West Side Story is the best musical. Ever. When Tony sings “Something’s Coming,” I think of Advent and Christmas, for some reason, even against the backdrop of 20th-century summer Manhattan. These lyrics are marvelous!
Could be!
Who knows?
There’s something due any day;
I will know right away,
Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing
down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye,
Bright as a rose!
Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something’s coming,
something good,
If I can wait!
Something’s coming,
I don’t know what it is,
But it is
Gonna be great!
My heart starts beating faster when I hear it in my head. Anticipation, not knowing, but expecting something good. Advent is like that.
One of my favorite writers, a Presbyterian minister named Fred Buechner, describes Advent this way in his book Whistling in the Dark:
The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton . . . You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart . . . The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
I like that: the extraordinary moment before the extraordinary thing . . . that magical moment of delicious anticipation, when you are leaning forward, you lips are so dry you lick them and your breath is coming so fast, you can’t keep them moist. Your leg is shaking, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you are just waiting, anticipating what will come. Advent is like that.
At its most basic, Advent comes from the Latin Word Adventus which means “coming.” Before we read any Christian meaning into it, the word makes us think about being in a state of readiness and preparation. The air is humming and something great is coming.
So then the question becomes, what is coming? At this time of year, even if there weren’t holidays, we would be on the way to the winter solstice. Shorter days, cold nights. Then, after the shortest, the days get longer again. We prepare by hunkering down, storing up food and fuel, being with family. Our bodies are expectant. We can’t wait for light and warmth and spring. Advent is like that. Waiting for the next thing, the new thing. The holidays are coming, Christmas is coming. Advent describes the four Sundays after Thanksgiving when we wait for Christmas.
So, Christmas is coming, but what are we really waiting for?
Some of the scripture readings for this time of the year speak of preparing the way of the Lord, making straight the paths. They come from Isaiah’s prophecy and get quoted in the gospels when the writers are talking about the ministry of John the Baptist. The sense is that the Way of God is straight: mountains are made low, valleys are lifted up, crooked places are straightened out.
Theologian Edward Hays wrote this in A Pilgrim’s Almanac:
Advent is the perfect time to clear and prepare the Way. Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace. By reflection and prayer, by reading and meditation, we can make our hearts a place where a blessing of peace would desire to abide and where the birth of the Prince of Peace might take place.
Great image! A winter training camp. But the part I like most in this reading is the mention of the birth of the Prince of Peace. It seems to me that the real issue of Advent is Mary waiting for a child. There is really no way around it.
We know the story, because we have heard it so many times. The angel comes to the girl and says, Hey. Don’t be afraid. You have been picked to do a very important job. You are going to bear the anointed one into the world. She wants to know how, since she is not sexually active. And the angel explains that the Holy Spirit is going to over come her, and she will conceive and have a child and name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. Mary says, basically, let’s Do this! Then, I am sure, she made ready like moms-to-be would do.
The bottom line is the Advent story begins when God comes to Mary. And I think our stories begin when God comes to us . . . in the cold, in the dark, while we are waiting. Before we are perfect, in the mundane of our day to day lives, on the subway, in line at the Post Office, while doing laundry or studying. Our stories begin—our Advent begins when God comes to us. And most surely, God comes.
God comes to Mary . . . God comes to us.
John wrote a wonderful hymn about the Word who is Jesus, who is the light that the darkness cannot overcome. In the winter, while we wait, we light candles for light, for warmth. The golden flickering light reminds us of the Light the darkness cannot extinguish. God is surely coming to us and while we wait, we light candles, we hold vigils for faithfulness, hope, joy and love. We don’t wait passively; we, like Mary, wait actively. We get ready to receive God in our hearts.
In Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, Henri Nouwen wrote:
Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. The bus is late? You cannot do anything about it, so you have to sit there and just wait. It is not difficult to understand the irritation people feel when somebody says, ‘Just wait.’ Words like that seem to push us into passivity. “But there is none of that passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively . . . Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.
While we are present in the moment, while we actively wait, we are in Advent. We read together, worship together, talk together, pray together, set up vigils of waiting together. We light the Advent candles of faith, hope, joy and love. We make ready, make room in our hearts and lives for the bundle of JOY that God is sending into the world as Light that cannot be extinguished. We wait, and hope and expect peace.
We hear in the midst of winter Tony singing in that modern tale of Romeo and Juliet. Could be, who knows, it’s only just out of reach in a church on a beach, maybe tonight, maybe tonight, maybe tonight . . .
Advent is THIS moment.
I love you,
Jacqui
