While the rest of the world thinks that this is Christmas-time, we Christians believe differently. And because we’re the ones who created this holiday, our opinion ought to count for something.
The church actually has a whole calendar of its own, complete with seasons, to guide our worship of the Lord throughout the year. The Christian year begins with Advent, the season we’re in right now, to guide our expectation and hope of the Lord’s coming. Advent is followed by the Christmas season, which begins on Christmas day and ends on Epiphany, the holiday celebrating the visit of the three wise men. (The “twelve days of Christmas,” by the way, are the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany.) The next season is Lent, 40 days of reflection and repentance leading up to Easter. Our Easter lasts for 50 days until Pentecost. And the rest of the year is known by the lackluster moniker of “Ordinary Time.”
The name of our current season, Advent, is derived from the Latin word for coming or arriving. Everyone around us is singing that “Santa Claus is coming to town,” while we declare that the Lord Jesus is coming. My recent series of sermons and devotions considered the promise of Christ’s return that we find in the book of Revelation. Our world may be a crazy, messed-up place that brings heartache and grief (especially in 2020!) but we look to the time when Christ will return to destroy the power of evil and death and to gather his people to himself. The day is coming, but in the meantime we wait.
We find guidance for our worship and devotion to the Lord as we await his second coming by revisiting the words and events of those who awaited his first coming so long ago. Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets declared the message of the coming Messiah, and individuals such as Mary and Joseph displayed great courage and faith in the events leading up to his coming. My sermons during this Advent will focus on John the Baptist, the person God sent to prepare the way for Christ’s coming.
Our observance
of Advent suggests a reflection on two questions:
1. How am I
preparing myself for Christ’s coming? Unlike Santa Claus, Jesus does not keep a
naughty list and a nice list. He offers
his grace and love to all who open their hearts to him. The problem for us is that after we’ve opened
our hearts to him, we close them again so easily. Repentance, or turning our lives to Christ,
is not a one-time event. It is a
continual act of preparation.
2. How am I
helping others prepare for Christ’s coming? We each in our own
ways share in John the Baptist’s work of preparing people to receive our
King. No one but the Holy Spirit himself
can bring a person to Christ, but he does his work through us. We can make the most of the opportunities and
gifts he sends our way to help others discover “the wonders of his love.”
