Advent – Vita pastoralis

Just So We’re Clear, Mary Did Know

This is silly. I can’t believe I’m doing this. (So don’t do it, LeCroy.) Sigh. I’m gonna do it.

There’s this song. It’s schmaltzy and sentimental, like many of the contemporary Christian songs I grew up with. If you like this song, I advise you to stop reading. Because I’m going to trash it.

I grew up in the glorious heyday of CCM, and I loved every minute of it. I went to their concerts. I sang their songs in church services and in youth talent competitions. I bought their tapes, read their books, and had their posters on my bedroom wall. Like most Evangelical teen boys growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s I had a crush on Amy Grant. Later I had one on Rebecca St. James. I listened to the local CCM station non-stop, even as a kid sending in some of my meager dollars for their pledge drive. I’m not really cynical or bitter about it. I am mostly appreciative of such a wholesome upbringing in a non-ironic way. The point is, I’m an insider offering insider critique.

Here’s my critique: “Mary Did You Know?” is a terrible song.

I mean, the tune is catchy enough. It sticks in your head like many of CCM’s greatest hits. There’s nothing like a good spirit-filled musical climax or key change to grease the skids on a flagging worship service (I grew up Pentecostal. Key changes were a means of grace for us. The Spirit seemed to always coincide with the high notes.). Aesthetically, it fits in with the era in which it was written. It’s in the Bill Gaither milieu, so it’s melodically rangy and adeptly uses musical climax to stir the emotions. The original recording was by Michael English in 1991. Michael English is an incredible singer. I saw him live once, because of course I did. You have to give that original a listen. Hoo, boy. It’s fantastic (now I’m being nostalgic and a little bit ironic, but in a good way). The music is Phil Collins and the vocals are Michael McDonald. There’s even a third verse drum entrance crescendo à la “In the Air Tonight.” So, as far as that goes, it’s not bad. In fact if you love 80’s music it’s glorious, if about a decade late as most CCM is.

But the lyrics. Ugh.

The author, Mark Lowry, is a great guy. He’s a comedian and singer who tours with Bill Gaither. But he’s not a biblical scholar or theologian, bless his heart.

I mean, the song is fine. If you like it, listen to it. Like the old adage about wine, if you enjoy it drink it. If you like Boone’s Farm, slurp it up, my friend. No judgment here.

But just so you know: Mary knew.

This is my biggest problem with the song. It’s inaccurate and unhelpful. (But, pastor, I just listen to it because I like the beat). We can go line by line through the song to illustrate this (and don’t worry, I will), but in general it presents a version of femininity in Mary that is not true to her or the other heroines of the Bible. It presents her as a clueless passenger in this journey instead of one of the key players. It woefully downplays the importance of her role. Not only did Mary have the perilous job of carrying the God-Man in her body to full term, consider this: the infant mortality in the Roman Empire was about 30%, and an additional 30% of children did not reach adulthood. That’s only a 40% chance of Jesus living to the age of 20. And that’s not even taking to account the fact that people were out there actively trying to kill him. Powerful people. With armies.

Mary’s job was to feed him, clothe him, and keep him safe. She also taught the young boy manners and took him to church. He learned to speak by imitating her. He had her accent. The Eternal Word of God learned human speech from this marvelous woman by watching her lips and imitating her sounds. And all indications are that she did it for the latter half of his life as a single mother.

She did all of this while remaining faithful. She did not take the apple, as her mother Eve did. She was graced by God and did not waiver. She wept at the foot of the cross when the Apostles fled in fear. She was in the upper room on Easter evening and on Pentecost. She helped Luke write his Gospel. This was a strong woman, who stands at the pinnacle of all the heroines of the Old Testament. Higher than Deborah. Higher than Jael. She may not have crushed heads with her hands, but she raised the head-crusher par excellence. She was a Miriam (that’s her name, by the way) seeing her baby boy down the Nile to safety and then raising him to be the deliverer of her people. She is a leaping, dancing prophetess, singing on the shore of the Red Sea with the drowned army of the enemy lying submerged within. Only that beachhead was not in Arabia but in the hill country of Judea in response to a leaping, dancing fetus and a blessed declaration by her auntie. Yet the song is just as victorious and prophetic as the song of her namesake centuries before.

She knew.

Let’s put this to rest. The image of Mary as a passive, quiet bystander who just happened to be the human incubator of the most high, praised for her purity and her quiet virtue, is a product of wrongheaded ideas about sex, purity, and the human body which sadly dominated the early church and the middle ages. Mary was not virtuous because she was a virgin. She was a virgin because she was virtuous. And she didn’t stop being virtuous the moment she was no longer a virgin. I almost typed when she lost her virginity, as if virginity is a thing that can be lost and when you lose it you are damaged goods. There are some purity preachers who go about the country giving Christian teen girls shiny brand new pennies and telling them not to lose their virginity because then they will become tarnished. They need to keep their pennies shiny and bright so that they can give that gift to their husbands. What a load of hot steaming garbage! If a girl falls into sexual sin she hasn’t become any more tarnished than she already was, for heaven’s sake. She needs to repent of that sin and endeavor towards chastity in the future, but she isn’t damaged goods. The gift that she will eventually give her husband is not her virginity, but her very self and her promise to be his faithful wedded wife. We need to put this thing to bed for good. By the way, those same preachers don’t give the teen boys shiny pennies. What sexist nonsense!

I digress. Though, the image of Mary as meek and mild does come from that same purity culture. I could give you an in-depth history of the development of sexual purity culture, how it began as a result of the cessation of martyrdom and the rise of the monastic class in the early Middle Ages, but I’ll spare you that. The high-point of this insanity is demonstrated in the medieval idea that when Jesus was born he did not pass through Mary’s vagina, but miraculously passed through her belly, leaving her maidenhead intact. I’m not joking. Here’s the point: Mary’s virginity was not a virtue in and of itself. It was important that she be a virgin in order to serve as a symbol of the new creation and to prove that she conceived by the Holy Spirit. To further demonstrate this, Rahab is a mother of Jesus and she was decidedly not a virgin. Her former life of prostitution did not make her unworthy of mothering Messiah.

Mary was not a hapless damsel in distress, the prototypical medieval maiden cloistered in her embroidery with her ladies-in-waiting. She was a warrior princess. She was Eowyn of Rohan singing and slaying. Her Magnificat, sung on that Judean hillside, was a response to the devil whispering to her, tempting her to the apple saying, “No man can kill me.” That song and her courageous life afterward is her reply, “I am no man.”

