Once
upon a time, a centurion named Biggus Maximus shuffled into the Blessed City.
He’d been away from Rome for years, stationed along the empire’s Eastern border
to guard against the invasions of Gothic hordes—the Germanic kind, not the ones
with lots of eye shadow—incursions which had been increasing in frequency for
the last half a century or so. He’d been separated the from his unit at the
Battle of Adrianopole, where that idiot Valens had managed to get himself
killed, and he was exhausted. Exhausted and a little depressed, because there
was something in the air, some wird, some doom, as if everything was coming to
an end, as if it all were coming apart at the seams.
Biggus
shook himself—he was just tired, that’s all. The setbacks were just that:
setbacks. No barbarian horde, with their primitive weaponry—clubs, for Caesar’s
sake, against good Corinthian steel; slings against mighty catapultic engines
of war—no army of thugs
like the Visigoths was gonna take them
down . . . He was just tired, so the first thing he did, before he even checked
into headquarters, was go to his barracks for some well-deserved sleep.
He
came awake with a start after a couple of hours; it was just after dark, and a
throbbing beat filled the air. After a minute, he recognized it as Jingle Bell
Rock—the Madonna version, not the one by Paul Ankus—which puzzled him to no end
. . . Had he lost a whole month in his ramblings? Did that Visigoth cudgel do
more damage than he thought? He could have sworn
that it was still before All Hallows’ Eve . . .
He
fumbled around in the dark until he found his wrist-dial—thank Apollo it was
one of those new, self-illuminating models—and sure enough, it was only October
15th. With a heavy sigh, he clambered out of bed, donned his toga and livery,
and went looking for the moron who was keeping him awake playing Christmas
music more than two months
before the fact.
Well.
We all know the end of this
tale . . . Despite all the Roman might, despite a defense budget bigger than
the economies of France and Britain combined,
70 year’s later the Western Roman Empire collapsed.
And as for ol’ Biggus Maximus, he got more and more grumpy and less and less
sleep, and became the first person in recorded history to complain that
Christmas was getting earlier and earlier every year.
The
first hints of what would become Advent appeared about a century after Biggus
lost his night’s sleep—just after the official fall of the Empire—when a Bishop
named Perpetuus declared—forever, one assumes—that there would be a season of
fasting beginning on St. Martin’s Day in the middle of November and lasting all
the way through Epiphany—the twelfth day of Christmas for those who are
counting—and about a century after that
it became known as Saint Martin’s Lent because there were a total of 40 days of
fasting. In the West, it was shortened to the 4 Sundays we know today
And
while Biggus Maximus may have been the first
to complain about Christmas coming too soon, but he certainly wasn’t the last . . . Each year we complain about
it too, we shake our heads ruefully as if it’s unavoidable, saying “it’s the
culture . . . what are you going to do?” Well, not to be pushy, or anything,
but I can tell you
what you can do . . . Celebrate Advent
instead. That’s what it’s for,
it’s whole purpose is so we be still
and think, instead
of hurtling mindlessly into tinsel-bedecked, over-the-top celebration of Baby
Jesus the day after Labor Day (I swear, it’ll get there soon). Even the name reflects this purpose:
it comes from the Latin word adventus,
which means coming. Coming.
Not “it came the week before Halloween,” or “it arrived at 12:01 the morning
after Thanksgiving.” It’s not here
, already, but coming.
Now.
Before I start foaming at the mouth, let me say that there is a lot of pressure to go
along, and it’s understandable to a certain degree. After all, we Presbyterians
have always been
pretty integrated with our culture, we’ve never been particularly separatist
about our faith or it’s expression. In fact, some of us seem downright
embarrassed about it. And cultural norms havebeen
changing over the last half century or so, but still: as I often say, what kind
of witness is it if we’re no different from anyone else?
Ironically,
our evangelical brothers and sisters are better at this sort of thing than we
are . . . They often have little problem taking stands on issues that separate
them from the culture at large, even though these have begun to fray around the
edges a bit. And most evangelicals have only a dim notion of what Advent is all
about, much less how to celebrate it.
You
see, there’s a lot of symbolic and theological and symbolic weight packed into
these four Sundays In about the 12th century, a monk named Bernard of
Clairveaux—who founded the Cistercian monastic order—wrote that Advent is a
time of preparation for not just one coming of Christ, as a manger-child on a
chilly winter night, nor even for two, at the end of time. “There are three
comings of the Lord” he wrote. “The third lies between the other two. It is
invisible while the other two are visible.”
Our
passage describes the second of Bernard’s comings in poetic language, when “the
sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will
be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” It’s
very much couched in the world-view of the time, with Heaven—the abode of the
gods and the realm of the stars—pictured as being above us, and that the coming of the Son of Man
would shake up even that
realm.
It’s
important to understand that this is poetic language, that’s it’s not to be
taken literally. The folks in Jesus’ time—or Mark’s 40 year’s later—would have
understood that, they would have understood that poetry can be a way of
expressing the inexpressible, that somehow the present order, the way things
are, will change, it will cease being what they are and become something new.
It’s an example of how the Christian view of things differs markedly from the
purely scientific, materialistic world-view, where things just keep on keeping
on, following the second law of thermodynamics, until the Star we call the Sun
burns out. What happens to us
is governed by these things alone, there is no overarching reason for things,
no overarching end.
Christians,
like all world religions, believe that there is
such a reason, such an end, and that the divine is working through cosmic
history towards it. Teilhard de Chardin called it the Omega Point, and believed
that it will be a culmination of the Christification, the bringing humanity
together as one, pushed there by evolution, and bound by the forces of love.
Teilhard’s vision is a hopeful one that views all the trials and tribulations,
as Jesus would call today’s increasing chaos, as necessary prelude to that
coming together, when the lion will lie down with the lamb and we will practice
war no more.
But
what about St. Bernard’s third
coming, the one that comes between the other two? “The intermediate coming is a
hidden one” he wrote, in which we see the Lord’s coming within our own hearts.
It’s a coming that happens every day, one that was promised by Jesus himself,
in spirit and power. Where he is in us just as the Father is in him.
And
so, sisters and brothers, this Advent I suggest that we look not only to the
external, not only to the lights and advent wreaths and candles, and not only
toward the future either, toward that image of time and place—however it’s
pictured—when the stars fall from the sky. I suggest that we look inward, into
our hearts, to find the Christ within, who comes to us not only at this chilly
time and place, but every day and minute and hour of our lives. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment