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We’re in this strange time of year where seasons and celebrations seem to bend into each other. It doesn’t feel like it was that long since Halloween, and we only just ended our celebration of Thanksgiving. Christmas too will be here before we know it.
A film that gets at this flow is The Nightmare Before Christmas. In the movie Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, is leading the annual Halloween parade. As it finishes, the mayor is already anxiously ready to talk about next year and what they will do for the celebration then.
Jack is struggling though. He wants something different. He wants something new.
He happens to stumble upon a grove with a bunch of trees. One is marked with a pumpkin, clearly representing Halloween. There are others too, such as one marked with a turkey for Thanksgiving and another with a decorated egg for Easter.
Then there’s another tree marked with an ornamented tree. Each of these trees in the grove opens up and goes to these other holiday towns. This particular one leads Jack to a Christmas Town with Santa getting all the toys ready for children all over the world.
Jack loves what he has found and decides he wants to celebrate Christmas too. He starts getting all the people of Halloween Town to help him with this task.
The problem is Jack still doesn’t quite get Christmas. He kidnaps Santa to give him a break. He makes spooky toys that end up scaring the children he gives them to. It gets so bad that the Air Force try to shoot Jack out of the sky in his sleigh as an imposter. His friends end up finding Santa and restoring him to his role before it is too late.
Jack doesn’t quite understand Christmas. It’s clear from the use of secular aspects of the celebration that the film creators didn’t quite either.
The problem is that maybe we don’t really understand Christmas either. For one, we call it by the wrong name. “Christmas” is short for “Christ’s Mass”, but every Mass or Eucharist is a celebration of our Lord Jesus Christ.
No, the day we speak of is properly known as the Day of the Nativity, or even the Day of the Incarnation, because it is a celebration of Christ Jesus being born.
What hurts our understanding of this time of year is that we often comprehend what Advent is even less. We often like to think of it as a simple preparation for the Nativity, but it isn’t that at all.
Advent is much older than the Incarnation. It was celebrated long before people saw any merit at celebrating birthdays. It was originally about looking ahead to the time of Jesus’ return. We see that even today. We see that in our Gospel reading.
Advent is about preparing for that time of our Lord’s Second Coming into this world. We see that throughout all our readings today. If we had to pick a theme for the lessons, it would be “Sleepers, awake.”
Jesus Himself exhorts us to these words. He tells us at the end of the Gospel to “Be alert at all times.” We are called to be focused. We are called to pay attention.
We are called to be ready, and this too is where our lessons show us another theme, this time to live righteously. For the Prophet Jeremiah, as we approach the end of his writings, this comes at a time where Israel is so unrighteous that God is allowing the Babylonians to be near their gates, ready to take over the Southern Kingdom of Judah and exile the remaining Israelites from the Land God promised them of old. Even in these dark days, Jeremiah holds onto hope for the future. He holds onto hope of a day when the Israelites will return and be renamed as “The Lord is our righteousness”, because it is not ourselves, clearly, that can make ourselves righteous but only God alone.
This hope of righteousness continues. It is what David hopes for in our Psalm. It is what Paul hopes for the Thessalonians. Paul hopes for their righteousness as he desires to be among them again, just as his protégé Timothy recently was, giving a report of his time with the Thessalonians. Paul hopes for the Thessalonians’ righteousness as they prepare for God’s own coming to them through the Second Coming of our Lord.
Righteousness is what Jesus calls His Disciples to in the Gospel. It is what Jesus really means by waiting, making ourselves righteous as we live into the way God intends us to be. This is where our themes intersect, that to wait is really to live righteously.
The path of righteousness isn’t easy. David in the Psalm reminds us that we will face persecutions, as he did from his predecessor as king, Saul. David also asks that the Lord forget the sins of his youth, a reminder that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God.
Being righteous moves us beyond the ways of the world, as Jesus exhorts us to go. It is hard because it goes against the ways we see around us. Righteousness is hard because it shifts us from following the patterns we have previously known and perhaps even lived into.
Yet “dissipation and drunkenness”, as Jesus mentions in the Gospel, aren’t enough to fill the hole we often find in ourselves and in our lives. That hole is Jesus shaped, and only He can fill it to make us whole.
Advent is a time of preparation. It is not simply about preparing for the Nativity Season. It is not even solely about preparing us for Jesus’ return. Nothing in this life is certain. We may not know when Jesus will return, but we also don’t know when our own lives will end. The question Jesus is trying to ask us is ‘do we want to live a life where we try and fail to fill that Jesus shaped hole with other things that don’t quite fit or do we want to live a life that is actually worth living?’
We can only live that worthwhile life if we are taking the time to let God in. With this knowledge, use Advent as it was meant to be. Truly understand the meaning of this time in a way we often fail to with the season that follows, the Season of the Nativity. Be watchful. Be alert. Take this time to prepare. Make your lives whole by letting God in.