She knew. Frankly it is insulting to ask her the question.

Let us analyze the lyrics of this song.

“Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?” Well, no, she wasn’t omniscient, but she did tell the servants at the wedding of Cana, “Do whatever he tells you,” (John 2:5). She knew her boy was a miracle worker.

“Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?” Absolutely, unequivocally, yes. She named him “Yahweh Saves.” The angel Gabriel told her to name him that (Luke 1:31). And the same angel told her husband this, “He will save his people from their sins,” (Matt. 1:21). I assume she and Joseph talked. Further, Zechariah, after his son John the Baptist was born, sang, “You have raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of your servant David,” (Luke 1:69). Old Zech was long gone when Luke wrote his gospel. Who opened up the family photo album for him? It was Mary. She is the source for the material in the first two chapters of Luke. She knew.

“Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?” Yes, see above.

“This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you?” Yes. She literally named him “Deliverance.” Again, see above. Though I will grant that this is some nice word play.

“Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?” Yes, see Isaiah 28:19, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18, and Matthew 11:5. Also see above that she knew he could work miracles.

“Mary, did you know that your baby boy would calm a storm with His hand?” Again, she was not omniscient, but she knew he would have power over nature as the divine Son of God. Gabriel told her that she would be impregnated by the Holy Spirit and that she would give birth to the Son of the Most High. Again, due to the evidence in John 2, apparently, she understood that meant that he had divine power. Elijah and Elisha demonstrated power over nature, so it’s no stretch to think that Jesus would. Plus, Gabriel told Mary and Joseph that he would be called Immanuel, God with us. She knew.

“Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?” Well, technically, he hadn’t done that. He didn’t have legs until he was born. Did she know he was a pre-existent deity? See above.

“And when you kiss your little baby you’ve kissed the face of God?” Ok, here’s the only one where I admit she probably didn’t know this. But maybe she did. All the evidence was there. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did know this. Gabriel did tell them to call him Immanuel, after all.

“Mary, did you know? The blind will see, the deaf will hear, The dead will live again, The lame will leap, the dumb will speak The praises of the Lamb!” Yes. Read the Old Testament prophecies about Messiah. They predict all these things.

“Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?” I think she knew this. He was the Son of the Most High God that would rule over an everlasting kingdom (Luke 1:32-33). She knew he was Messiah and she knew all the glorious things described in Isaiah that Messiah would do. Psalm 110 depicts a Messiah who is the dread judge and ruler of all. She knew that he possessed divinity as the Son of the Most High. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that she knew that he would be Lord over the entire creation.

“Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?” Absolutely she knew this. Gabriel told her so, and see everything listed above. Also, take into account the Song of Simeon who declared that he was to be a “light to the nations,” (Luke 2:32).

“Did you know that your baby boy was Heaven’s perfect Lamb?” OK, this is a good question. Did Mary know that Jesus was the agnus Dei? I think so. She knew that he was going to save his people from their sins. As a well-educated Israelite she would know the only way that could happen was through sacrifice. Further, when John the Baptist came on the scene, the first thing he said about Jesus is that he is the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world (John 1:29). How did he know that? Was it because the Spirit shot him through with an on-the-spot revelation? Or was this a well-known fact in the family from the time of Mary’s visit, Elizabeth’s declarations about Mary and Jesus, and Zechariah’s song? I think she knew.

“And the sleeping Child you’re holding is the great, the Great I AM?” See above. But here’s one more piece of evidence. When Mary visited Elizabeth, Luke records that the baby, John, leapt in her womb and she was filled with the Holy Spirit and started prophesying. The text says she then started singing. What was her song? “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord,” (Lk. 1:42-45). The mother of “my Lord,” she sang. Is that Lord like Master or Lord as a substitute for the word Yahweh? We can’t be sure that they understand it in the latter sense, but it’s certainly possible that they did.

“Oh, Mary, Mary, did you know?”

Oh, yes, yes, she did know.

Let us not forget the conclusion Luke leaves us with after relaying the Marian material to us in his first two chapters, “And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart,” (Lk. 2:51). Mary was not only the mother of Jesus, but she was his first disciple, as she replied to Gabriel, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” (Lk. 1:38). She was a student of her son. She treasured these things in her heart and pondered their meaning. During those long nights of feeding him, of rocking him back to sleep when he woke up crying, she pondered the deeper meaning of these things as she poured over the Old Testament scriptures in her mind. Perhaps this is what gave her the resolve to stay faithful when others failed. When the apostles fled and Peter denied him thrice, she was there at the cross, remaining with him till the bitter end. She was there at the tomb on Easter morning. She was there in the upper room at Pentecost. What gave her that faith, that strength, that resolve when others doubted, disbelieved, denied, and fled?

She knew.

Visit New Life Presbyterian Church for more articles and teaching from Tim LeCroy. New Life is a church worshiping in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York serving both the Cornell University and Ithaca College communities.

Advent Is Not Christmas, Part 2: The Historical Development of Christmas and Advent

“I Hate Christmas.”

I once read an article in the Washington Post whose title was, “I hate Christmas.” It wasn’t entirely what I expected: an atheist curmudgeon annoyed by the ubiquitous seasonal Christian messaging, wishing that everyone would get off his god-free lawn. While there was a little bit of that in the piece, it was mostly centered around the fact that because the author grew up poor, he could never experience Christmas the way movies, tv shows, pop songs, commercials, catalogs, and even friends and family taught him he was supposed to experience it. His family could never afford the lavish feast, the tree surrounded with all the items on his Christmas wish list, or even a very nice tree. He now shuns Christmas along with its gatherings, festivities, gifts, and cheer, instead spending all the money he can afford buying toys for poor children so they can have the Christmas he never had.

I finished the article thinking that the author hadn’t rejected Christmas, he had rejected what Christmas has become: a commercialized cornucopia of instant gratification. What he had actually offered was a valid critique of Christmas and a call to recenter on its true meaning. After all, what more pure symbol of the Christmas spirit is there than sacrificing financially to provide gifts to poor children? St. Nicholas, anyone?

Afterward, I perused a bit of the comment section (yes, I know you are not supposed to read the comments). Many commenters agreed with the author. Some agreed because they were of other religions or were atheists (what I thought the article was going to be about). Others, though, didn’t reject Christmas but rather the spectacle that it has become. One commenter replied, “Only 2-ish weeks before the schizophrenia is behind us. My favorite day of the year is January 1, when it’s all over.”

