It seemed like winter came too early this year. Several mid-November snowfalls, just heavy enough to leave a thin layer of white on the ground, caught me off guard. I hadn’t even begun to make the normal winter preparations. Up until a week earlier I’d been clinging to the notion that it was still the height of fall. But getting caught in a snowstorm as my husband and I were trying to fly home from Chicago on Thanksgiving weekend finally disrupted my fantasy.
The day after we returned from our Thanksgiving travels I found myself having to shift gears again. Advent, the Christian season of ritualized waiting and preparation to welcome the coming of the divine Light at Christmas, had begun. Advent is my favorite liturgical season. But this year it, too, caught me off guard.
The season of Advent includes four Sundays. Each Sunday has a unique character and set of stories that lead us to Christmas Eve. So, though we might want the readings for the first couple of Sundays of Advent to include stories of the birth of Jesus, they never do. Instead, they are taken from the Hebrew prophets and the later chapters of the gospels. They feature calls to wake up, to become fully aware of the time we’re in. And they are apocalyptic in the strictest definition of that word. While we tend to equate the word “apocalypse” with “catastrophe,” the literal translation of this Greek word is “revelation” or “uncovering.”
The sense of something being revealed or uncovered in the first half of Advent comes through the voices of characters like John the Baptist and Jesus. They admonish their audience to wake up to the greed and corruption of the governmental, social, religious, and financial systems of their time. They call for the disruption of business as usual.
At the same time, they insist that in their place something new is waiting to be born. They point us toward the possibility of a world filled with justice, mercy, and peace.
Year after year we tell the same story, yet we’re still waiting for the promise of Advent to fully come into this world and take root. There is a disconnect between the promise and our lived reality.
This year in particular I’m feeling that disconnect. It seems like so many of the systems I’ve counted on – government, economic, and environmental – are collapsing all at once. As they do, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact they have been unsustainable all along; that they are riddled with inequality and greed. And I’m sorry to say that I think I’d just become accustomed to all of that – as long as there was some stability and as long as I in some way benefited from it.
So, the disruptions have caught me off guard and reoriented me from my illusion of comfort to the reality of what is embedded in those systems. And I have a very hard time imagining a way out of the mess.
When I find myself sinking into a dark place as I perceive our world coming apart at the seams, it helps me to remember those scriptural apocalyptic stories. Specifically, it helps to be reminded that they aren’t once-and-for-all stories. Rather, they help us make sense of what occurs over and over again. And the good news is that they always end with restoration and transformation. Those stories help us to envision what the world can be – a world ruled by justice, equality, and peace. A world where everyone has what they need.
But that sort of transformation doesn’t happen by magic. It requires effort and commitment. In fact, it won’t happen at all until we all wake up to the reality of our brokenness, share a vision of wholeness, and act accordingly. It won’t happen until we wake up to the current reality and commit to creating systems that benefit everyone equally.
That’s an overwhelming task, and no one can do it alone. But each of us can go a long way toward implementing the vision of a more livable world by caring for our neighbors, our communities, and our environment. Even the smallest acts of kindness and compassion are powerful and can be our tools of disruption as we steadily chip away at injustice.
So, ready or not, winter is here to stay and it has ushered in Advent and the start of a new year on the Christian calendar. It’s the perfect time to pause and reflect on where we are and what needs to be changed, and then take steps to make the world better.