Living in Advent: Making Room for the Messiah

I was a freshman in high school when I first heard R.E.M.’s song “Losing My Religion.” I didn’t know what that phrase meant then. "I think I thought” it was probably connected to doubt or religious hypocrisy. It turned out that “losing my religion” was a Southern expression that meant something more like losing your temper, cussing a little bit in anger or, to put it a little softer, losing your patience.

I’m thinking about “losing my religion” because I find that at this time of year, I have to clear out my feelings about election season in order to make room for Advent.

In recent years, every election season seems to be one of “losing our religion,” regardless of outcome. By that I don’t mean losing our tempers, though it could mean that, too. I mean losing our patience, believing the kingdom will come or not in elected officials. It’s not that I think every administration is created equal—a regime change means real outcomes in people’s lives—just that all the fervor and angst tells me we’ve got our eyes on the wrong kingdom.

And that’s what Advent can help us to correct.

Recently, the Dordt Theatre department put on a production of Fiddler on the Roof. Once upon a time (also back in high school) I was in that musical and one of the lines that has stuck with me comes near the end, as the Jews of Anatevka are driven from their home by pogrom. “Rabbi,” one of the townspeople begins, “we’ve been waiting all our lives for the messiah. Wouldn’t now be a good time for him to come?” And the Rabbi’s answer: “We’ll have to wait for him someplace else. Meanwhile, let’s start packing.”

Waiting is hard to do. And maybe becoming harder. In a world full of social media checks and Amazon orders and on-demand binges and endless calendar appointments, we no longer have to do much—if any—waiting. We can create a life full of little adrenaline hits to completely drown ourselves in the moment so that we actually forget that another day is coming, much less another kingdom. We used to blame the Christmas season for its busyness, for drawing us away from “the reason for the season.” But now I think it’s safe to say that all year round we build our lives around not waiting.

A quick google search (see what I mean?) shows that for Christians especially, waiting shouldn’t be just passive business. It’s like endurance training with a specific virtue in mind, the flowering of the fruit of the spirit that should follow: patience. For Christians, there should be a “making ready” that goes along with waiting—anticipation, a hope that doesn’t get diminished.

This specific kind of waiting is why we find Mary, well, ready. In Mary’s assent to the angel’s request, there’s a “making room for.” Imagine it: “Let me see, do I have room in my life, including in my engagement to Joseph, for an unplanned pregnancy?”

She said “yes to that she’d chosen all her life,” as one poem puts it. She made room. Mary, Joseph, really their whole clan did. They had been waiting.

Notoriously, much of the rest of the world was not ready, had not made room.

I’m thinking about Mary and Joseph because it’s Christmas time, but I’m thinking about Tevye and Anatevka because I need to learn about waiting from them, from communities that have endured because their eyes are fixed on something greater. A kind of impatience in this regard is a weakness of mine and perhaps of certain parts of Reformed Christianity generally. The kingdom has come in Christ and is coming, I want to say, so let’s make this happen. Now.

This semester at Dordt, the chapel series has been on parables of Jesus. One of the themes across the series has been Jesus testing his audience to see if they know His Father’s character—and by extension, His own. Who do we say that He is? An unjust judge? A hard master who reaps what he does not sow? A bridegroom who’s not coming back?

In discussing the parable of the unjust judge, Dr. Gayle Doornbos emphasized the importance of waiting. This particular parable works by showing what God is not, and what we are not. God is not the unjust judge, and so our waiting for His justice is not in vain. So we wait, not “losing our religion,” but persisting in prayer, and in seeking the kind of justice and peace that matches the heart of God.

It’s tempting in the everyday lives we live to completely forego the kingdom. As I sit here writing, the coffee pot kicks on and off, as does the furnace, keeping me warm. Sure, I’ve got my problems—a chronic roof leak plagues my existence—but my life is pretty good. I have my own vine and fig tree, so to speak, so what’s the problem?

The waiting of advent means I not rely on those material things, and that I not believe the kingdom will come or not come with a new administration. Our waiting means making room for a messiah I know is coming back—making room by knowing the character of our Lord and preparing accordingly.

U2 has a song that I like as a kind of thorn in the side for this time of year called “Peace on Earth.” It’s about the seemingly empty promise that there is peace on earth now that Jesus has been born, especially as wars continue to ravage the earth and, more to the point of the song, take specific lives. “We hear it every Christmas time,” the lyrics say in a particularly haunting moment, “but hope and history won’t rhyme so what’s it worth?”

There’s a real sense in which peace for only some is peace for none, that none of us can have peace if not all of us have peace. In the poem “Any Human to Another,” Countee Cullen puts it this way:

Joy may be shy, unique,

Friendly to a few,

Sorrow never scorned

to speak

To any who

Were false or true.

I don’t want to believe it, not sure that I do believe it. It’s too dark to think that not everyone gets joy in life. Turns out I am not the persistent widow, seeking justice at all times. But if I do try to think in this way, I generally try harder to make room for joy for others, to be a joy bringer.