Christmas Isn’t the Problem

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. If there was a hidden camera in my house it would catch me randomly singing, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” My wife and I have curated the biggest (and best) Christmas display in a three or four block radius (in our estimation… opinions may vary). I love the feasting. I love the gift-giving. I love the Christmas liturgies, hymns, and candlelight services. I love all that because I love the message of Christ born to set his people free. I love the message of Immanuel, God-with-us, that the God of the Universe took on every bit of our broken humanity so that he could redeem it all. I love it because the incarnation is the only sufficient answer to the problem of evil in this world, as the best philosophers have realized, St. Augustine at the head. I love it because he became sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. That’s the reason I’m singing, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” That’s the reason why I’ve lit my yard up in multicolored c-9 ceramic bulb nostalgic glory. That’s also the reason why I’m ecstatic that the whole world pauses once a year to celebrate the fact that God was born into the world.

And yet, I resonate with what that Washington Post author wrote. Because he’s right. The Christmas message is not what Hallmark, Home Depot, Honda, Hanes, Harley-Davidson, Hurley, and Hasbro are selling us. We have gotten off the rails, or jumped the shark, or whatever metaphor you want to use, in our overindulgence of the Coca-Cola commercialized version of Christmas. The songs, ads, and store displays start before Halloween now. That’s three full months on a peppermint Red Bull IV drip of wall-to-wall Christmas experience. There’s no expectation. There’s no preparation. There’s no self-denial. It’s just CHRISTMAS!!!!!, full-bore, full-tilt for three full months until December 26 when they turn off the spigot and we collapse into full-on exhaustion. No wonder some people hate it.

But that’s not the way Christmas was designed by those that developed the church year centuries ago. Yes, there was feasting. Yes, there was decorating and singing and gift-giving. But preceding it was a period of longing, expectation, and self-denial focused on something entirely un-Christmassy: the second coming of Christ. In other words, there was the season of Advent. And Advent was not Christmas.

Perhaps refocusing on the wisdom of those that created the autumnal portion of the Church calendar could help us in our current predicament. What can we learn by sitting at their feet?

The Creation of the Christmas Season

The Advent/Christmas cycle of the church year is a creation of the church itself. This is an important point to note, especially for Protestants. In part one I argued that the springtime cycle of the church year has biblical and patristic roots. Because of those clear biblical roots and direct one-to-one correspondence between Passover/Easter and Pentecost, those two feasts have always been celebrated by the Church from its earliest days. In fact, the only question about early observance of the Spring calendar was when Easter would be each year. To be fair, Lent was a creation of the early church, but its antiquity far outstretches that of Advent and Christmas. Lent, or something like Lent, has been a part of the church from at least the second century A.D.

However, when we come to the fall cycle of the church year, though we do have a clear mandate for a Fall festal calendar, we do not have a clear one-to-one correspondence of OT feasts to NT ones. For that reason, it took a few centuries for unanimity on the fall calendar to develop. I want to briefly trace that development and the reasons for it.

The first part of the season to develop was Christmas Day. The origins of Christmas are a bit murky when compared to Easter, but there are some clear historical markers. The first thing to note is that Christmas was not an appropriation of the Roman feast of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun). First of all, that was not an ancient Roman feast, having been created in 274 by the Emperor Aurelian in a political effort to spark belief in the re-birth of the Western Roman Empire that was crumbling under his feet. It makes no sense for Christians to have appropriated a recently created Roman feast that had no popular following. Sol Invictus is a historical artifact, nothing more. However, Christmas is of Roman/North African origin, and there is some evidence, from no less than St. Augustine, that the celebration of Christmas in North Africa predates the Donatist schism. That would place observance of December 25 as the Feast of the Nativity well before Emperor Aurelian’s creation of Sol Invictus and suggest that the emperor was instead responding to the threat of Christianity by choosing that date.

Why then December 25th? What we need to understand is that the selection of exact days of the year when things occurred was not an essential quality of the church calendar. As I covered in part one, the essential quality of the church calendar was to create a yearly festal calendar for the New Covenant church based around the events of the life of Christ. We do not know when Christ was born, though some have made the case that it was exactly on December 25, and it may have been. However, dates were selected based on their significance in relation to the created year (see part one on day four of creation). We need to think of the church year not as historical reenactment, but as a yearly sermon series. Its purposes are for discipleship, not for reliving the historical record.

So why December 25th? The reason, it seems, is based on two notions. First is the ancient Jewish idea that the prophets and patriarchs were born or conceived on the same day that they died. Second, was the apparent Patristic conviction that major events in salvation history should align with the Solar calendar, and thus fall on a solstice or equinox. Both of these notions led to the idea that the best placement for Christ’s conception was on March 25th, which happens to be when the church commemorates the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), and thus his nativity was placed nine months later on December 25th. Whether or not these are the exact days on which these events occurred is largely irrelevant for the purposes of the church year. The point is that these texts are read and taught on those days and their significance in salvation history is celebrated. A church could choose to read the texts surrounding Christ’s birth in July and celebrate it then. As I said in part one, the calendar is a matter of adiaphora. However, if a church did that, that church would not be in step with the rest of the church throughout the world. If catholicity has any value, then keeping the calendar of the universal church should have some weight. As St. Athanasius once wrote concerning the observance of Lent, “while all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should not become a laughing-stock, as the only people who do not fast, but take our pleasure in those days… exhort and teach them to fast forty days. For it is even a disgrace that when all the world does this, those alone who are in Egypt, instead of fasting, should find their pleasure.” The early church certainly took their liturgical unity very seriously. Indeed, it was one of the main reasons the Council of Nicaea was convened.

Christmas to Advent

By the late fourth century the celebration of the Nativity was universally accepted, in East and West, on December 25th. In a compromise to earlier Eastern traditions of celebrating the day on January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany was accepted in the West around the same time. In this conception the liturgical year then began on December 25th and there was no preceding season.

