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Maybe the waiting is the most important part of Christmas.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
So we have entered the season of Advent now. On Sunday, we kicked things off. This year, we're working through these set of five Advent prayers that we find in the Christmas narrative. It's a really beautiful way to frame our waiting in this season as we prepare ourselves for the arrival of the Christ child. On Christmas Eve, we're going to gather together, we're going to celebrate, but before that we wait.
Speaker 1:And this is something that sometimes feels like a bit of a throwback, like it comes from Christian tradition, it's what our parents did a long time ago, but for me this is something that becomes more and more important every year. Because every year I've been alive the world seems to move faster and faster. Everything is always on demand when I want it all the time. I just had a new Internet put in at my house. It's pure fiber right to my door.
Speaker 1:I have 300 up and 300 down. It's blazingly fast and it's amazing, but this is the narrative of the world right now. Everything as quick as it can be when I want it on demand, and that's not real life. Real life involves waiting. It involves anticipation.
Speaker 1:It involves lamenting that things are not how they should be. And Advent reminds us of that. And particularly in a world that wants to move faster and faster, Advent becomes more and more important for us each year. In the Gospels, there's this narrative where just as Jesus is beginning his public ministry, he's taken out into the desert and tempted. The Satan character in the story tempts Jesus to move straight to the end of the story.
Speaker 1:Really, if you read it, those temptations are about the temptation to skip the journey, to go straight to the end, to grab the power that Jesus knows he should already have, the kingdom that he knows should already be active in the world and to go right there without the journey. And Jesus rejects that. Jesus says that the waiting and the journeying and the suffering and the lamenting how things could be are part of the story. And skipping straight to the power, straight to the ending, straight to the celebration would rob all of it of its beauty and its meaning. This is kind of how Advent works for us.
Speaker 1:Yes, of course, it's great to go to the ending. Of course, it's great to celebrate on Christmas Eve. It's beautiful to open presents and share them with each other on Christmas morning. But the waiting, the anticipation is part of that beauty and it reminds us that the world is not yet what it should be. It reminds us that in our waiting there was also lamenting because we recognize that there are people who wait for justice.
Speaker 1:They wait for their suffering to end. They wait for the goodness of God to reach them and in that we wait with them. And our solidarity, our community that comes out of that is beautiful because it brings us in touch with the way things really are. That things are not on demand, things are not when we want them, that there is a world that is waiting and groaning for the goodness of God to arrive and in that, in that solidarity and community with the world, there is beauty. And so Advent becomes even more important for us.
Speaker 1:Every single year the world begins to move faster on us. In this season, as we begin to prepare our hearts for the arrival of the Christ child, we want to invite you to wait well. And that when the Christ child arrives and Christmas bursts into our world, the full celebration of the divine in our midst, all of your waiting will make that celebration just that much more beautiful.