Is there anything that makes us more tense than the holiday season?
Think of the tensions of this season; financial tension, relationship tension, job tension, family tension, calendar tension… it feels like one more thing and you’re just going to fly apart.
In fact, there’s even a tension that exists between the understanding of Christmas and the understanding of Advent. One isn’t really a synonym for the other. Everywhere around us it’s already Christmas, so why am I trying to talk to you about Advent?
In our world, Christmas begins when the big box stores tell us, usually around October. Our televisions and computers lure us into debt by numbing us with the Christmas spirit.
Advent, on the other hand is a bit different.
The word Advent means “coming.” So, the season of Advent looks back to the time when Jesus came to the earth, the baby, that manger, the shepherds, that whole story. But Advent also points forward to a time when Jesus will come again to the earth and make all things new. The very season we are in looks both backward and forward. It’s like we are being pulled, a bit, in two directions. And that feeling is its own kind of tension.
At church we’re talking Jesus and journeys and fullness of time and slow down and wait for the Lord, and everywhere else we’re singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” and “Deck the Halls.” The Sundays of Advent crawl by, we signify them by a sort of ancient timepiece, the “Advent Wreath.” Each week one more light appears until Christmas Sunday. The story of God is so much about patience and time and Christmas is about immediate gratification. How are we supposed to feel? “What should I be thinking this time of year?”
Well, let me go back to the idea of tension for an answer. “Tense.” What if we didn’t think so much about the tension we feel, and considered instead, “tense” as in past, present, and future? What if we consider the Lord of Christmas across the eons of time?
Revelation 4:8, a story which predicts what things will be like at the 2nd Advent, when Jesus returns to earth again, actually has this marvelous refrain that helps us make some sense of the meaning of “tense.” The writer of the book refers to Jesus as the One, “…who was (past tense), and who is (present tense), and who is to come (future tense).”
I’m thinking that an encounter with Jesus who was, and is, and is to come could really help us right in the middle of all this “tenseness.”
So against the backdrop of time and change, right in the middle of our busy lives, and peering into the unknown future, the solitary figure of Jesus spans it all. When we are unsure or overwhelmed in this season, we can rest a bit in this; Jesus was, Jesus is, and Jesus is to come…and we live right in the middle of these “tenses.”