Over time a preparatory season developed in the Western Church. It seems to result from areas, like Spain and Gaul, who were more influenced by the East. In the East, Epiphany is a major occasion for baptism, second only to Easter. In fact, to this day, some Eastern traditions will do a kind of “polar bear plunge” on Epiphany as they mark the baptism of our Lord. In Spain and Gaul it was understood that if baptisms were going to occur on Epiphany, there ought to be a corresponding preparatory fast akin to the one that preceded Easter. In fact, Lent as a fast has its origins as a preparatory fast for those who would be baptized on Easter Sunday, and gradually that practice filtered to the church-at-large, especially as infant baptism became the universal practice after the 4th century. Thus, in Spain and Gaul in the 5th and 6th centuries we find the prescription of a preparatory fast for monks in the season leading up to Christmas. However, that fast was not for the general public. The earliest tradition held that the fast would begin after the Feast of St. Martin on November 11, thus it was colloquially called St. Martin’s Lent. For this reason, the earliest forms of Advent consisted of six weeks, not four as it is today.

As they often do, monastic practices filter out to the rest of the church, albeit in a less strenuous form. In that way, the six week Advent began to be practiced in the liturgy of the churches of Spain and Gaul from the 6th and 7th centuries. As we can for many things, we can thank Gregory the Great for shortening Advent from six weeks to four. He was a notorious simplifier of which even Marie Kondo would be proud.

As to the content of Advent (and the eventual naming of the season) there were two separate strains. In Rome, where Christmas was the greater emphasis, the season leading up to that day was more focused on the first advent of Christ. However, in Gaul the focus was entirely on his second advent. In the Bobbio Missal, composed in the early 7th century, the gospel Lessons for Advent are Luke 21, Matthew 11, Matthew 3, and Matthew 24. These are all focused on the second coming and the need to repent ahead of the final judgment. Can you imagine showing up to church the Sunday before Christmas and getting a sermon from Matthew 24 about the tribulation and the second coming of the Lord as lighting split the sky? Such was the tradition in ancient Gaul. These brothers and sisters did not sentimentalize Christ’s birth!

The two strains of focus on either of the advents of Christ demonstrate the shift from the early church’s emphasis of the Parousia being focused around Easter to the early medieval church moving it to the close of the year. The early church had an imminent expectation of the return of Christ, and thus the Parousia was located liturgically in the Spring of the year, with Christ’s resurrection. However, as the centuries rolled by, the church shifted its expectation and began to focus more on a far fulfillment of Christ’s return. For this reason, church leaders began to move the season focusing on the Parousia to the close of the solar year as a reflection of Christ’s return at the end of history, thus putting a tidy bookend on the liturgical calendar. In this conception, as the solar year begins at the winter solstice with the renewal of the Sun, so the liturgical year begins at the solstice with the celebration of Christ’s birth. Then at the close of the year, as the Sun’s light is fading, the church shifts focus to the second coming as the close of history. Then at Christmas the cycle begins again. Thus was the early Gallic conception of the church year.

(As a side note, in this conception Easter is located at the Spring equinox, the exact point in the year when light overcomes darkness. The early church saw this placement of Easter as a non-negotiable due to the declaration of Yahweh in Exodus 12 that the Passover was to mark the beginning of months in perpetuity. Easter must then be after the equinox, because Christ overcame darkness for good on that day. Thus, we see how in its final form the church year closely fits the creational intent reflected on Day Four of creation, that the Sun, Moon, and Stars were to mark the festal seasons. For more on that see part one.)

In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Carolingians of the Frankish empire melded both Gallican and Roman traditions into the one Pan-European tradition that we have inherited. This applied to nearly all aspects of the liturgy, but for our purposes also included prescriptions for Advent. Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, and their advisors thus combined the Roman conception of Advent with the Gallican one, beginning the season with an overt focus on the second coming and then ending Advent with the text of Gabriel’s visit to Mary. In this new form, Advent still has a strong emphasis on the second coming of Christ, but it moves toward the incarnation in its final week. This compromise was not simply for pragmatic reasons. The Carolingians were acutely focused on discipleship, and thus expert liturgists, like Alcuin of York, brilliantly shaped the season that we inherited to include important concepts of the expectant hope of Christ’s return, the eschatological duty to watch, pray, and prepare, and the final judgment. Without Advent’s focus on these themes, the broader plan of the church year has a large catechetical lacuna. The Carolingians remedied that, and for this reason their calendar stuck in the west, and eventually in the east as well.

Longing for His Appearing

Thus we see that Advent is not Christmas. Advent is a separate liturgical season that focuses on important themes that every Christian disciple should be shaped by. Focusing on these themes, especially the longing for the return of Christ, properly situates our joy and cheer when he is born on Christmas Day. Instead of an empty season of buying, buying, buying, and more buying, Christmas then becomes a day for truly celebrating, because Jesus is the answer to all our prayers of longing for the world to be different than it is. Forgoing full-on Christmas celebration until after the Feast of the Nativity on the 25th is then a practice in festal patience. Feasting is a positive value because we have a reason to feast! Continuous feasting without real reason to do so or any pause to watch, reflect, and prepare leads to debauchery. The Bible is not against feasting, it is decidedly pro-feasting! However, the scriptures also place the festal observance on concrete points in salvation history along with other times to reflect, to fast, and to pray.

The waning of the year is a natural point to pause and recenter our lives on the longing for his appearing. As the light fades (some of us feel this physically in our bodies) we are naturally reminded that history has an end point. We also become acutely aware of the eschatological principle of the already/not yet. Increased darkness leads to watchfulness; this was especially so in humanity’s pre-industrial eras. The lighting of candles and the longing for dawn is a natural response this time of year. This is reflected in Advent’s focus on our longing for his appearing, especially the placement of Matthew 11 in the second Sunday of Advent. In this text, John the Baptist is rotting in prison and in his misery he sends messages to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we seek another?” What a profoundly honest question to ask in a time of darkness! That has to be the theme of our Advent expectancy!

Christ’s response to John does not berate him or cast him away. Instead, he castigates those who think that a man of faith like John should never doubt. His answer to John focuses on the concrete events of Christ’s life that show he is the fulfillment of prophecy, that he, in fact, is the One.

This is the movement of Advent. It begins with the promise of his return to set all things to right. Then it moves to the response of faithful believers in the midst of a very broken world, “Are you really the one?” or, “Are you ever going to deliver us?” Then we move in week three to the triumphant John, preaching repentance ahead of the judgment of the Lord. Finally, we have the announcement by the Angel of the one to be born who will set his people free.

That’s Advent! It’s not what our culture has made it to be, and frankly many people have grown to hate. Advent, in its design, is a season to reset ourselves and to renew our joy in the midst of a dark season. This is why the liturgy for the third Sunday in Advent begins with these words, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, Rejoice!” This is the hinge on which the Advent season turns.

