By Father Casey

The word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming.” For most people this time of year, Episcopalians included, the coming refers to Christmas, and a lot of us didn’t even wait for Advent to start getting ready for that. Given everything we’ve endured this year, many of us craved Christmas to come extra early, so the lights and tree went up a bit earlier than usual.

But it’s important to understand that hanging a wreath on the door and turning on Bing Crosby is not the same thing as observing Advent. Because the “coming” implied in Advent is a lot less about our preparations for Christmas than it is about our preparations for the coming of Christ at the end of days, when the fullness of the Kingdom of God will finally overwhelm the world as we know it. Most years it’s an abstract concept, an idea we’re content to humor when we’re at church, but spend very little time thinking about elsewhere.

But this year? 2020? Haven’t you found yourself longing for God to do something – to show up, to interrupt things, to bring down at the very least a respite from the cascade of hardship and suffering we’ve endured? Haven’t the words of Isaiah – “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” made more sense this year?

Among all the things that have humbled us this year, and stirred our desire for that second Advent, the thing I keep coming back to, again and again, is the staggering – and still steadily growing – number of deaths from the pandemic. 276,000 as of this writing, and that’s only in the United States. It’s a number that is so enormous that it’s sort of hard to fathom, which may explain why so many in our society seem to care so little about living differently in response. So, think of it this way: it’s as though the whole city of Plano just disappeared this year. Or the cities of Waco and Richardson, combined.

And these victims aren’t just statistics or stories in the newspaper. Each was someone’s child, someone’s friend. Many were parents or grandparents. They had lives, stories, worth. And nearly all of them died alone. One victim’s obituary, for a Kansas Episcopalian named Marvin Farr, poignantly captures this tragedy: “He died in a room not his own, being cared for by people dressed in confusing and frightening ways. He died with Covid-19, and his final days were harder, scarier and lonelier than necessary. He was not surrounded by friends and family.” (I recommend you read the whole obituary.)[1]

Nor does it end there, as most of the funerals for this vast multitude lacked congregations. They were buried without the companionship of all the family and friends who should have been there. They did not receive the farewells they deserved, nor could their families experience the consolation of their communities. There just remains an enormous, unresolved grief.

I understand entirely the pull to happiness and cheer right now. I totally get how much we “need a little Christmas, right this very minute.” I know that putting up the tree early, and binging Christmas movies, and playing the music extra loud this year may be a way to experience some lightness in a long, dark year. I get it completely.

But this year of all years, given the enormity of the losses, I believe it is our responsibility as followers of Christ to not hide from the grief of the world. Our Savior did not shy away from the hardest realities of life, and neither should we. Which is why I’m asking you to allow this Advent season to be a time of lament instead of forced happiness. Anything less would be like fast forwarding to the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, or jumping to the end of A Christmas Carol. The ending makes no sense unless you’ve first reckoned with the sadness and suffering.

I hope you won’t assume that the only way this can be the “most wonderful time of the year” is by escaping into some sort of month-long holiday fantasy. Resist the temptation to spend the next month sipping the sedative of nostalgia and consumerism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was well-acquainted with grief and suffering, once wrote, “The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come.”[2]

Try following the path of old Scrooge, and let the spirits who reveal the hard truths of our lives and of the world haunt you. They may show us what we would prefer to escape, what we wish had never been, but it is the only way we can hope to experience the divine redemption for which we so desperately long. And when the Son of Man does at last come on clouds descending, when the heavens are finally torn open and the long expected one does at last break into the world with all the fullness of his power, may we be awake enough and humble enough and ready enough to not miss it.

This is adapted from my sermon for Advent 1, which you can listen to here.

[1] https://priceandsons.com/tribute/details/2456/Marvin-Farr/obituary.html

[2] Edwin Robertson, Ed., Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005).