From the Pastor: The Promise of Advent

Dear Peace family,

And now the calendar turns to Advent, the first season of the church year, the time of waiting, hope, expectation. It is a favorite season for me, even though it is often crowded out in our culture’s rush to celebrate the exuberant joy of Christmas.

This will be a bittersweet Advent for our family. Most of you know that Lois’s father, Richard Solberg, died suddenly on November 15, and so we are grieving the loss of a truly remarkable man. I suppose I gained my love of Advent in large part from the Solberg family, in whose home Advent had a very special part. My first visit in their home, years before Lois and I were married, was during the late Advent season and then Christmas, so the season is closely connected in my own heart with the family. That will make Advent a hard time for us this year.

And yet it is to just such a time as this that Advent speaks most eloquently. Advent is about the darkness of life–the aspects of life that are difficult, discouraging, troubling–and yet it is about the light that comes into the world in Jesus Christ. "The days are surely coming . . ." says our first lesson on the first Sunday of Advent. This season is about looking for the longed-for Messiah, awaiting the promised redemption. It is about learning how to be patient when life seems dark, because we are confident that "light dawns for the righteous."

We have God’s promise: "every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, the rough places plain." When we walk through the valleys of life, and when our path seems crooked and rough, that promise is still there. In Advent, we focus our eyes and our hearts on that promise. People of faith know the wonderful truth: the darker the night, the brighter the stars!

I invite you into this season. Come on Sundays as we prepare for the Messiah. Come on Wednesday evenings (4:45 p.m., beginning December 6) for our traditional "Advent Organ Vespers"–a time to sit and reflect as we first hear beautiful seasonal music from Paul Perry, and as we then join in Evening Prayer. Let your season be marked with prayer and with quiet hope.

My prayer for you is that you will be touched by the coming Lord in these next days, and that your heart will truly prepare him room!

Peace to you,

Pastor Richard O. Johnson

P. S. On behalf of my entire family, I want to thank you so very much for your kind words, cards, for food brought, for help with transportation and lodging, and most of all for your devoted prayers for us in our time of loss. We are deeply grateful.

Classic Prayers

Stir up your power, O Lord, and come. Take away the hindrance of our sins and make us ready for the celebration of your birth, that we may receive you in joy and serve you always; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

--Gelasian Sacramentary (8th century)

Liturgy Notes: Our Advent Worship

Liturgical churches are characterized by many things. One of the most significant is the observance of the “church year.” In an unchanging pattern, the church’s worship is formed by and focused on the seasons that have developed over two millennia of Christian faith. We have just come to the end of one year, culminating in the festival of Christ the King; and now we commence on the cycle again with the four-week season of Advent.

It is probably during this time that the contrast between the liturgical year and the secular environment is most pronounced. In the secular world, promotion of Christmas begins very early--earlier each year, it seems. Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving is the heaviest shopping day of the year, and we might say that Christmas is already in full swing on that day. In non-liturgical churches, the celebration follows the same pattern. December becomes the month of Christmas, with worship each week focused on the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Small wonder that many of those churches don’t have Christmas Eve or Christmas Day services! They, like the culture, are “Christmased out” by December 25. Some other churches have reduced Advent to a single Sunday, usually the first in December.

Why Advent? Why does the church hold out for a time of quiet reflection and preparation when the rest of the world seems to lurch headlong into the festivity and joy of Christmas?

One reason is that Biblical faith has always had a close relationship to waiting. “My soul waits for the Lord,” said the Psalmist, and that insight speaks volumes about who God is. He is not one who provides us with instant gratification, like some cosmic vending machine! Rather he is a God who asks us to be patient, to avoid the temptation to demand everything now. He works with us slowly. And so Advent is a season of waiting. Our Advent worship is quiet, reflective. It is a valued time carved out of hectic December schedules, a time for sitting in silence and opening our hearts to God. Charles Wesley’s great Advent hymn reflects this attitude: “Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in thee.” Advent is a time for acknowledging the weariness we feel in this life, and waiting patiently for the rest that comes in Jesus Christ.

Another reason is that to truly celebrate the Lord’s incarnation, some preparation is required. And so preparation is a theme for these four Sundays. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” cries John the Baptist, and our Advent hymns and prayers echo that call. Our Advent worship is structured to remind us that preparing for Christmas and preparing for Christ are not altogether the same thing! Preparations for Christmas are external--shopping, wrapping, housecleaning, traveling, partying. But preparing for Christ takes place in the heart. “Oh kindle, Lord most holy, your lamp within my breast,” wrote Paul Gerhardt. During Advent, we look into our hearts and ask God to bring the light of his dear Son.

We need this season. If it makes us feel strangely “out of synch” with the rest of the world, that is good. That is our calling. May our Advent worship be for us a time of quiet reflection, a time of waiting, a time of patient preparation, so that Christ may be born in us again at Christmas.