We live in an attention economy. Increasingly this is causing an attention crisis. We are divided against ourselves by the many claims on our eyes and ears. A house divided cannot stand.
Modern life is frenetic. Everything is lived at breakneck pace, and sometimes we do trip and break our proverbial necks. That’s one of the reasons we’re so exhausted. We can’t rest, we can’t stop, we’re on the go all the time.
Whether we mean the over-scheduled middle-class household that works too long and rushes around with a thousand activities after work followed by a bottle of wine and some doomscrolling; or whether we mean the person who finds the pace so fast they don’t even know how to start so end up apathetically doing nothing at all, afraid of getting on a treadmill that seems designed to break us; or whether we just mean the shiftless masses trudging in the gloaming, eyes fixed on the bright colours of their magic glass which suck the wonder from the foggy air; we must confess that we struggle to simply be.
Christianity claims to offer ‘rest’, but we haven’t a clue how to even begin resting. Christianity says we just have to wait for the blush of dawn, but we don’t know how to wait so distract ourselves in useless activity. Jesus says ‘abide,’ and we wish that we could.
The prescription is the means and rhythms of grace. The cure is to hear the word and eat the word and drink the word and be with the people in God’s house and yours. But we struggle with being slow. We struggle with things that aren’t cures but are wisdom that we have to become the kind of people who are fed by them. We struggle with anything which will take a lifetime, or even longer. We struggle.
Advent can help us. This is a season of darkness, focused on the second coming of Jesus. It’s a time of waiting. It’s a time to really feel the tension of living in the Between, this suspended moment between what was and what will be. The Church are a people of the Between, a people of gloaming, of the time when it’s neither night nor day, the time between the times.
If we give over four and a bit weeks a year—starting four Sundays before Christmas Day—to thinking about waiting, it will be a balm for our souls. We do this by considering the promise of the coming King in the Old Testament, and the promise of the returning King. We do this by staring the darkness full in the face, unflinching with our questions and raw emotion. We do this experiencing Advent as the fast before the feast, that which makes Christmas so much sweeter.
If you’ve done much fasting with your church, then you’ll know that the sweetest Lord’s Suppers you’ve ever had are those that break your corporate fast. The gathered people come with empty bellies and full hearts to pray, and the smell of bread wafting through the room is like the incense of the heavenly temple. In a very real sense, it is that. The fast makes the feast sweet. The ‘fasts’ of Lent and Advent prepare our hearts for Easter and Christmas.
We should think about Advent in two ways, in the church and in our households:
Households
Push back on ‘Christmas Creep’ where you can. Then, make Christmas last. It’s not a day but a season. The reality of living in the culture we do will make actually observing Advent until Christmas Eve almost impossible; try what you can.
Decorate slowly. Don’t jump to the Christmas music too soon. Don’t fill up on the food in the middle of December so you’re sick of it by the second of January.
Make yourselves some rules—yes this is, in essence, a liturgy—but don’t make them the kind you can’t break. You’re not trying to be a Grinch who won’t go to the work Christmas meal because it’s in mid-December, but instead you’re trying to cultivate habits of heart and mind within the choices that are in your control.
Of course, it would be nice if the shops played Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, and O Come O Come Emmanuel on a loop until Christmas Eve but it isn’t happening (and you wouldn’t like it, but that’s sort of the point). Instead, we change what is within our own gift, and that’s our household.
Again, if you usually invite neighbours around for a Christmasy mulled wine and mince pie the week before Christmas, of course you still do that. Not least because if you did it on 27 December they probably wouldn’t come.
Nevertheless, we aim to lean into the waiting where we can. Look the darkness in the face. Remember how wretched the world is. Then, when Christmas dawns and the Light is born and God in Heaven becomes God my brother, then we will rejoice.
Church
How can churches lean into Advent? I haven’t seen this done well outside of very formal liturgical churches that are nothing like the ones I attend or lead. We run all these Christmas events because it’s the one time of year that our friends and neighbours are interested in coming to church. That’s a good thing!
How about, on the fallow weeks in Advent that you don’t have some kind of event, you push back on the Christmas creep just a touch. Sing some carols, maybe even teach some Advent hymns, but preach with the darkness and waiting in mind. Preach in preparation for the feast. Allow the calendar to school us in its wisdom.
Do we have to do this? Absolutely not. The Incarnation is a truth to preach and sing all year ‘round, not just at Christmas. We don’t have to be beholden to the calendar. But I wonder if, in this particular cultural moment it might serve us to remember Advent. We’re the people of the Between, of the twilight; but the dawn is coming. Inexorably. Let’s wait for it like watchmen (Isaiah 62).
Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash
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