Gaudete! Y’all rejoice! Not out of a naïve sentimentality or due to a blind consumeristic obsession, but because though we’ve been honest and realistic about the brokenness of our world, we’ve found again a reason to hope!

I wonder if that Washington Post author would still hate Christmas if the church still led in observing Advent in this way? I wonder if folks would still long for January 1 when it will all be over, if we still kept the distinction between Advent and Christmas? We in the USA talk about there being a war on Christmas in our culture. But what if I told you that many European believers think that it is America that is truly waging the war on Christmas? As the observance of Santa Claus circles the globe haven’t even we in the church lost sight of what Advent and Christmas were originally designed to be?

One more time, Advent is not Christmas.

Visit New Life Presbyterian Church for more articles and teaching from Tim LeCroy. New Life is a church worshiping in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York serving both the Cornell University and Ithaca College communities.

Advent Is Not Christmas: Part 1

I have a pet peeve. Actually, I have several. This one has to do with the way that many churches do Advent, that is, as an extended time of Christmas. Their focus is on the first Advent of Christ, and the time is spent covering the biblical material leading up to his birth. Christmas carols and hymns are sung from the first Sunday of Advent onward and there is no distinctive Christmas season. In other words, Advent is Christmas.

There is just one problem. Advent is not Christmas.

Before I get any further I need to make several disclaimers. First, the purpose of this essay is not to shame anyone or call anyone out. I’ve observed this practice enough to not have any one particular church in mind. In fact, the church I attended this week on the First Sunday of Advent did it correctly. So, I’m not calling anyone out in particular and neither do I have any recent experience in mind. Second, my goal is not to cause anyone to feel ashamed or to cause any immediate, drastic changes in your church. My purpose is to educate and train. The church year is a secondary (or even tertiary) matter, and there’s no reason to go to war over how anyone does the church year (or doesn’t).

That said, if we are going to do the church year, I think that it ought to be grounded in what the Scripture teaches and what the church has observed over the centuries, and that as Reformed Christians we ought to have a good rationale and purpose for doing it.

In this essay, part one of two, I will cover the broader biblical and historical aspects, that is – the Biblical and Patristic Roots of the Church Year. Then in part two I will get into the nitty gritty of why Advent is not Christmas (and why that matters).

The Church Year is Grounded in God’s Word

The church year is not just a cool thing that trendy churches are now doing. While I think it’s good that all kinds of churches are getting in touch with the roots of historic Christianity, as we do that we need to understand what we are doing and why. Ancient does not necessarily equate to good and helpful, and we need to understand what unhelpful aspects may have developed in ancient practices so we can avoid them. When it comes to the church year, we are not just appropriating church tradition. It turns out that, as in many other things, the church’s tradition is grounded in God’s Word.

There are some folks (I happen to be one of them) that believe that whatever we do in the worship of God should be grounded in God’s word. In other words, we can’t do whatever we like in our worship of God. The Bible teaches us how we are to worship, and our worship should be regulated by God’s Word. This idea is referred to by Reformed theologians as The Regulative Principle of Worship.

There are three places we can find the church year grounded in God’s word: the creation narrative, the Mosaic law, and in New Testament observance. The first is in creation itself. In Genesis chapter one we find that light is created on the first day, but the Sun, Moon, and stars aren’t created until the fourth. Light existed before day four— it evidently was a manifestation of God’s glory. Much like the waters were gathered on day three to produce the dry land, the light is gathered on day four to produce the Sun, Moon, and stars. The Sun is said to rule over the day, and the Moon to rule over the night. The Sun, Moon, and stars are given to “to separate the day from the night,” and to serve as indicators of “signs and for seasons, and for days and years,” (Gen. 1:14). The Sun marks the day, the Moon marks the month. The stars mark seasons. Together, all three help us mark years. But did God create all this just for telling time?

The text says they are for “signs and seasons, and for days and years.” Why is the word “signs” in with “seasons, days, and years”? It seems to show that the heavenly bodies will not just mark the passage of time, but that they serve as important markers throughout the year. The word sign used there appears several times in the Old Testament, but two of its usages are as a pledge of the covenant (circumcision, rainbow, and Passover are all signs) or as a marker of divine action. One way to think of these celestial signs are as creational ebenezers, heavenly stones of remembrance, that move us to mark the mighty deeds of the Lord in worship as we move through each year of our lives. Further, the word used for “seasons” here is almost always used in the Old Testament with a connection to worship. It can mean an “appointed place,” in which case it almost always refers to a particular spot in the Temple/Tabernacle, or to the Tent of Meeting itself. As an appointed time, it most regularly refers to the time for appointed feasts. This is how the BDB Hebrew Lexicon defines this usage in Genesis 1, preferring the translation, “for signs and sacred seasons.” This is also the case in Psalm 104: 19, which should be translated, “He made the Moon to mark the sacred seasons.”

This creational feature is encoded in the worship of the Old Testament Church. We find a series of yearly feasts prescribed in the Mosaic law. These feasts are largely agricultural, but they follow the cycle of the year. The movement of the Sun, Moon, and stars in their yearly cycle set the dates for the great festivals, especially those of the springtime.

Exodus 12 describes both the ritual of the Passover meal and the day that it is to be observed. The LORD tells Moses that this month, the month they were delivered from Egypt, is to be counted as the first month in their ecclesiastical calendar. We find that several other important events happen on the first day of the first month, including the day when the waters were dried after the Flood (Gen. 8:13) and the day when the desert Tabernacle was erected (Ex. 40:2, 17). The first day of the first month has also been traditionally thought to be the first day of creation. The first month of the year was calculated based on the first ripening of the barley harvest, a marker of springtime (see Leviticus 23). The first new moon after this marked the beginning of the first month. Then the next full moon marked the Passover. This is why to this day we calculate Easter based on the first full moon after the spring equinox. But more on this later.

After the Passover, the people of God were to celebrate Pentecost, which was dated 50 days after the Passover (Lev. 23:15-16). Thus, Passover and Pentecost were the two great feasts of the springtime. There were also two fall feasts, which are described in Leviticus 23: Trumpets and Booths (also called Ingathering in Ex. 34:22). All four of these festivals marked significant events in the Exodus story. Two other feasts were added to the calendar at later points. The feast of Purim celebrates the deliverance of the people of God as told in the book of Esther. It is held yearly in the last month of the ecclesiastical year (Adar, see Est. 9:18ff). Hanukkah, an early winter feast, was added during the intertestamental period in the month Kislev to celebrate the Maccabees’ deliverance of the people from the Seleucids. Every year the people of God were to celebrate these feasts with eating and drinking and worship services. These feasts had three aspects. First, they were thanksgiving feasts, based on the agricultural calendar of ancient Israel. Second, they were memorial feasts marking out significant moments in salvation history. Third, they were formative feasts, teaching the people of God important theological truths. These three aspects, thanksgiving, instruction, and formation, will be criteria that we refer back to when evaluating Advent in part two.

