WB Soul-Check: Advent-ure
The crew of the U.S.S. Interpretize are stuck in an Advent time loop! The appearance of a second Captain John Wesley from two weeks in the future reveals that everyone aboard the ship is doomed to explode on Christmas Day, leaving the crew with a difficult decision: do they full stop and do nothing, or do they stay the course and move forward? Not knowing which decision could trigger their destruction, or if there is even the possibility that they be saved from this fate, the crew is left to wonder what resources they have to face such an impossible dilemma.
Advent is a season of expectation and waiting. It is the start of the Christian year, rooting us in our God-with-us story from the first appearing of the Christ-child, to the anticipated return of Christ when God’s home will be among mortals, every tear will be wiped away, death will be no more, and we will no longer know suffering (Rev. 21:3-4). We root our Christian year with bad grammar, where the Lord is come, and we celebrate what was, is, and will be with the dissonance of joy and sorrow, hope and longing, peace and disquiet. Time and emotion seem to collapse and expand in Advent.
Maybe that’s why I’m not actually one of those “No Christmas hymns in Advent!” sort of pastors. We are an already-not-yet people. Our entire existence as Christians is to be caught between the tension of Christ who was, is, and yet will be. We live in the victory of the incarnation, the forgiveness of sins, the celebration of God-restoring-humanity. We live in the hope of final victory, the anticipation that hunger and thirst will end, that one day the pain and loss and struggle of this world will all be settled under the ultimate judgment of the love of Christ. In this tension, even “Christmas” songs become songs of Advent, and Joy to the World is both a celebration of what was, what is, and what will be.
In the meantime, we must make a decision about the sort of people we will be. If we are changed by the Christ-story, if we become characters in the nativity of Christ-born-in-our-hearts today, how must we live? If we are waiting for the coming of the Lord who is come, what will we do and say in a world that groans to be restored?
As we wait on the Lord, we practice faith through the means of grace, those holy habits of being that form within us the mind of Christ. Christ has set us free to be truly human, to unleash eternity into the confines of time, to speak blessing into the ideology of curse, to take selfless action within the geography of selfishness. The means of grace are really the patterns of Christ-likeness, celebrating that we are both spirit and body. Waiting on the Lord through the means of grace is like a farmer planting seed…she sows and tills, yet she is at the mercy of time, nature, and grace to see whether new life will spring forward.
There’s always the danger of thinking that your good works are what save you, but that is no reason not to work. There’s always the risk that worship, sacrament, prayer and study will become boring ritual to you, but that is no reason not to pursue God in the ways God has promised to meet you. This Advent, I challenge you to wait on the Lord by putting flesh on your faith. I don’t know what you’ll find, but I expect it has something to do with grace.
When not drawing the Wesley Bros cartoon, the Rev. Charlie Baber, a United Methodist deacon, serves as youth minister at University United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, N.C. His cartoon appears on United Methodist Insight by special arrangement.