Blessed are you, holy and living One, You come to your people and set them free.
I love this current season. Both, the church season of advent, and the secular build up to the celebration of Christmas.
I love Christmas movies, Christmas cookies, Christmas radio station, eggnog, peppermint mochas, decorating the house, being cosy with family.
Which is why me missing the joy, the anticipation, the light of Christmas had such a profound impact on me one year.
December 2019 was the first time in my life that I recognized that I was missing the season of Advent as it passed me by, that I was not anticipating Christmas, that I was deeply experiencing and feeling the emotions of the Grinch pre-heart growing 3 sizes.
There was one prominent reason for this, and that was serving as a co-director for the newly formed Severe Weather Shelter.
This venture required a heavy lift of a number of churches, many of whom didn’t see eye to eye on much, but had worked diligently for months to come alongside one another and a local service agency so that the most basic needs of emergency sheltering could be met in our community.
This venture also required a thick skin as we took on the brunt of public and private backlash from community members, neighbors, and civic leaders.
I didn’t anticipate the amount of work and stress and lack of sleep and stress that helping operate a severe weather shelter for the most vulnerable in our community might take.
It was an emotional and physical drain on myself.
Which was hard because I knew it was the right thing to be doing, there was no other option being made available, there was no other hope being offered to our homeless neighbors, there was no promise being made by the community that their lives were valued and valuable, that as a community we would not let them die simply because there was no place to go to keep them from exposure to extreme temperatures.
I think that in many ways, that was part of the drain.
That it felt like we were doing it in spite of the community around us.
It drained the fun of the Christmas season in the buildup to Christmas because everyone around us felt like the living embodiment of Ebeneezer Scrooge (before the ghosts).
But we persevered.
And Christmas day came.
And we were open Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Pastor Marv came and played carols for our guests on his electric piano.
We provided food, a feast truly, and a safe and warm place to sleep, complete with Christmas tree!
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
I would help oversee 4 more seasons of cold weather sheltering including more shelter openings on and around Christmas day and the emotional and physical drain didn’t impact my observance and enjoyment of advent, of the Christmas season, as much as it did that first year, because I was able to reframe that experience through the lens of Advent as more than just a season of anticipation but also a season of personal devotion and preparation. Something I had always known but had not been challenged to fully live into and understand until that first winter of shelter operations.
This is a season of soul-searching, this is a season of anticipation because this is a season of seeking connection with Christ.
The seasons of Advent and Lent are intrinsically linked to one another as they both traditionally represented times of repentance and fasting in preparation for Christ to fulfill a promise. In Lent, that promise is his death and sacrifice, his defeat of death, his sacrifice which forgives all of our sins. In Advent, that promise is his incarnation, his walking among us in human flesh, a promise that was foretold by the prophets, who pointed us to the signs of his coming, and there is also the promise that he will walk among us once more in his second coming at the end of days.
And so in Advent, we journey to the banks of the Jordan River to hear John the Baptist crying out from the wilderness.
The wilderness that Jesus is spirited away to at the beginning of Lent to be tempted by the devil.
A connection point between the seasons, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the birth, death, and re-birth.
Prepare the way of the Lord, John calls to us, echoing Isaiah, echoing the prophets that have been pointing us back to God, have been preparing us for Christ to walk among us.
Sleepers wake! The voice astounds us.
We are called to prepare for the lord, who is already walking among us.
Jesus will show up at the Jordan in short order.
Jesus is already here with us, even as we are preparing for his birth on Christmas day.
Jesus has already gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.
Jesus has already won his victory over death.
And still the call of Advent remains, prepare the way of the Lord who is coming.
Prepare for the incarnate Christ who will be born to walk among us in this creation, for the first time and for evermore.
We start our Church year here for it is both the beginning and the end of the story.
Jesus’ birth marks the beginning of our story as followers of Christ’s path.
Jesus’ way of love fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah, every valley is filled, and every mountain and hill are made low, and the crooked is made straight, and the rough ways are made smooth; and all flesh sees the salvation of God.
All of this is accomplished through his love, which conquers all, which conquers death itself through his death and resurrection.
As we walk in the way of love, we continue to make this prophecy a reality in this creation.
For we are preparing this creation for the end of the story.
The second coming of Christ at the end of days, to sit in final judgment over creation, to bring us into that life eternal with great rejoicing.
It is this second coming that we celebrate in anticipation as we observe this season of Advent and the birth of Christ on Christmas.
It is why Advent was a traditional season of penitence and fasting.
A season of preparing our souls for Christ’s second coming.
A season of aligning our faith practice with Christ’s way of love so that in his second coming we are not caught unaware and off guard.
We take to heart the warnings of both Christ and John in these first three weeks of Advent, before we turn to the miracle of the annunciation and conception of the Christ child in the final Sunday of Advent before Christmas day, before the birth of Christ comes once more.
We take the invitation of the season to pause, removing ourselves from the societal pressures of production, consumption, and excess in the secular observance of the season, to align our hearts on Christ, to align ourselves on the straight pathway, to align ourselves on the way of love that lays before us, beckoning us to embark on a faith journey that embraces love above all else, that encourages and challenges us, that opens our ears to hear the words of the prophets that have come before so that we may have the grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, so that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
We also take a moment to pause and offer up prayers for the new iteration of severe weather sheltering being run by the City of Longview and the Salvation Army, who have taken the model we successfully utilized over the past five years as our community at large tries to take real ownership over a fundamental need for our citizens. It has gotten off to a rocky start, being unable to be open this past week even with nighttime temperatures below freezing, and we offer our prayers that they are now prepared for when the true freezing nights descend in the near future.
As Paul wrote to the Phillipians, a perfect prayer for our Advent season: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” Amen.
the road 