“30 for 30″ #6: To Redeem Christmas We Must Redeem Advent*

I’ve never liked Christmas. Maybe I just have too many bad memories. Maybe I just don’t like what the holiday has become. Maybe I’m just a Scrooge (my wife’s theory). But for whatever reason, Christmas has never been a big deal to me.

Until the last few years.

A few years ago I was introduced to the season of Advent. Coming from a Baptist background, Advent was really never an option – or if it was, it was just some silly candle service where we sat around violating fire code.

But a few years ago I was introduced to Advent through Asbury Seminary. There, a whole community of people took Advent seriously – pleading with Paul in I Corinthians, “Come Lord Jesus!”

Preachers and others are often fond of lamenting how the season of Christmas has been robbed of its value by a culture of consumerism and materialism. But we’ve done little or nothing to combat it. We’ve forgotten that we have proven tools to fight such a co-opting of one of our Holy-days: Advent.

The season of Advent can redeem Christmas. It is the antithesis of everything Christmas has become in our culture. Advent is about waiting, mourning, repenting, longing for God to break through to us in a world that says there is no god but the individual self. Advent is about desiring to see, to escape the darkness, to look for our Messiah in a world that says, “I am your savior; just spend more money and you’ll be happy.”

Advent is the season where the church all of the world waits expectantly for the return of Jesus Christ, her true king and savior. Just as Israel waited 2,000 years ago for the first coming of her king and savior at Christmas, so now we wait, too, in Advent.

If we want to redeem Christmas, we must redeem Advent. And it cannot be one or two of us, it must be a community that together decides that waiting, repenting, expecting, mourning, and longing for more is better than all the promises of Black Friday and Christmas morning.

Come, Lord Jesus! Come!

—-My friend Drew is doing a series of blog posts on Advent. I think you will greatly benefit from them, and I think you’ll find them much more informative and formative than this merely introductory post.

http://exchangedliving.com/

*For those of you who are unfamiliar with Advent, it begins this Sunday and lasts for the next 4 weeks. A simple google search can get you a good start, but I recommend doing it as a community, not just by yourself. You’ll see how much more powerful it can be.

The Birth of Jesus and the Death of Joseph

Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, only appears in two biblical books. And even in those books he is a very minor character. In fact, he disappears completely after the brief story of Jesus at the Temple at the age of 12. By the time Jesus subjects himself to John’s baptism at the age of 30, Joseph is long gone. We never hear of him again. The text never offers us insight into why he is gone or what has happened.

New Testament scholars speculate about this, but the dominant opinion is that Joseph died sometime between Jesus’ 12^th year and his baptism around the age of 30. There’s a story here about which the gospels are mute. But even their silence, when a character simply disappears into thin air, a good story teller wants us to speculate – and the gospel writers are good story tellers! They do this because in such speculation they want to reveal something incredibly important about their Main Character:

When Jesus comes in the form of a baby on that Christmas some 2,000 years ago, he does not come as a divine spirit detached from the common pains and hurts of human life. He comes in human flesh, in a broken world, in a godly family – yet one that still labors under the wages of sin.

In this sin-stained world, Jesus experiences the death of his father. His human experience is so full and so real that not only does he take death upon himself, but he takes on the pain associated with experiencing the death of his dad – one of the most vulnerable and intimate of all human relationships! He is not so far removed from human experience that the only time he ever feels pain is on the cross. If Jesus wept when Lazarus died, I imagine he nearly had a breakdown when Joseph died.

And because of that, he can sympathize with me. With us.

For all the joy Christmas will bring this year, it will also bring much sadness for many people (I just read the obituary of a 6 day old baby). For all the peace Christmas will bring, it will also remind many families of their loved ones in Iraq or Afganistan. And for all the families Christmas will bring together, it will also remind many of us that our families have experienced a separation that can never be mended.

In the midst of this kind of pain, Christians have more on our side than sentimentalism and clichés.  We have an incarnate God who experienced human frailty, the worst of human disorientation, and the deepest of human depression. We have an incarnate God who can sympathize with our weaknesses, our fear of death, our times of disarray, and our feelings of loss. He became one of us, not only to save us (great as that is!), but also to know fully what it means to be human in a broken and chaotic world. The cross was the culmination of a lifetime of pain (that’s why he is the ‘man of sorrows’). Because of his participation in the universal human experience of seeing a loved one die, I know that Jesus can help me as I struggle with that same reality.

With a broken heart I can do nothing but offer praise to such a God as this!