Advent is my favorite season in the liturgical calendar. A fresh set of Sundays and Seasons resources feels a little bit like back to school. Advent is only four weeks, and they fly by, which makes it nearly impossible to tell all the stories associated with this season in worship—especially when so many of us make room on one of those Sundays for a children’s Christmas program or the choir’s Christmas cantata.
Christmas tries to sneak in early every year—and we let it. The magi figurines go up with the rest of the nativity scene. We light trees and dare to sing a few carols before the 24th. For all the ways we sing and pray and hear that these weeks are a pregnant pause in the life of the church, we’re not immune from the hustle and mess of Christmas coming early.
And guess what? That’s OK! In fact, I think a messy Advent is the best Advent sermon there is. There are mornings when the kids fight about who gets to open the door on the Advent calendar, and there are mornings when everyone forgets. While we’re jumping back and forth from Jesus preaching about the end of days to John’s conception to Isaiah’s prophecy to Joseph dreaming, our communities are experiencing the already and the not yet. The revelation of incarnation cannot be neatly tucked away in a pretty box and bow until Christmas Day.
Maybe the church doesn’t need to keep these seasons strictly separate. Maybe we’re meant to let our inner child get caught up in the anticipation of this season the way children do—with a frenetic excitement for right now and a deep imagination for what’s still to come. Advent can be an invitation to help our people practice paradox and to remember that, in Jesus, God knows what it’s like to live according to both a human chronology and heavenly time. It’s tension and wonder—and a total mess.
In my book Ordinary Blessings for the Christmas Season, I include blessings for hectic travel and tricky family systems, for the ways holidays stir up grief or remind us who matters, for the financial pressure and the overtime workers, for the weather and the ancestors who bring the holy story alive.
God becomes human for the beautiful mess we are in every season—so why not this one too?
I believe the miracle and gift of the incarnation means that God cares about our candlelit sanctuaries and our sentimental ornaments and our generous end-of-year giving, but that’s not where it ends. Not even close!
God becomes human to hear fifth-grade band concerts and to hold the weight of wishes whispered to mall Santas, to laugh with parents when they see their kids trying on last year’s snow clothes that are way too small, to honor the boundaries of those who cannot go home for Christmas and who celebrate with chosen family instead. God becomes human for the beautiful mess we are in every season—so why not this one too?
Like so many Lutherans, my family says, “Come, Lord Jesus,” at dinner time. These are Advent words, an invitation both urgent and timeless, that God would be present at both our high altars and our dinner tables, in our worship services and in the colorful prayers muttered under our breath when the season gets stressful.
Because God isn’t only partially interested in our mortality or occasionally committed to loving the world. God is all in. Our worship and faith practices are some of the ways we wait for God, and God is here this season. If Mary can embody the word of God, what else can be true about the finite holding the infinite? What other boundaries have been blurred between the ordinary and the sacred, the mortal and the everlasting?
My prayer for you this Advent season is one you might not expect from a pastor, but I offer it in case you need it this year:
I pray you make a mess of this season,
you let others see you frazzled
so they can offer to help, and love you well.
I pray something primary falls apart
so you experience relief and receive grace.
I pray you let your inner child loose
for even one hour or one day
and let her get away with something.
I pray you don’t spend too much energy
safeguarding Advent from Christmas,
so you can play in the paradox of
two worlds of time swirling at once.
I pray you will stand in the mirror
and look at your own body with love—
a revelation, an incarnation, a holy home.
I pray you will know the presence of the God
who delights in your whole life and is born
every year, whether you’re ready or not.
