Advent waiting

By Tyler Tankersley

Today marks the first day of the season of Advent. This particular liturgical season is still new to me; in the church I grew up in, we did not acknowledge Advent. We went straight from Thanksgiving to four weeks of jubilant Christmas celebration.

While in seminary, I worked at a church that did not jump immediately into "Joy to the World" as soon as Thanksgiving had passed. Instead, we spent an intentional time of four weeks in which we waited for the coming Christ child.

Our culture does not handle waiting very well. We are prone to bouts of impatience if the line is too long at Starbucks, if it takes too long for our oil to be changed or if Amazon is one day late delivering our newest package. In our culture that is obsessed with immediate gratification, perhaps it is the season of Advent that has the most to teach us.

The Benedictine writer Joan Chittister says this: "Waiting hones our insights. It gives us the time and space, the perspective and patience that enables us to discriminate between the good, the better and the best." Waiting allows us to judge between what is truly life-giving and what is not.

Advent is the season in which we enter the time of waiting that the people of Israel experienced as they awaited the arrival of the Messiah. During times of waiting we are called upon to check our expectations, to balance our perspectives and to allow God to work within us as preparation for God's plan for our lives. As Chittister says, "The function of Advent is to remind us what we're waiting for as we go through life too busy with things that do not matter to remember the things that do."

As we engage in this season of waiting, it is also all too clear to us that, in many ways, we are still in a time of waiting. Our world is full of injustice, heartbreak and oppression. In addition, to enter into the experience of the Israelites' anticipation of the coming Messiah, Advent also is the season when Christians anticipate and wait for Christ's Parousia ("the second coming"). We long to see a new heaven and a new earth in which there is no more mourning, poverty, hunger or thirst (see Revelation 21).

So, before we enter the full-fledged, bright lights of Christmas, let's wait. Let's allow God to help us sort out our priorities on our faith journey. May our prayer be one of watchful anticipation for how God may be seeking to shape us into people of hope, peace, joy and love. And may our prayer be:

"O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here,

Until the Son of God appear.

O come, Desire of nations, bind

All peoples in one heart and mind;

Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease;

Fill the whole world with heaven's peace."