First Sunday in Advent

FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT, DECEMBER 2: SPENDING LESS                                                                         You cannot serve God and money.

For most Americans, the Christmas Season—Advent in the Church Calendar—entails a period of excess shopping, spending, and partying. Jesus says something in that we should consider before jumping into this consumerism mayhem: “You cannot serve God and money.” When put into context, this verse speaks to the real problem of the excesses of the Christmas Season:

 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,  but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. . . .  No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Matthew 6:19-21,  24)

If you choose to go against the cultural flow and spend less this Christmas, it does not mean that you love your family and friends less. Perhaps by giving them a personal, creative gift or something from the Alternative Giving market, they may experience a deeper sense of your love and God’s love.

Prayer for the Day: Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Advent 2012

I have written a new devotional for Lent for the Church of St. John the Divine Houston that starts today and ends with Christmas.

INTRODUCTION TO ADVENT 2012

When I was a child, I loved the Advent season, anticipating Christmas Day, the gifts I would receive, and the familiar carols we would sing in church. The family gatherings and parties never failed to entertain me and make me joyful. One of my favorite traditions was watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. Year after year I was moved when Charlie Brown bought the pathetic Christmas tree that no one wanted, brought it to the Christmas pageant, was declared a failure by his fellow cast members, and then in exasperation asked, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” At that point Linus took center stage. Reading from the King James Version of Luke’s Gospel, he told us what Christmas was all about. To this day, I do not like any other version of the Christmas story.

When I was a young architect, I used to walk from my office through a department store to the food court in the adjacent mall for lunch. One September I noticed that the Christmas display went up the week after Labor Day. This was entirely too early. It made Christmas entirely too commercial. And it seems to me that nothing has really changed. Christmas is as commercial as it ever has been, and I want to ask, like Charlie Brown, “Does anyone know what Christmas is all about?”

There is a movement afoot, known as The Advent Conspiracy, to help people see what Christmas really is about and that Christmas really can change the world. The authors of The Advent Conspiracy put it this way:

There is a sense of prophetic mystery surrounding Christ’s birth. The story reveals something divine to us; it drives our quest to look closely at our own stories. Who are we? Why are we? How do we? Where, in the midst of our questions, is this Immanuel, this God-with-us?

Sadly, for all our questioning, the mystery of the Incarnation escapes us. Jesus comes, in his first Advent, into the midst of our great sin and suffering. This was God’s design. But apart from the angels nudging a few scared shepherds and a cryptic star decoded by a handful of distant astrologists, almost everyone else missed it.

Missing out should feel familiar; most of us habitually miss it every year at Christmas. Our story is consumption and consumerism, and we’re obsessed with the climax. We worship less. We spend more. We give less. We struggle more.

Less, more. More, less. Time and nerves stretch thin, and we reduce family and friends to a card or a present that costs the “right” amount to prove our level of love. Our quest to celebrate mystery exhausts us. Another Christmas passes by like a blizzard, and we are left to shovel through the trash of our failure.

Missing the prophetic mystery of Jesus’ birth means missing God-with-us, God beside us—God becoming one of us. Missing out on Jesus changes everything.

I write this devotional to help us refocus on the meaning of Christmas and the purpose of giving. May it challenge you in your thinking about Christmas as we consider spending less, giving more, loving all, and worshiping fully. This Advent, prepare for a Christmas season in which we exchange consumption for compassion, consumerism for Christ-centered celebration, cultural conformity to Christian-counterculture. Would it not be nice if we, like Linus, could tell the world what Christmas really is all about?