For The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St.Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship History Course with Dan Wilt
On the outskirts of the Advent season, I was inspired to throw myself into the meaning and understanding of the season. However, when I discovered from the first moment that it would require searching my heart and repenting of sin, I have to say I wavered.
Until now, Advent has simply been a calendar with a picture of the Nativity or Santa on it from which I could retrieve chocolates at will, simply closing the little doors so no one would see if I was cheating the dates. It was a countdown to Christmas. A word I heard but of which I had no understanding. My ignorance was blissful in the way that I needed not put any effort into this, no soul-searching, no intellectual or spiritual process. All that was required was the last-minute gift shopping, a trip to Wal-mart and the taste of waxy chocolate.
With knowledge comes responsibility, though, and with responsibility can also come a great wealth of understanding and beauty. I now have the opportunity to become blissful in my understanding, and I am going to enjoy it fully, whether or not I have to repent.
The first thing I needed to know was what advent actually meant. So I looked it up. The definition is “a coming into place, view or being. Arrival”1 This clearly has nothing to do with shopping. It does have everything to do with the coming of Christ. And what found most enlightening was that is is not simply a season of remembering what was done at one point in time, but it is also a time to anticipate what is ahead. In identifying with history and the future, God comes into view in the present moments of redemption and conversion.
We are not simply remembering His coming once, but His continual entrance into our everyday moments of our lives. It is not just thinking toward His second coming for all the earth, but His redemption of our sin each day and hour. It’s the Kingdom again – the now and the not yet. The immediacy of the incarnation in our lives.
We long for the Messiah to come, and to break through our lives, just as He did 2000 years ago.
I was struck by the part that Isaiah plays in this. The message that he send to repent and turn to God, that the worship of Israel was empty and dead. 2 How often have I been frustrated when sitting in a worship service (or more often leading one) and wondering why the words seem so empty. Some days it is simply what we do together, and that is the reason I sing. But my desire was never to sing songs, but to worship with my whole self. As Isaiah is reminding Israel, I need to be reminded that when I turn to Him, He will bring deliverance. Of course, this is where repentance comes in.
No one wants some Isaiah or John the Baptist calling them a brood of vipers. So in this case, repentance on my own initiative seems a good idea. In this I know that I am asking God for a breakthrough. I am now expecting Him to come again in this season in my life how He has always come into time. And I expect that He will change me if I let him, and continue to change me as I remember Him and anticipate Him.
I have never known this season with such exquisite beauty as I do now. As Webber says, “Christmas spirituality acknowledges that your life in God is a gift of union with Jesus Christ and the calling to bring your life into His life.”.3
That is a gift I would rather receive over any other thing. Especially cheap, waxy chocolates.
1.advent. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/advent (accessed: November 14, 2008).
2. Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time, Baker Books, 2004, p.41
3. Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time, Baker Books, 2004, p.71
