The Union Church In Waban

A Message from our Minister:  Rev. Stacy Swain

At staff meeting the other day, we joked about how great it would be if we could move Christmas this year!

 What if we quietly picked it up and moved it from December 25^th to some far less noisy month, like July?  What if we just set Christmas down in a time of relative stillness? 

We would not tell the commercial world, of course.  We could all still do our shopping and wrapping.  We could still have our parties and concerts.  We could even still send out holiday cards and end of the year letters updating our friends on all that has happened in our life and the life of our families in the previous year.

We were thinking it would be great to move Christmas this year, not because we do not enjoy the festivities.  I for one, love presents.  I love getting them and I love giving them.  And I love all of the traditions that fill our family life this time of year; baking cookies, decorating the tree, hanging lights across the front porch.

The only reason we were intrigued with the idea of moving Christmas, is because, it is really so hard to attend to Advent while at the same time engaging the crescendo of the season’s activity.  

Take time for example.  After the roasting pan of Thanksgiving is washed and put away, time bursts its boundaries. The common refrain for here on in is, “We are running out of time.”  If the packages do not get mailed by _________ (you add the date) they won’t arrive in time. If I do not get the invitations out by ________________ (you add the date) no one will come to our party.  If I don’t get to the mall by ________________, (you add the date) then that special gift that he had his heart set on will be sold out.  In the crescendo of the season’s activity, there never seems to be enough time.

But in Advent, time is so expansive it becomes irrelevant.  Thomas Merton, writer and Trappist Monk, writes of how time telescopes in Advent.  Advent is the time when we recalibrate our perceptions so that we can again perceive the eternal in the temporal — when take time to look for the presence of the living God who is beyond the boundaries of time entering and dwelling fully in the here and now.  This is not to be taken for granted.  What if we really lived every day, fully expecting to encounter the in breaking of the Holy to the mundane?  How would that change our perspective on things?  How would that change how we lived? 

The other challenge we face in trying to live into Advent amidst the clamor of the season is reconciling the truth that we have already received all we need through Jesus who came to show us the way to abundant life and the commercial message that there really is no such thing as enough.  What if we really trusted that we already have what we need to be happy?  What if abundance was not measured by dollars but by love? 

It would be wonderful to encounter Advent and celebrate Christmas unfettered by the rush and demands of the commercial season, but that would be cheating really, side stepping the demands that the Gospel places upon us.  For what Jesus asks is that we live into what God is offering us right there in the midst of what is often the most challenging of times.  Finding the eternal in the midst of the press for time, living into the overflowing abundance of God’s love in the midst of a culture that insists on scarcity takes a presence of mind that Advent insists we practice.

So, sorry no short cuts this year.  Christmas remains on December 25^th and as such we have our spiritual work cut out for us.  Thank God that we have a church community in which to that spiritual work together!