Part of why we observe Advent is to make Christmas weird again, to allow the shock of the incarnation to take us aback once more. The movie Talladega Nights has a famous scene in which Will Ferrell’s character prays to the “eight-pound, six-ounce, newborn infant Jesus.” It’s his “favorite Jesus.” This kind of laughable mawkishness springs from our casual overfamiliarity with the Christmas story divorced from the larger story of the fall of the world and God’s redemption through Israel. We rush too quickly to carols and bells and a sweet little “eight-pound, six-ounce, newborn infant Jesus” and lose sight of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah—the one who is wisdom, Adonai, root, key, light, king, and Immanuel.
By entering into the larger story of redemptive history, we begin to feel our need of a deliverer again. We wipe away the fake snow and tinsel, the felt-board shepherds and friendly beasts, and lean into the ache of the cosmos, the sorrow and struggle of all creation. Just as we are tempted to skip over the devastation of Good Friday and rush ahead to the good news of Easter, we can hurry to the hope of the incarnation and refuse to glimpse the depth of confusion and pain of the oppressed people of Israel, longing for God’s shalom in a world devoid of peace. But in the same way that ignoring the horror of the cross inevitably belittles the resurrection, when we overlook the captivity and yearning of Israel, we end up missing the glory of that holy night in Bethlehem.
Before we celebrate the birth of Christ, we remember the pain of labor—we wait with this whole longing world, with all of creation, groaning for redemption to be born. We face the darkness before we celebrate the dawn. We prepare for Christmas not only with shopping lists and decorations but by making space for mourning. We join with Israel in lamentation. We wait, as the hymn says, “in lowly exile here, until the Son of God appears.”
We begin our year not only by waiting but by readying ourselves to receive the gifts of repentance, healing, and restoration that God gives by grace. We come to God openhanded, holding our imperfect and incomplete lives before him. We need him to come to us, to rescue and restore us, even today, in our everyday lives.
But Advent reminds us that awaiting the final coming of Jesus is—and has always been—the essential posture of every Christian. No matter how sophisticated our technology or how privileged our lives, the Christian faith tells us that what we most long for is not to be found till the end of time.
My yearly practice of waiting on these three comings of Christ shows me that I often forget how to wait on the Lord. I begin to believe I am the master and maker of my own life. I begin to believe that joy is self-made through my own ingenuity and hard work. I begin to believe that the things I most long for are within my grasp if I can only master the mad task of controlling my own life. I begin to believe I am the engineer of my own deliverance. And into these fevered deceptions, Advent comes each year and quietly asks me to pause, to remember that we do not bring the kingdom of God to the world through our own effort or on our own timeline. We wait for one outside of us and outside of time. We wait for our coming king.
Advent is a season of hope, but hope is not to be confused with privilege, peppiness, or a denial of just how broken things really are. We cannot embrace true hope without also acknowledging the pain and sinfulness of the world and of our own lives. Hope is the comfort of the poor and the needy. It is not a trite bliss formed through our own effort, wealth, or success.
