Advent, Part 1: Celebrate the Difference

Probably one of the most painful things that can happen to almost anybody, particularly on our present culture, is to be different. To not look like everybody else. To not fit in. To know that somehow the crowd is there, and I’m here, and I don’t know that I belong in that crowd at all.

Being different produces feelings of fear and anxiety as well as doubt. It’s awful. And anyone who has ever been in that painful position of knowing you don’t fit in knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Maybe you were picked last when they were dividing up teams on the playground. Or maybe you didn’t have that electronic device, that pair of jeans, that brand of shirt or shoes that everybody else had. And you began to realize, Gosh, I’m not like them. 

Courageous Calling

But guess what? Advent is a celebration of not fitting in. It’s not a question of somehow wishing we were different. Advent relates to the fact that we don’t fit in, and in fact, we’re not supposed to.

Because for Christians, who have said yes to Jesus Christ, the goal in life is not fitting in. The goal in life is living differently, intentionally so, from everyone else. It’s a willingness, in fact, to stick out, not blend in. It’s a willingness to speak up when everybody else is silent. It’s being willing to take a hit, to stand out and not back down.

It’s a call to courage. To clarity. To joy, even in the midst of the difficulty of speaking out just like that.

Do you remember the one pink candle in the midst of the three purple ones in the Advent wreath? It’s a certain celebration. It’s a sign about who we are called to be. It’s the willingness to stick out, be different, act differently, and know that that is what God has given us in Christ Jesus—that it is, in fact, our calling.

Costly Compromise

So if your desire in life is to fit in and you’ve said yes to Jesus, I want to tell you, you are going to be sorely disappointed. If you so compromise your Christian beliefs that you do fit in, you become that “salt of the earth” that Jesus describes as having lost its taste: “How can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot” (Matt. 5:13).

That’s the price you pay for fitting in. There’s a part of you that dies inside. You die to the deepest and best part of who God is making you. And you try your best to get over the little lies, the things that you say that somehow compromise your integrity. And you tell yourself it’s OK, because the world says the ends justify the means.

And so yes, you might fit in, you might get ahead. As you get into adulthood, you might make some business deals or have jobs open to you that would not have opened if you’d been absolutely honest.

But a part of Advent is to say we’re not meant to fit in. That what we do when we try to fit in is, in fact, compromising and saying no to the very work that God has done in us.

Countering Culture

In other words, the call to prepare the way of the Lord—all the things that are the themes of Advent—has everything to do with how you and I live. It’s not just a sort of esoteric season that gets us ready for Christmas. It’s something actually much more profound. It’s the call to look at our lives and ask hard questions about where I am compromising my Christian faith for the sake of fitting in: economically, politically, in the way I operate as a neighbor, in the way I treat others socially. It even asks us to look at whether we’re fitting into our church culture in a way that looks more like what the church wants than what Jesus asks.

You see, our standard is not the Diocese of Central Florida or The Episcopal Church—or any other church, for that matter. The standard is what we see in Jesus.

You see, Jesus tells us that to say yes to him, to come into the water for baptism, is to receive something brand-new that doesn’t look like this world at all: the new nature we receive in Christ. It fits us forever, and we, as we say literally every Sunday in the Nicene Creed, believe there will be a time when Jesus returns.

And in that return, we will stand before him, and we will not be judged on the basis of how much money we’ve made or how successful we have been, much less how many people have actually liked us. We instead will be judged on our faithfulness to him. And to be faithful to him requires being distinctly different from the way our culture operates and moves and acts. In this countercultural kingdom, the ends do not justify the means.

So as you see the pink candle of Advent, remember that when you choose Jesus, you choose to stand out. Celebrate the difference!

In this Advent season, how will you celebrate the difference Christ is making in you? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer.

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on December 11, 2016, at Church of the Holy Spirit, Apopka, Florida.)

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.