In the New Testament we find that the people of God are still celebrating these feasts and references to them are sprinkled throughout. Passover is connected with Jesus’ death and resurrection. Pentecost, the day when the Law was given at Sinai, is connected with the coming of the Holy Spirit in the upper room. We also find Jesus attending Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths (John 7:2, 10), Dedication (Hanukkah) (John 10:22), and apparently also Purim (John 5:1-2). The only feast that is not mentioned explicitly in the New Testament is Trumpets along with its Day of Atonement. Perhaps this is because Passover and Eastertide are going to subsume them in the New Covenant.

Even after Christ’s death and resurrection we have references to the OT feasts in the New Testament. We cannot discount the fact that God chose the Mosaic feast of Pentecost to send the Holy Spirit upon the believers in the Upper Room. This seems to point not only to a New Covenant fulfillment of that feast, but to a continued New Covenant observance of it. Further, we read in Acts 20 that Paul desired to reach Jerusalem by Pentecost. He also mentions Pentecost in 1 Corinthians 16. With these positive participations in the ecclesiastical calendar, we find nowhere in the New Testament that the yearly calendar is to be abrogated. We find other aspects of the Mosaic law are abrogated: bloody sacrifices, circumcision, food laws, other holiness separation laws related to purifications and clothing, and others. But we do not find any abrogation of the ecclesiastical year. Instead, we find an encouragement from Paul to keep the feast, not the old feast of unleavened bread, but the new Pascha, that we now call Easter (1 Cor. 5:7-8). There Paul gives us the theological content of the Old Testament feast (cutting off the old leaven of malice and wickedness) and connects the Old Testament feast of Pascha to the sacrificial death of Christ on the Cross.

The Early Church Celebrated the Church Year

It’s hard to overstate just how important the leaders of the post-Apostolic church were in building the faith that we all profess and practice. Paul uses the metaphor of the Temple structure to describe how our faith has been established. In Ephesians 2:20 he states that our faith is, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” In Paul’s conception though, the apostles, prophets, and Christ don’t make up the entire structure. They are the foundation, but the subsequent generations make up the rest of the building. Peter agrees, saying that we are “living stones” making up the structure of our faith, with Christ as the cornerstone, (1 Pet. 2:5). By the time the Apostles left the scene in the late first century, the foundations were laid, but the early church had to continue building.

The first Christian leaders after the Apostles understood this. The earliest extant Christian document outside of the New Testament, the Didache, purports to hand down instructions from the Apostles themselves on how the church should be organized. As it was written in Syria around 80 A.D. this is not a fantastic claim and should be taken seriously. Clement of Rome, writing to the church at Corinth around the same time, described the problem of who would be the successors to the Apostles and carry on their leadership of the church. In chapter 44 of his letter he writes that the Apostles had designated ordained presbyters to be the successors to their ministry. Ignatius of Antioch, writing after the turn of the century, writes that the people should be subject to the bishop led presbytery, that bishops and presbyters are in tune with one another like strings on a guitar, and that the bishops have the mind of Christ (Ig. Eph. 2:2, 3:2, 4:1). Some scholars have posited that Clement and Ignatius present alternative visions for church government in the early church, but I believe they represent an identical polity, one that is a hybrid of episcopal and presbyterian systems. But I digress.

Those early Christian leaders also addressed the problem of the apostolic vacuum by arguing that the writings of the Apostles were inspired and should be the basis for the fledgling faith. Both Ignatius and Clement demonstrate an awareness that what Peter and Paul wrote was inspired by God and thus authoritative, but that what they themselves were writing was neither inspired nor authoritative in the same way (1 Clem. 47:3, Ig. Ep. 12:1-2, Ig. Rom. 4:3). Thus, while the ordained presbyters were the successors to the Apostles in leading the church, they were bound by the writings of the Apostles in scripture as to what doctrines they elucidated and in their leadership of the church.

These two pillars of early Christian theology lead to the calling of the great ecumenical councils to deliberate and articulate the content of the faith in the presence of heresy. Those first four councils were the weight bearing joists and beams, laid on the foundation of the Apostles, that would support the faith for centuries and even millennia. The Niceno-Constatinopolitan Creed and the formulations of Ephesus and Chalcedon serve as our theological floor to this day. As the preamble to the Athanasian Creed would later expound, no one can be considered a Christian who does not profess the faith that those four councils describe.

But what does all this have to do with the church year? Did you know that when the Council of Nicaea was called in 325 A.D. one of the primary issues it met to deliberate on was the yearly day of the celebration of Easter? One of the more significant controversies of the early church was whether Easter should be celebrated on a fixed date (like Christmas is now) or whether it should be movable based on the calculation of Jewish Passover. The first issue discussed in the published canons of the council does address the issue of the Trinity, but the final act published was the solution of the Holy Pasch (see Decrees of the Ecumencial Councils by Norman P. Tanner). The council decided that Easter should be determined each year according to the practice of the Romans, which practice was developed based on the occurrence of the first full moon after the spring equinox. To this day this is how we determine when Easter will be.

The Nicene deliberation demonstrates two things for us. First is that for the earliest Christians celebration of the springtime ecclesiastical feasts was not a question of if, but when and how. Second, this demonstrates how important the concept of unity was for them (see John 17:20-26 and Eph. 4:3-6 for the reason why), and that unity was based on tangible, observable practices like worship and the celebration of ecclesiastical feasts.

In fact, the Church Fathers felt strongly that the church year should be practiced as a practical feature of the unity of the church. Athanasius of Alexandria is known first for his ardent defense of Nicene Orthodoxy and secondly for his being the first full articulation of the New Testament canon in 367 A.D. Yet Athanasius was also an ardent supporter of the church year, arguing that the 40 day fast of Lent should be a feature of the church’s worship throughout the world. The fact that the council of Nicea refers to the observance of Lent as a given further demonstrates this. (Please see my earlier essay on the origins of Lent for more information.)

