Advent is short this year, as short as it can possibly be. Notwithstanding the chocolate Advent calendars, much less all the houses decorated for Christmas during Thanksgiving week, the liturgical season is calculated by Sundays and did not begin until today. There are four Sundays in Advent and every so often that fourth one falls on December 24, as it does this year.
"Advent: the season of open fifths" I whispered to my choir-mate during this morning's organ prelude. An open fifth is the stark, "pay attention" sound missing the middle note that would allow the harmony to relax into a minor key or brighten it into a major one. It's a fanfare with an ancient, clarion sound.
I can't say that it broke through the morning's rain and gloom--not in any way that persisted through the day. But it is the first Sunday in Advent, the day in my household when the first box of Christmas stuff comes down from the attic — the box that holds the candles that go in all the street-side windows of the house. I hope they carry a message of hope and anticipation to the outside world. Inside the house they remind me that light can indeed shine in the darkness, that there is continuity from one season of life to the next, that Christmas is coming but it doesn't get here all at once.
These "candles" run on electricity. Not from batteries. In my house they're plugged into the wall. That stable in Bethlehem may have been lit by a star, more metaphorical than practical, and perhaps an oil lamp. Lighting up my windows in 2023 requires long white electrical cords, a power strip, an extension cord, a "three-fer" that plugs three cords into one outlet, a half-dozen built-in light sensors in some of the candles and a smart plug that controls others. When I put these things away last January, I left the cords tangled up with one another as a roadmap to plugging them in again this year. It's kind of perverse, I thought this afternoon, while crawling around on the floor, that celebrating the True Light coming into the world requires so many cords and plugs.
The lights attached to the smart plug timer will shut off at midnight, as I've programmed them to do. One candle in the kitchen has to be switched off manually when I go to bed. (Or should I order another smart plug from Amazon?) The others, the wise bridesmaids with the light sensors, stay on through the night and blink off, one by one, when the morning light reaches them through the overgrown evergreens in front of my house. There will be a couple mornings in December when I, awake too early or sleepless for too long, will sit here in the bay window and watch that happen. Those mornings seem especially promising.
There will also be some afternoons in December when the western sky bleeds pink and purple from the setting sun, as if angels had dipped their brushes into the paint box and washed the heavens with color. Gaudy and equally promising.
In between in these closing days of 2023? Terrible conflict in the Mideast, ongoing war in Ukraine, a warming earth with big question marks in its future, and people everywhere tangled up in selfish, senseless division.
"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down," rang the lament in this morning's Old Testament lesson from Isaiah 64, "so that the mountains would quake at your presence, as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil."
We would be awed by such signs, and more than a little frightened. But there will be other signs of God at work in the world. I see one such on my television, currently running a slideshow of my daughter's photos of friends and family. We'll show it at her birthday party next week -- celebrating with the people she loves and who love her.
What else? Look for the helpers, says Mr. Rogers. Look for those who persist in seeking change, bit by bit. Those who toil, those who sing, and all those who await from the Lord great and abundant mercy.
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, says the spiritual. Plug in those electric candles. Wait and watch. Christ is coming soon -- indeed, is already among us.
