Advent: Waiting in the Dark

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is the Christian season that builds toward Christmas. Using the story of Mary’s pregnancy, Christians relive those last few weeks, expectant. The world gets dark and often cold, and we move inside, get cozy, light fires, and wait for the birth of hope.

This is the cycle. This is the story, the myth, the metaphor. Every year a billion Christians, and a whole lot of other people who can’t resist, lean into this story. It begins today. A season of waiting. The church of my young adulthood moved services to the evening in Advent so that it was dark. Advent is about the dark. That’s part of the metaphor and it’s a reflection of the actual reduction of light 90% of the world’s population is experiencing. It’s dark. Mary is pregnant and she waits. We wait with her. We wait all month in a whole lot of cultural/communal ways. We have Christmas countdowns, we open daily advent calendars, we recount all the stories about Mary, we talk about the suspense of pregnancy in our story telling, we even make a huge deal out of Christmas Eve, so popular because it’s the closest we can get to Christmas morning, the final moments of anticipation. And then there’s Christmas, the birth. It’s the birth of Jesus, of hope, of light if you’re willing to use a dark/light metaphor which generally, I’m not but often pervades this time of year. The star song, the end of waiting, the meeting of the newborn, the shift into the new world. The end of what was and the beginning of what will be. The liturgical year ends and begins, over and over again, as we wait, once again, in the dark.

That’s it every year. We wait. We count. We expect. We anticipate. We celebrate the birth, until the next year when we wait again.

I’ll be honest. I love it. It’s a favorite season for me. I like Advent more than Christmas, maybe because I think it reflects our real lives more. Also, because nothing can live up to the hype of that much waiting. The waiting really is the best part. Even with a child in the house, even with a ton of gifts Christmas morning, even if we plan a perfect day, it’ll never quite justify an entire month of build-up. But we’ll do it again next year anyway.

In reality, the final weeks of pregnancy are alive with expectation, but the birth isn’t one day. It’s not even 12 days, as Christmas might be. It’s forever. It’s a lifetime. But, that’s not how we celebrate this. We wake Christmas morning, celebrate the day, the birth of hope in the world, and then we sleep for a week, pack up and go on with our lives. This is how you know the birth was a metaphor. No crying babies, no life-altering situation. Nothing has changed. The season ends and we move on to what’s next.

In this case, the season isn’t so much about Christmas, but about the weeks leading up to it. It’s about Advent, about the season of anticipation, of preparation. The pot of gold at the end

of the rainbow in our real lives won’t have much consequence, but we dedicate an entire month building up to the great reveal.

I suggest we turn our attention to how we spend this Advent season since this is, as far as I can tell, where hope really lives. In fact, while the last few weeks of a pregnancy are about waiting, it’s about a lot more than that, as anyone with 4 weeks left to birth can tell you. It’s about gestation, about creation.

This is what brings me to the Visitation. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. It’s about the baby and moves from there. If you’re Christian and going to live your life according to the teachings of Jesus, Christmas kicks things off. After the birth, the story is really about his life, his work, his death, the transformation of the world in response to his message. Those things are beautiful and worthy of our consideration and even our dedication, but in our very real lives, in our shared spiritual practice, we don’t spend too much time after Christmas focusing on those things.

But for us, the time spent during Advent is more relevant, more alive. What we do in the month of December year after year is more reflective than what we do on Christmas Day. The story of the Visitation is a reflection of so much of the socializing we do this month, and this story recasts the star of the show. The Visitation, happening in this pregnant moment, is about two women more than two male children. It’s about family and friendship and solidarity. It’s about all the relationships that happen before, about all the people who make one life – Jesus’s life in this case – possible and important. It’s a moment in history when two women share their joy and their concerns and they partner to move through the waiting, to move through the trepidation, to prioritize their bodies and their love for each other.

A few years ago, a good friend’s daughter-in-law was killed. She was shot by her own father in her home. He then shot and killed himself. My friend’s son was grieving, the whole family was grieving. My friend was holding all of them along with so much of her own sadness. Because the death was violent and stunning, people kept their distance from the family. Their minister didn’t even call. I went to their house for a visit and told my friend I was coming to sit. I told her we didn’t need to talk, she shouldn’t cook, certainly don’t clean anything. I’m coming to sit.

And we did. We sat on the couch for a long time. She told stories. She cried. Mostly, though, she didn’t speak at all. She just sat. I made tea. She held the warm cup to her face and breathed deeply. I touched her hands. I kissed her head. And I sat too. We sat and we waited as grief and fury moved through.