Therefore, in addition to laying down our ecclesiological and theological framework, the Church Fathers bequeathed to us the Christian calendar. They redemptive historically transmogrified (to borrow a phrase from two of my seminary professors Jack Collins and Michael Williams) the springtime feasts of the Old Testament into a Christian liturgical calendar. The feast of Unleavened Bread became Holy Week and then Lent. The Day of Atonement became Good Friday. Passover and Trumpets became Eastertide (in fact the vast majority of the world still refers to what we call Easter as Pashca). Pentecost became, well, Pentecost, but the shift moved from Sinai to the New Sinai of the Upper Room and the coming of the Holy Spirit. That the New Testament writers place so much emphasis on the fact that these major events in salvation history occurred on these festal days, also arguing that the sacrificial system of worship itself was transmogrified and brought into the New Covenant in Christ, bolsters what the Church Fathers did. As in the case of canon, presbyterate, and creed, the Apostles laid the foundations for the church year, and the Church Fathers built upon it a sturdy floor for us to stand upon. In fact, continuing with our building metaphor, we might see that patristic doctrines of polity and scripture built the basement walls, the creeds of the councils laid the floor joists, and the liturgy of the Fathers created the weight bearing walls. What remained for later generations was to “dry in” the frame and then to provide the interior design of the place, making the house of our faith into a beautiful dwelling place for us with our God.

The Reformers Accepted the Early Church’s Calendar

To bring this forward a thousand plus years (I promise I will go back and fill in the medieval gaps in part two) the Reformers accepted the calendar that the Church Fathers developed. Even our Reformed forebears kept the major “evangelical” feasts, emphasizing that communion should be received on those days. For certain, the Reformed rejected the late medieval excesses of Lent, throwing out with that dirty bathwater the baby of patristic Lenten practice, but they did not reject the calendar outright. Martin Luther did not reject it at all, but reformed it, as was his practice in general. But even the Reformed kept the major feasts, while rejecting Lent and being more skeptical of Advent. All the Reformers were keen to reform the calendar of late Medieval excesses with its proliferation of Saints Days, which they felt distracted from the central story of Christ and his life. For this reason they accepted the framework of the church year that emphasized the major events of Christ’s life (birth, death, and resurrection) along with the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room. We see the pre-Puritan Reformed position clearly in Heinrich Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession where he writes:

If in Christian liberty the churches religiously celebrate the memory of the Lord’s nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, and of his ascension into heaven, and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, we approve of it highly. but we do not approve of feasts instituted for men and for saints. Holy days have to do with the first Table of the Law and belong to God alone. Finally, holy days which have been instituted for the saints and which we have abolished, have much that is absurd and useless, and are not to be tolerated. In the meantime, we confess that the remembrance of saints, at a suitable time and place, is to be profitably commended to the people in sermons, and the holy examples of the saints set forth to be imitated by all.

For certain, Calvin was more critical of the church year than Bullinger, but he seems to be more concerned with perfunctory performance of them and those who we colloquially call “Chreasters”. Calvin’s Geneavan churches did keep the major holidays, and he preached sermons on their topics (the Nativity of Jesus on Christmas, for example) and served communion. His objections seem to be for pastoral reasons, specifically, that people were only showing up for major holidays and thinking their observance of them was enough for them spiritually. In spite of this, Calvin said that he did not think that observation of the major holidays should be abolished unless the majority of the church agreed.

This Evangelical (story of the gospel) Church Year is a concept I believe that we can all center around. Whether we choose to retain the Puritan rejection of all days save Sunday, go the Lutheran (as in Martin, not the denomination) route of major holidays with their seasons, or walk the Reformed middle way of Bullinger, hopefully we can see the biblical and patristic roots of the church year. In this we can have charity towards our brothers and sisters who observe certain days along with those who do not. Afterall, this is what is laid down by Paul in Colossians 2 and Romans 14, establishing the Apostolic principle that the Church year is a matter of adiaphora not dogma. Paul says we should not despise each other based on our observance of these days and that we should find our central unity not in them but in Christ.

While exercising this charity, the question remains whether the dominical and apostolic exhortations to maintain the unity of the church around the one faith, along with the practical applications of Christian formation that the church year presents, demonstrate the wisdom of the early fathers in building those weight bearing walls. I’m obviously arguing that case, while extending charity to my brothers and sisters who disagree and hoping for theirs in return.

In part two I will discuss that if we accept the wisdom of the Fathers and choose to observe the winter cycle of Advent and Christmas, we should do it in ways that are keeping with the patristic and biblical principles regarding the Church year, and that means, ultimately, that Advent is not Christmas.

Visit New Life Presbyterian Church for more articles and teaching from Tim LeCroy. New Life is a church worshiping in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York serving both the Cornell University and Ithaca College communities.

The Promise of His Appearing: The Historical Development of Christmas and Advent

Advent Is Not Christmas, Part II

This is part two of a two part series. To read part one click here.

“I hate Christmas.”

I recently read an article in the Washington Post whose title was, “I hate Christmas.” It wasn’t entirely what I expected: an atheist curmudgeon annoyed by the ubiquitous seasonal Christian messaging, wishing that everyone would get off his god-free lawn. While there was a little bit of that in the piece, it was mostly centered around the fact that because the author grew up poor, he could never experience Christmas the way movies, tv shows, pop songs, commercials, catalogs, and even friends and family taught him he was supposed to experience it. His family could never afford the lavish feast, the tree surrounded with all the items on his Christmas wish list, or even a very nice tree. He now shuns Christmas along with its gatherings, festivities, gifts, and cheer, instead spending all the money he can afford buying toys for poor children so they can have the Christmas he never had.

Christmas isn’t the problem

Perhaps refocusing on the wisdom of those that created the autumnal portion of the Church calendar could help us in our current predicament. What can we learn by sitting at their feet?

Click here to read the rest of the article over at Semper Ref.

The Biblical and Patristic Roots of the Church Calendar

Advent is Not Christmas, Part I

This is part one of a two part series. To read part two click here.

There is just one problem. Advent is not Christmas.

In this essay, part one of two, I will cover the broader biblical and historical aspects and then in part two I will get into the nitty gritty of why Advent is not Christmas (and why that matters).

The Church Year is Grounded in God’s Word

Please continue reading over at SemperRef.

St. Ambrose of Milan – Savior of the Nations, Come

This is one of my favorite Advent hymns. It has some of the most powerful lines in the history of Christian hymnody, written by one of the first to really emphasize congregational participation in worship, Ambrose of Milan.

