AN ADVENT JOURNEY . . .
The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen
Looking over the lessons for the Advent season, I am reminded once again how much Advent is a time of journeying. The lessons speak of a highway in the desert, of crooked roads being made straight, of people who walk in darkness. Yet in the midst of our darkness we are promised a messenger of light. We are told to be alert, to look up and rejoice, to sing a new song, for the grace of God brings salvation to all.
Salvation to all – surely that is GOOD NEWS! And yet all too often we hear God’s “good news” delivered in a gloom and doom message. Bumper-stickers scream at us to beware the car ahead of us (the one that will be suddenly empty when the “rapture” happens.) We are told (almost gleefully) that this person is in, that one is out, that the End Time is upon us and God’s wrath waits with everlasting fury to damn the one who doesn’t conform to a set of impossible rules.
I don’t read the Bible that way at all. Study and reflection on God’s word has taught me that the End Times began with Jesus, and have been going on year after year, age upon age, for twenty-one centuries. That’s a long End Time.
But God’s time is not our time. And God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. As I read and study Holy Scripture, I find the overall message so hopeful, so full of God’s love for us, that I can’t help but understand it this way: whatever God’s wrath may have meant to the writers or to the people who first read the text, in the end God’s wrath will meet us as LOVE. It is a love that cannot bear sin, but a love that can and will gently correct us, walk with us, carry us when we are weak, comfort us and strengthen us to be His People.
And so we can wait out this long end time, secure in God’s love. Over the centuries, the Church has developed a number of methods to help us count off the time and stay on the path in our journey with Christ. One of those methods is called the Church Year, which begins anew this month.
Advent, this season of movement, is the first Liturgical Season of the Church Year. The word Advent comes from a Latin word meaning to arrive or to come, and the very name implies journey and arrival, preparation and patience.
We journey through Advent toward Bethlehem, toward the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation. We journey on that highway that Isaiah spoke of – that Holy Way. The journey is not necessarily an easy one; along the way our resolve may be tested. Our scientific minds may demand black and white answers, even as the ancient story tugs at our hearts. The busyness of modern life may get in the way, impeding our well-intentioned desire to keep holy time. Clamorous commercialism may lure us toward a blatantly secular holiday, all but obscuring the babe in the manger.
But we don’t walk this road alone. By virtue of the Communion of Saints we walk in the company of hundreds of thousands of saints and martyrs who have traveled the road before us. They serve as examples of how to persevere along the way. And there is tangible comfort, strength, courage and support in God’s gracious gift of Christian Community. Finally, Jesus himself walks with us every step of the way, upholding us when we stumble, calling us back when we stray, and most of all, loving us through the tough times.
And when finally we reach the place where the mystery of Immanuel – God with us – drives us to our knees before the manger, we find that we have only just begun the journey. The road goes onward, a journey through a Church Year that will lead us through a wilderness of temptation and decision, past places of challenge and confrontation, through regions of healing and comfort. We will break bread at a wedding, at a hillside picnic with 5000 people, in the homes of sinners, and finally, in an upper room. We will follow this highway all the way to a garden and a cross and an empty tomb and beyond, because we are the People of God, and we go where He leads us.
