Ramblings • Advent 4 • 22 Dec 2024
Reflections for the week of the fourth Sunday of Advent 2024, Year C
Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.1
Christmas Eve tomorrow…
And I have no idea how I feel about that.
This is the first Christmas Eve in a very long time where I have had no church responsibilities whatsoever. None.
Even in my early childhood Christmas was a hard working season, filled with more stress than joy. My favorite part of the holiday became the day after Christmas when I could relax into being myself… preferably by myself.
I hadn’t fully sat with the feeling before today, but I recognize Christmas has always been a sad time for me. I have always internally rejoiced at the announcements for “Blue Christmas” liturgies, times when people could come together in a sacred space and actually feel what they were feeling as opposed to the forced happy-happy-joy-joy imposed by Christian and non-Christian celebrants alike in this season.
I love the liturgists who stick to their guns and hold off the Christmas hymns until at least the end of the Christmas Eve service.
I fully understand why the Puritans banned Christmas (even though I hate their reasons for doing so).
I do feel joy at Christmas, but joy is a different animal than happy.
Joy, for me, has tended to be internal, something I have kept to myself and quietly pondered in my heart.
I also feel a strong sense of hope in this season.
I don’t do resolutions that start on January 1st.
(I am looking forward to all the new guys at the gym the first week of January, even though many won’t last through the middle of the month.)
I start my pondering and preparations for the new year on Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent begins.
Advent is when my year begins, which suits me because it usually flies completely under the radar except for liturgical types.
It’s usually not a “big bang” sort of beginning, as expected on January 1st. It is usually a quiet acknowledgement that some things—many things—are drawing to a close and some new things are already starting to take shape.
And that fills me with hope.
Advent is my signal that I can start loosening the straps binding me to the burden of all the stuff I want to leave behind in the old year.
Christmas, for me, is a bump in the road on the way to Epiphany.
Christmas brings up all of the old stuff from the year I want to leave so I can look at it one, last time before settling into the day of relief, the Feast of Stephen.
Yet hope is winning out this year.
So many doors have closed, never to open again. More doors are closing.
And that is propelling me forward into a very rich present I don’t want to rush—and I don’t want to rush into (for fear of gaining so much momentum that I rush through the joy way too soon).
This Advent I am preparing to savor the coming year with great presence and gratitude.
Yes, I will be overcommitted and working my ass off.
But I will be engaged in work that I love.
I will be so engaged, that the sorrows of the year will have space to sit quietly in the corner every so often so I can indulge in the joyous work God has given me to do.
I look forward to re-engaging with you in the new calendar year.
Until then, I will retreat into my shell and let others make what they will of the masks I wear for this holiday.
Christmas comes but once a year. Thank God.
Thanks for being here
Please share your thoughts in the comments or you can send them to me directly at jon@joncarllewis.com. Other ways to connect with me are at “Let’s Connect!” below.
Book of Common Prayer, p. 212.
Your approach to this season strikes a chord of substance over form. I resonate. Love this line: "Christmas is a bump in the road on the way to Epiphany."