The Advent I need

I welcome the shadows and the light.

The Christmas decorations are up! I love the cozy feeling of a tree filled with homemade ornaments and mementos from years past, stockings hung over the fireplace, and outside lights that pierce the darkness that descends at 4:30 pm. It all makes me want to wrap up in a blanket and drink peppermint hot chocolate for the rest of the month.

This is what Christmas decorations do, right? Make everything gauzy, fill our hearts with giddiness. And thank goodness for that.

I need that joy, but this year I am feeling drawn to shadowy side of Advent as well.

The waiting…

Before that night in Bethlehem that changed everything, the world had long lain in wait for a new kind of divine revelation: incarnation. God with us, all of us, and not at a distance but in bodily form. Then there is Mary’s own waiting, the seemingly endless period of incubation and preparation that every pregnant woman goes through. (I could swear that my own kid was fully cooked and ready to burst out of my skin by month six, but he kept squirming and kicking inside of me until his due date.)

Here in 2024 I’m waiting, and many of you are too. I’m weary of meanness and violence and the kind of self-aggrandizement that takes from those in need to line the pockets (and egos) of those who have plenty. God, where are the angels announcing that good news for all people? Or maybe the question is, where’s the reckoning for the personal and planetary destruction we have wrought?

The danger…

Mary and Joseph faced danger before Jesus was even born. They were not yet married, meaning Mary’s pregnancy was at best fodder for gossip and at worst grounds for her death. (As Joseph knew the baby was not his, he could have accused her of adultery, which carried a penalty of stoning.) Instead, Joseph believed the angel of the Lord and joined Mary in her social shame. Then came the journey to Bethlehem at the end stages of Mary’s pregnancy. This was a multi-day trip. It could not have been an easy or comfortable one, and it culminated in a delivery in an unsanitary environment with presumably no provisions. Once Jesus was on Herod’s radar, his life was at risk until he and his parents fled the country, and many babies and toddlers lost theirs in Herod’s rampage.

Our world feels full of danger to me. (I note that the world has already been dangerous for so many people, and it’s a mark of privilege that it just now seems that way to me.) The Church no longer feels like a place of safety, as white Christians have voted into office a regime that threatens to destroy all the imperfect structures that keep American society going. The blueprint of Project 2025 is a completely destabilizing one in which a lot of almost imperceptible policies that we all rely on day to day will vanish. And history shows us that insecurity often leads to desperation and then to violence.

Advent gives a theological framework for our current waiting and danger. In that shift between BCE and CE, there were not foregone conclusions. We can have a sweet Christmas because we’re on the other side, knowing that Jesus was safely born and raised. Mary and Joseph had to go on faith. Advent reminds me to sit in the not-knowing of what will yet unfold, trusting in the promises of God.

This Advent, then, I want to focus not just on the candles and the manger scenes and the poinsettias, though I need these points of joy to keep me going. I want to zoom out and see the shadows around them too, the places of uncertainty that threaten to crowd out the lights. I want to remember that God is at work as much in those spaces as in the brightness and cheer.

I wait for what God will do next, knowing that no matter how bad the outlook seems, God’s love for us and desire for our good are more persistent and powerful than any person, circumstance, system, or structure.