We don’t celebrate Advent. Call me a slacker Christian, but I don’t even know exactly what it means. Something about getting ready for Christmas, I think, with a nod in the direction of the second coming of Jesus. Several years ago (out of self-consciousness, possibly the Sunday school variety) I bought a Jesse Tree devotional book for my small children. It is lovely and simple. I’d recommend the book to anyone. It is definitely more wholesome than a dollar store calendar with chocolates–my entire understanding of Advent up until ten years ago.
To tell the whole truth, though, I attempted to make 25 ornaments and read daily devotionals and sing the recommended hymns, but couldn’t summon enough energy in the evenings to make it really count. Plus my husband, bless him, doesn’t sing hymns out loud.
I had enough trouble keeping the tree from getting knocked over by rowdy little boys. Every time it tipped another homemade ornament would shatter on the floor. The rainbow over Noah’s ark, gone. The snake wrapped around the glittery apple, the cute little sheep, Jacob’s ladder–all in the trash. Now when I pull out the ornaments of a December morning there are only odd reminders. A broken red chimney (symbolizing the wall of Jericho or the fiery furnace? I can’t be sure), a purple chipped salt-dough bunch of grapes.
The encouragement to parents to make Christmas “really count” can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back–the one glued to the side of Abraham’s felt tent. For me, elevating ordinary life raises standards that I cannot maintain. It’s a carrot dangling in front of me, an imaginary promise. If I only hustle and say all the right things my kids will turn out and Christmas will be more meaningful.
It’s just not true. Our lives are ordinary, and in this ordinary life there are days when I struggle to prepare frozen chicken nuggets with a hearty side of ketchup for supper. I, a lover of Christmas, decorations, and every holiday on the calendar, stake my claim in the mundane. There is no love, hope, joy, or peace in adhering to traditions as though they give life–particularly around Christmastime.
In the ordinary, we develop habits. In the quotidian we tread paths that, as Christians, should be marked by a self-giving love. I’m not talking about Giving Tuesday or dropping quarters in the red Salvation Army bucket. The words that come out of our mouth, our flexible bank account, our reverence for the garbage man, the gentleness in correcting a child, the patience we exhibit in the Kroger self-checkout lane…(I’m telling you, practicing those last two will break you like a Christmas ornament in the hands of a two year old.) We are capable of maintaining a high love frequency. Everyday love routines speak our hope of His coming.
My friend Alex likes to say “We are people of the towel.” He means this: we follow the example of Jesus. We serve, we wash one another with daily advent encouragement: He is coming.
Being prepared, then, is the goal of habitual training in ordinary life. We make room for Jesus in small and large ways by living. We are only branches, abiding.
Jesus, who entered into our ordinary in the form of a baby, did not show up to school us in the ways of tradition, as if our parties and Advent readings give us bonus points.
He showed up in the womb of a single teenager when women were stoned for adultery.
The King of all creation arrived, a defenseless infant, in the time of the Roman Empire. As soon as Herod heard the news, he ordered the slaughter of all the baby boys in the region. His family escaped. I can’t imagine they forgot the price other families paid.
He who was with God in the beginning donned a human body. He cried. He learned to walk. He felt hungry. He worried his mother.
Jesus was a refugee, a carpenter. He celebrated, he engaged, he encouraged, he retreated.
He became one of us.
He loved people.
He was the Christ the Jews had been waiting for for hundred of years. And they crucified Him.
See, my servant will act wisely;
he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him—
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness—
so he will sprinkle many nations,
and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand.
Isaiah 52
We are two thousand years out from that baby in a manger, the Son of Man on the cross. We still wait, for the sprinkling of nations, the shutting of kings’ mouths.
We wait and we don’t stop waiting. May our children witness our fervent hope in the mundane, when we put up the tree and when we take it back down. Or in our case, as it gets knocked over.
