2 responses to “Advent and How Religion Works”

1. 

   Martha Underwood

   17/12/2017

   In my Episcopal church, we observe all four Sundays of Advent and do not sing any Christmas carols until Christmas Eve services. One Christmas, when we had an interim priests, many church members asked if we could sing some Christmas carols during Advent and he said yes. I was not a happy camper. Our 1982 Hymnal has some wonderful Advent hymns.

   I used to be the Sunday school director and had always observed Advent in our Sunday school classes. When the parents wanted Children’s Chapel, I started thinking about quitting. I stayed, however, for five more months before stepping down. For several years another person did it. This year we had a new volunteer who was excited to teach Sunday school (it replaced the term Children’s Chapel). She refurbished the Sunday school class and the landing you come onto from downstairs before entering the hall to the Sunday school rooms. In the fall she had fall decorations up. The first Sunday of Advent, I went upstairs and low and behold, I saw in letters on the wall of the landing, “Hallelujah, Jesus is born.” My reaction was, “What happened to Advent? It is not Christmas yet!” I told my rector what I saw. although she prefers that Advent be observed in Sunday school as well as church, didn’t say anything to the teacher since we have a hard enough time getting people in our church to volunteer for children and teen’s Christian Education and she did not want to dampen the member’s enthusiasm by commenting on the lack of Advent. The children love going to Sunday school and their teacher and she loves them. That is what really matters. But in the back of my head, I still have to say, “What about Advent?”

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2. 

   Daniel Berry, NYC

   20/12/2017

   Christmas is no substitute for Advent’s incomparable richness and the excitement of expectation its liturgical cycle ingeniously creates. As I’ve aged, I’ve dug deeper and deeper into Advent to find that I learn more from it every year. But it hasn’t much to do with Luke’s charming story about a baby in a stable. The message of Advent for me is to keep my household in order and to be watchful for the likelihood that the master will appear at a time and place I don’t expect. Meanwhile, jumping too quickly into Christmas strikes me as related to Bonhoeffer’s concept of cheap grace.

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