Advent: Transitioning into the dark time of the year

By another name, transition is change.  The longer I live the more I recognize, and at times even accept, that living a balanced life is largely contingent upon how successfully I handle the transitions in my lives.   Ready or not, new events and occurrences happen in our lives and invite us to change. Transitions and changes occur when we move to a job or change positions; when we move to a new school or start a new grade; when children are born into our families and then grow up; when new friends appear and old friends leave; and when our Christian faith community leaders prepare to depart as new leaders prepare to arrive.

As some of you know I had a Navy career that spanned about 30 years of active service. I just calculated that during that time I had 18 permanent changes of duty.  I wasn’t always ready, nor did I want all of those changes of duty.  Not too strangely, my readiness didn’t always seem to matter to the people who detailed me for those moves. The moves happened, transitions occurred, and I was challenged to change with them. 

The Diocese of Southern Virginia is a large and complex organization.  As a faith community the first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of a new Christian year.  Gradually throughout the season of autumn, the bright light of summer has been diminishing.  Shortly the darkness of significantly shortened days will limit the amount of natural light we can experience in any 24 hour day. I always find that the shortened hours of daylight can function as an Advent reminder of the need to be reflective of the first coming of Jesus the Christ into our midst at the feast of the Incarnation on the 25^th of December. 

Though Advent may be in the foreground of our life as Christian people, this year a background event has the potential to overwhelm our contemplation of the coming of Christ.  The background event is the coming departure of one bishop and episcopal leader, and the arrival of another on the first day of February.  Though the departure and diminishment of one bishop and the arrival and commencement of another episcopal leader is significant, it’s probably best to resist allowing the leadership change to eclipse the Advent season movement of God in our lives. 

In our congregations on the First Sunday of Advent we will read from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah.  We will hear what Isaiah said to his readers about a significant change and transition that was about to occur.  That change would amount to a time when all of God’s people, Jews and non-Jews, would come together and, giving up their inherent conflict with one another, travel to a mountain where God would teach them a new way of being human: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths (Isaiah 2.3b, NRSV).”  In Isaiah’s day nothing could have been more radical.  We read this scripture to be reminded that Advent is a season of potential radical change and transition. 

Even more radical is Isaiah’s proclamation that this teaching would result in a time when “…they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah 2:4b, NRSV).”

If taken at face value for us today in our context within the United States, I cannot imagine anything that would call for a more radical and monumental change and transition.  Just think about it.  No longer would we separate ourselves from one another as adherents of one or another political party.  No longer would we seek ways to demonize one another because we share differing perspectives about the norms for our social and cultural context.  No longer would we allow ourselves to believe that our religious traditions are superior to those of another person.  No longer would we say to someone who was born into a family in a different part of the world that because of their family and national origin they are not as good as us.

Advent is our time of transition and change.  As we petition God, “O Come O Come Emmanuel” and look through the darkness of late autumn, I invite you to look within yourselves so that you may learn more of the ways of God in your lives as you ask God to shine his light through the darkness that you may find the path of God on which you are being called to walk.

Peace,

+Jay