It was a Visitation. It was a holy time. In birth and in death, we Visit. We meet each other in our joy and grief.

It is who we are. It is what we need. Now, as much as or maybe more than ever.

The Adent season is an invitation to Visit. I’m spelling that with a capital V. Visit. Be with each other. There is an end, a new beginning later, like all stories, a place we’re heading where

this story will turn, but for now, we’re waiting, and the waiting is holy. It’s the in between space where we create the world we’re waiting for.

It feels like the whole world is waiting. Everywhere I go people are talking about fascism, authoritarianism, climate disaster, the end of democracy, the rise of the right, the disintegration of the world as we’ve known it. We don’t seem to be preparing for something, though, as much as we’re just waiting for it. We’re waiting to see what this election cycle will bring. We’re waiting to see if there will be any accountability for trying to overthrow our government. We’re waiting to see if our fellow countrymen care about the implications of the rhetoric or if they – or we – even understand it.

There’s a pall that is setting over the land. A sense of foreboding. I’m watching what’s happening at the climate conference in Dubai as world leaders – at least those who showed up – are making compromises that prioritize profit over planet and concede to concessions that are leading to our own destruction. Almost 30 years of United Nations climate conferences and emissions are still rising, making 2023 the hottest year in human history. Fish in the Irish Sea are lifting their heads above the water to get a break from the boiling sea. And we are watching them, doing the equivalent of nothing. Most of us are just waiting.

This is Advent. The time of waiting.

But, this is a time of gestation, not of passivity. Mary is creating a baby. Life happens in the dark. Worlds are conceived. There is no Christmas without Advent, there is no baby without pregnancy. It’s now that the world is created, now that we are designing and building and producing hope.

If this historical moment is fraught, if the world is hanging by a thread that seems ready to tear, then this isn’t our time for doing nothing. It’s our time to Visit. When people are feeling worried, when grief seems to be just over the horizon, we can use Mary and Elizabeth as our model.

December is often a very social month, but I’m hearing reports that it doesn’t feel that way to everyone this year. I’m not sure how universal that is, or why it might be happening. It could be a backlash from last year’s feeling of liberation after two very tempered Christmas seasons, or if the pandemic broke so many of our social bonds that we are finding ourselves without all the invitations we used to have, or maybe saying “no” is more the new normal, creating greater isolation, but there seems to be a little less celebration in the holiday season this year.

Given all of that, it’s time to Visit.

This is the hour of incubation, of construction, of creation. We do that together. If we are going to birth a new world, if we are giving life to hope, we are going to do it in community, in partnership, and please tell me we’re going to do it in Love.

Mary brought nothing to Elizabeth but her self. She brought her love, her care and concern. She offered her time, a sharing of her life. Elizabeth was in transition, pregnant, facing some level of danger, and Mary brought her Self.

That’s what we all have to offer. We bring our Selves to each other.

Next week, Leslie McKenzie had the lovely idea of having a birthday celebration for folks over the age of 90. We offer ourselves in celebration of life.

Janice has started a new gathering some Sundays for caring and exploring in community. We offer ourselves in shared spirituality.

When I hired Br. Zachary, I told him I was looking for an anam cara ministry, a ministry of spiritual presence which he has so deftly embodied. We offer ourselves in spiritual companionship.

When people are sick, Esther often brings them bone broth. We offer ourselves in healing.

When Lisa had her surgery last summer, a team accompanied her to appointments, ensuring she wasn’t alone in all the medical things she had to navigate We offer ourselves in care.

Br. Zachary and Rev. Jude have started a monthly brunch for people in their 30s and 40s. We offer ourselves in friendship.

Our choir has been opened once a month to all the people who love to sing together, who then share in bringing us beautiful music. We offer ourselves in joy.

Our Council will gather after this service for some lunch and strategic planning. We offer ourselves to our shared mission.

And we Visit. We visit each other in times of crisis, in times of celebration. We Visit each other for fun and friendship, to aid in grief, in loneliness, and always we Visit in love. Over and over again, we become the bodies of the Visitation, the people of presence who are not just waiting, but who are gestating, who are creating a new world the one that will be born of our love and companionship.

This isn’t about waiting passively for a single day of celebration, but about embodying the new world in all the days leading up to it. It’s the designing and weaving, the sitting by warm fires, embraced by the comfort of darkness. It’s incubation. It’s gestation. And it’s happening between and among us as we, here together today, are again part of the making the ground holy and ready with our Visitation.