Advent 1: Happy New Year!

Advent began today. Here is a short piece I wrote for our church that was given to everyone who attended this morning. It’s the first of four pieces that I’ve written that seeks to answer the question, What is Advent?

Happy New Year!

Did you know that a new year begins today?  For many centuries now, Christians all over the world have chosen to celebrate the passing of a year differently from the world around them.  While almost all Americans will celebrate the New Year with parties and festivities on January 1, many Christians ring in the New Church Year a bit more solemnly.  No ball dropped in Times Square; few stayed up until midnight, counting down the seconds; there were probably no new year’s resolutions made.  And yet, the New Year is upon us.  And it has begun as quietly and as unpretentiously as Jesus’ life began that day in Bethlehem long ago.

That is one of the great aspects of the church calendar.  It’s designed each year, season after season, to mirror the life of our Lord Jesus.  The same themes that we find in his life recounted in the Gospel stories we find as we walk intentionally through the church year.  And really that’s what the church calendar is: a journey, a pilgrimage.  Instead of looking at a calendar as days clicking on by, the church calendar invites us to look at each day, at each season, as a participation in the life of Jesus.

The first leg of the journey every year is called Advent.  Advent, as almost every marker in the church calendar, is not a day: it’s a season.  It’s a journey in and of itself.  We want to invite you to walk with us in this journey of expectant hope, deepening love, exuberant joy, and full peace.

This week, spend time every day orienting yourself to the counter-cultural, counter-imperial, and counter-intuitive reality of the coming King.  A good daily devotional online that may help you journey through Advent particularly can be found at www.d365.org.