Advent, Part 2: Saying Yes to Advent
Last week, we learned that Advent is about celebrating the difference that Christ makes in our lives. We have a natural tendency to want to fit in. But once we make a commitment to follow Jesus Christ, we don’t fit in anymore. Following Jesus goes against so much of what our culture says.
That’s why, if we say yes to Advent, we say yes to so much more. I want to share with you four aspects of saying yes to Advent that will open the door for the profound transformation God wants to work in each of us.
A Prayer for Power
But let’s be honest. We all want to fit in. We want people to like us. We want to do well, to be well spoken of. As people, we all have that profound tendency and temptation to slide around the edges if it makes life somewhat easier.
That’s why we need the following prayer, one of our collects. Those of us who hear it every year at this time must pay attention to its razor-sharp impact: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come on us, and because we are sorely injured by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.”
This collect is saying, “Lord, Savior, God, I see those tendencies in me to lie, to not tell the truth, to cut the edge a little bit, to not speak up in the ways that I know that I probably should if I’m a believer in Jesus. And I just can’t help myself. I need you to come in. ‘Stir up your power, O Lord’ and deal with me.”
In other words, it’s not just some random prayer. It has to do with the stubbornness and fear that operate in my heart and cause me to be less than truthful about who I am as a believer, to fail to line my life up to the things the Scripture teaches.
If you say following Jesus is easy, you’re lying. It’s hard work. And it’s meant to be. But we have a model for living like this, a model for living in a way that is a true contradiction to the culture around us.
A Model for Living
John the Baptist is our model for what it means to be a Christian in a culture that does not line up with Christ. What do we know about John the Baptist? He prepared the way for Jesus’ entrance onto the human stage. So we also, as Christ’s people, take up that same role, calling people to faith, to repentance and to life, modeling that which looks like not this world, but the kingdom of heaven.
This is all laid out for us in Psalm 146, which should, in fact, be a description of what our life looks like in community: “[The Lord who] executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin” (Ps. 146:6-8).
If we’re a church that looks like Jesus, for whom are we making room? The stranger. People who’ve been in prison. The hungry. The orphan and the widow. And who are all those people? They are the ones who don’t fit in.
That’s the invitation given to us: to be a part of what God is doing in the world. Because that’s what his people should be about. In practical terms, this psalm should describe how I spend my money, what I do in my free time—because that’s what God is doing. This is how I will be judged. In my actions, I’m saying, “There is another kingdom coming, and we’ve already seen it in Jesus.”
And what does Jesus hold up? Caring for the outcast. Reaching out to those in need. Loving the unlovable. Speaking prophetic truth to people who want things to go their way rather than God’s way. Living in places of repentance about the torn and broken nature that has always existed within our hearts, so that I have to wrestle on a day-to-day basis to be able to say, “God, I need your help to be bold today, to be a servant today, to give away today. Not to hoard, not to fit in, not to look like everybody else. I need you to do something in me that I cannot do for myself because I want my life to look like the kingdom that’s coming, not the kingdom that you are judging.”
A Kingdom Life
So what does our life in Christ look like? It looks like Advent. Advent describes, in fact, what the Christian life should look like. We suffer because we stick out. People will make fun of us. They won’t include us. We may not get the job that we wanted if it requires us to compromise our values. This could happen.
And of course given where we are in The Episcopal Church in this global Anglican Communion, we have sisters and brothers across the planet who are doing a lot more than just not getting the right job because they stand for Jesus. They’re losing homes, they’re suffering persecution and often martyrdom. They are our John the Baptist witnesses.
And in the midst of all of that, there’s one more reason for the one pink Advent candle. It has to do with joy. It’s a joy to know you are a part of something that God is doing. It’s a joy to know that as you give and reach out and touch other people, as you make the time and ask the hard questions about your own life, as God begins to work change in you, and you begin to do things in the lives of other people, you are doing things that matter for all eternity.
And then when the time comes when we stand before him, he will look at us just like he looked at others, and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:23b, NKJV). This means if we’re suffering, our suffering is tinged with joy. And with hope. It means we sing, even in the times of sorrow, because we know there is a new world coming where death will be no more.
We are looking for a new heaven and a new earth. We are living now for a kingdom that is yet unseen but is surely coming, the kingdom we see in Jesus. That’s what we are saying yes to when we say yes to Advent.
So in the midst of all of the Christmas activities that I know that are occupying your life and time, there is a deeper work.
A Deeper Work
And the deeper work is saying yes to Advent. To the celebration of being different. To a willingness to stick out and to care for people who don’t look like you and me. To make room in our fellowship for the orphan, for the widow, for the immigrant, for the stranger, for people others might not want to be around. To make for people who, in fact, help us look more and more like the kingdom, even as we love this earth.
Don’t let this Advent slide by without praying, with real honesty, the collect I mentioned earlier: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us, because we are sorely hindered by our sins. Let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.”
Why? Because I need it. And I want to be a part of what God is doing. I want my life to count—not for somebody else’s applause, but for eternity.
That’s Advent. Let’s celebrate it together.
How are you saying yes to Advent this year? 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.