This hymn is also deeply theological. In Ambrose’s words we find the various theological controversies of the day reflected. Namely, the heresy of Arianism, which said that Jesus Christ was not fully divine, is combated in verse 4. Nestorianism, which argued that Jesus Christ was not fully human, is combated in verse 3. But beyond that, the hymn promotes the wonder and awe that we should all have when contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation. Verse three into the first phrase of verse 4 gives me goosebumps. Every time.

Give a listen to Christ Our King’s arrangement of this hymn from the 4th century. I hope it instills in you the wonder that it did for its first singers in Milan.

1 Savior of the nations, come,
Virgin’s Son, make here Your home!
Marvel now, O heav’n and earth,
That the Lord chose such a birth.

2 Not by human flesh and blood,
By the Spirit of our God,
Was the Word of God made flesh —
Woman’s offspring pure and fresh.

3. Here a maid was found with child,
Yet remained a virgin mild.
In her womb this truth was shown:
God was there upon His throne.

4. Then stepped forth the Lord of all
From His pure and kingly hall;
God of God, yet fully man,
His heroic course began.

Savior of the Nations, Come
St. Ambrose of Milan, 4th c.
Translation of verses 1 and 2 by William M. Reynolds, 19th c.
Translation of verse 3 by the Lutheran Service Book, 2006
Translation of verse 4 by F. Samuel Janzow, 20th c.

Tune: Johann Walter, Wittenburg, 16th c.
Arranged by: Timothy R. LeCroy 2016

Performed by Christ Our King Musicians
Vocals: Tim LeCroy and Liv Cordray
Violin: Erica Kallis
Piano: Liv Cordray
Guitar: Tim LeCroy
Bass: Tim LeCroy

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What is Advent, and why Should I Celebrate It?

This Sunday, December 2, 2012 is the first Sunday of the new church year and the first Sunday in Advent.

But what is Advent and why should I as a Christian be concerned with observing Advent?

This question goes a bit deeper into questions of observing the church year in general. Should Christians be concerned with observing special dates and festivals during the cycle of the year?

I would argue, yes. There are many reasons in favor of observing the church year, but let’s consider just one of those briefly. Just reflect for a moment on our civil calendar. Every year we have a cycle that affects our lives, our decisions, when we travel, when we shop, what we eat, and more – based on the civil calendar of the United States of America. This calendar is designed to make us good citizens and remind us of the major milestones of our national history. It shapes and forms our hearts and minds. The US civil calendar disciples us. It makes us into good little American disciples.

Now, there is some value in this, and I’m not against having a civil calendar, but we are being completely naive if we think that this worldly calendar doesn’t need to have the necessary counterbalance that the church calendar provides us. The civil calendar teaches us to honor and remember, but it also breeds in us a nationalistic zeal that makes us myopic with regard to the world around us. We have to understand that if we shun the church calendar, the only calendar we will have is the civil calendar, and it will be the only annual rhythmic influence on our lives and on our children’s lives. That’s very significant to consider.

Seen in this way, the church year provides a balance to the messages we receive from the calendars that this world provides. In the church calendar, each year we are taught to hope for justice and long for the coming of a Savior (Advent), to celebrate that Savior’s incarnation as God in our own flesh (Christmas), to bask in the glow of the light that the Son of God shines in our dark world (Epiphany), to mourn our own contributions to this world’s brokenness and darkness and the fact that the Son of God had to die to fix it (Lent), to rejoice in the great victory that Jesus Christ won on the cross and the vindication of Him by His Father when He raised Him from the dead (Easter), to celebrate that this man Jesus is now glorified and ascended to heaven and now rules all the entire universe (Ascension), to ponder anew the great power and dignity that he has bestowed on us by sending His Holy Spirit to fill us and empower us (Pentecost), and to take up the mantle as the Church Militant to extend the glorious reign of Christ to all the reaches of the Earth (Trinity Season). Each year this pattern forms Christians and shapes them into Christian disciples.

We need this counter-formation. We as Christians cannot keep our heads in the sand and pretend that we don’t need a Christian calendar to provide balance to the worldly calendars all around us. If we do not offer a counter-formation to the liturgies of the world, then we as the church will be producing disciples that are no different from those in the world around us. We will be self-centered, greedy, entertainment hungry, individualistic, sex crazed, bloodthirsty robots. And isn’t this who we are already? Aren’t these the kinds of disciples our churches are already churning out? Is this what we want to be like? What we want our children to be like?

Now, I’m not advocating that we should remove ourselves from the world, far from it! We as Christians need to be engaged in the world and in the culture so that we can have a voice to its direction and so that we can relate to our friends and neighbors as we share Christ’s love with them. And neither am I claiming that celebrating the church year is some kind of panacea that will cure all our ills and make us all perfect little Christian disciples. Yet, we must see that the calendar of this world is affecting us, and that we desperately need a counterbalance and counter-formation to the formation that the world provides. The church year is not religious formalism. It is not dead religiosity. No, when conceived of properly and with the proper pastoral leadership, observation of the church year can provide an antidote to the poisons that this world delivers to us and which we greedily lap up every single day.

You see, the church calendar provides a disposition. It provides an outlook, a worldview. It gives us something to carry us over from Sunday to Sunday and even to look ahead to weeks and months in the future. It gives us good gospel themes to consider and good godly disciplines to practice. The church calendar makes us wait, watch, pray, and long before we dive headlong into the celebrations of the great feasts of Christmas and Easter. We must long for the coming of Christ and have instilled in us a deep frustration and desire that he would come before we revel in the joys of Christmas morning. It makes us consider the deep hurts and brokenness of this world and long for their restitution before we celebrate the victory that will lead to their banishment.

And this, in short, is the reason for Advent. Celebrating Christmas without advent is what theologians call having an over-realized eschatology: celebrating the victory of Jesus Christ (which is very true and real) without also mourning the fact that in many ways it is not yet reached its consummation. Celebrating Christmas without Advent is like skipping your vegetables and jumping straight for the luxurious chocolate cake or the sumptuous apple pie à la mode. Dessert is wonderful, and something that should be a part of our lives, but if we skip the vegetables and go right to the dessert we will be fat and malnourished.

That’s where we are as American Christians. We are fat and malnourished. We need to eat our vegetables. We need the expectation and patient longing of Advent before we dive headlong into Christmas.