, all things will be made new, pain will be washed away, tears will be wiped away, and death will be no more. He came once, and we trust that he will come again. And every Advent season, we approach this season in this same anticipation. N. T. Wright likens the rhythms of the liturgical church calendar to spokes on the wheel of a bicycle. Just as the spokes hit the ground rhythmically and in order, we likewise enter into each season of the liturgical church calendar. In our church calendar, we go from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter and to Pentecost. And just as the traveler might expect to sojourn from one place to another with the expected spokes that land on the ground, we move into each calendar year as sojourners who move from one part of life to another. And as we enter each season rhythmically and in order, we trust that our God travels with us and gives us the tools we need to travel from one season to the next.
“The reality is that time is a stream we are swept into. Time is a gift from God, a means of worship. I need the church to remind me of reality: time is not a commodity that I control, manage, or consume. The practice of liturgical time teaches me, day by day, that time is not mine. It does not revolve around me. Time revolves around God — what he has done, what he is doing, and what he will do.”
- Tish Harrison Warren
We enter into this practice, as God’s people always have. Just as Israel had built in rhythms and festivals to remind them of their redemption, the great story of the Exodus, the church enters into these rhythms to cultivate the practice of reorienting our often disjointed days to the Author of life, whose ultimate Story anchors us through all of life’s tumultuous waves, as the one ties and holds all parts together.
In the Advent season, we join in with our siblings of faith in the past, who were longing for the first Advent of Jesus. In the protracted silence of 400 years (ten generations), the prophets of Israel had not spoken. They were waiting for one to come, to burst through the silence and into the darkness. They were waiting for a King to come to rescue them and to fulfill all the promises of written for and to them from the penmanship of our God who never reneges on any of his promises. And so, when Jesus came to his people in the incarnation, it was to fulfill something long awaited and longed for. And while we reflect back upon the incarnation, where the Author of life entered into the plot as the “Word who became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14), we join in with the longing of God’s people past, present, and future. For we are all longing for Jesus to come again. And the promise of the Scriptures is that when he comes again, he comes yet again to dwell with his people.
Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. he will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be morning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
- Revelation 21:3-4 (ESV)
For we look around us, and we may observe the brokenness and maladies of our surroundings. Some of us may have observed sad moments in this past year. Some of us may be reminded of sad stories each time the holidays come around. Some of us may be going through seasons of hurt right now. And perhaps, some of these deep hurts that haven’t been given air. Whether it’s missing someone or grieving some for of loss, Advent is the season that doesn’t push away the tears but gives meaning and fuller definition to the sadness and heartbreak. Advent joins our silenced hurts with the myriad of people who were longing for our Savior in silence. In the midst of it all, God has not left us. But in fact, he is and has always been ever present in our laments and sorrows.
Some of us may observe repeated cycles of sin that happen around us or even within us, and we’re longing for Jesus to come and to put a halt to these habits and patterns. We believe in a Story where love conquers over evil and hatred. And yet, when winds of evil and wickedness blow through and into our dwelling places, we are left wondering when our God will seal us away from sin and evil once and for all. Because Advent is not a season where we suppress the sad stories. But we let them all hang out. For it’s into this kind of world that Jesus committed himself into. He was born into the bloody mess of a manger and into the story of scandal in the virgin birth. Jesus knows about all that’s broken and messy within and around you. And he invites us that we let one another know as well.
In this season of Advent, we come in trust of our God who came to be amongst us and promises to be with us. For Immanuel — God with us — is not only his name but his everlasting commitment. That Jesus is ‘God with us’ — in the midst of the storms, in the midst of the darkness, in the stillness of sacred wonder, and in the promise of making all things new.
