Looking Forward, Looking Back
If you’ve been to one of your local big box stores, you have probably already been encouraged to start shopping for Christmas. “Hello Fall” started in August, but now that fall has arrived, we must begin preparing for winter—one that is hard to imagine is coming as I write this on a sunny, 70-degree day. Why the rush? As a hardline observer of Advent, I generally find early-November Christmas displays despicable, but this year I’ve determined to contemplate a bit more carefully what (besides pure consumerism) drives us to “anticipate” holidays both of our secular calendar and even within our Christian life.
There is, in fact, some religious precedent for this early move towards Christmas. After the feast of All Saints (November 1), the appointed Scripture readings in our lectionary begin to nudge us towards Advent, that season that encourages us to look both backwards to the coming of the Christ child and forwards to his second coming in glory. Advent, the beginning of a new church year, begins November 30 this year, and lasts for the four weeks leading up to Christmas Eve.
But already in the daily office lectionary we have begun reading the book of Revelation, the vision of John about the apocalypse. His visions of horses and dragons, angels and living creatures, gates of pearl and streets of gold invite us to contemplate the end times, but in a way that is often out of our grasp. (For good reason, the Church has often taught that one should not even read Revelation until having studied all the other books!)
Beginning this Sunday, our readings will also begin to shift: the passages from Luke begin to shift our focus away from Pharisees and tax collectors and towards the resurrection of the dead, the destruction of the temple, and the approach of the kingdom of God. The collect this week sounds like an Advent collect, asking God to purify us so that we may be found like Jesus “when he comes again with power and great glory.”
It is part of human nature to wonder about the last things, and the Church in her wisdom has given us opportunity to contemplate them together. The purpose of all this talk of endings, as we approach the end of the church year, is not primarily to make us fearful or anxious. Rather, it is to instill hope: to remind us of the hope that we have in Jesus and our belief in the resurrection of the dead that tells us we do not need to be afraid. Even as we see the change and decay around us, even as we meet the challenges that face us in both our personal and communal lives, we find ourselves strengthened by a sure and certain hope, which the collect for Proper 28 calls “the blessed hope of everlasting life.”
Some liturgical scholars view these three Sundays as a distinct liturgical season of “pre-Advent,” and others simply advocate for a lengthening of the Advent season to seven weeks. However you view this stretch of time, it is an opportunity to gradually turn our hearts and minds towards what is to come. It is a season of already but not-yet: moving past the growing season of summer and fall but not yet into the full observance of Advent and Christmas. So whether you’re still eating half-price Halloween candy and raking leaves, or already have the presents under the Christmas tree, I invite you to step into the present moment, not to block out the past and the future, but to rest in that hope which passes all understanding, both now and in the age to come.
Yours faithfully,
The Rev. Charles Martin
