This week, we have stepped fully into Advent, the season that begins each liturgical year with waiting and watching for Messiah. Advent is the favourite season of most pastors and deacons, and I know more than a few lay folks who love Advent as well. There is something about those shades of blue that captures the essence of the night sky in this season of darkness. The Advent hymns of hope and longing speak deeply to the reality of our world. Advent doesn’t rush us to the good part of the story… rather, it takes its time unfolding. We are just starting this season now in the Church, whereas many in the world have been celebrating Christmas since November 1st. 

I think this love and connection to Advent is precisely because of the contrast it offers to the expectations of Christmas that begin ramping up in November with Christmas parties, concerts, baking, decorating, Hallmark movies and holiday muzak playing on radios everywhere. Our calendars fill up; we have to summon the energy to be social, to be good guests and hosts, and to be present physically, mentally, and emotionally at events with family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. It can be delightful, difficult, busy, tiring, fun or all of those things at once.

Conversely, Advent is about preparation and anticipation. Not in the frantic getting-the-house-ready-for-company kind of way, but in the quiet-stillness-of- your-own-thoughts-and-a-hot-cup-of-coffee-at-dawn kind of way. Advent calls us to slow down, to be present in our own minds and thoughts, in our bodies and hearts. Advent calls us to watch and listen for God, to prepare our hearts for Messiah, to attend to pregnant possibilities of divine activity in our world. 

In the four weeks of Advent, we journey from big to small. In the first week, we begin in the cosmic and apocalyptic realm, where Jesus calls us to pay attention. God is at work bringing the Kingdom of God to confront the kingdoms of sin, death and the devil. 

In the second week, we hear John the Baptist preach about the Kingdom of Israel, of empires and rulers, of politics and nations. 

In the third week, we keep shrinking down: John addresses the crowds before him on the River Jordan. 

Finally, in the fourth week, we witness an intimate conversation between Elizabeth and her cousin Mary, two women pregnant with miraculous babies. 

In Advent, divine activity is revealed in all the levels of our existence, from the cosmic, to the political, to the communal, down to the intimate. And yet, divine activity begins in this final and special place—in the wombs of our mothers. In this most intimate and closest of relationships we can have as human beings, God enters into creation in order to meet us in Christ. From this smallest and closest of beginnings, Christ proceeds to encounter the fullness of creation, joining God once again in divine fullness to every part of our existence. From incarnation and birth to crucifixion and death, Christ becomes one with us. And then, in the Resurrection, Christ’s apocalyptic renewal and reordering of our world in a new creation, we become one in Christ.