QUARANTINE BLOG # 265

December 20, 2020

The Third Sunday in Advent

A Love Letter Concerning a Work in Progress

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.  I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:3-6).

How would you like a love letter addressed to you in Advent, in anticipation of Christmas?  That is what we have in the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul’s love letter to his friends in the church in Philippi.  It is a marvelous guideline in Advent for Christmas preparation:

It affirms that our lives are bracketed by the big drama of God’s purposes and we do well to ponder such deep beginnings and such awesome culminations.  Imagine God’s large purposes hovering around your life.

Paul becomes specific in his wondrous phrasing about the “in between” that is our Advent work.  Clearly, in between we have unfinished business, “we” being a work in process.  But this is the way with love letters; we always know that the one addressed is not yet finished but still a work in process.  And we intend to provide support along the way for a wondrous conclusion to the beloved.

Paul finishes by affirming that all this will converge in “glory and praise of God.”

This Advent practice, in sum, is about ceding ourselves over to God in gladness, to refer our life back to God, who has given it to us.

What strikes me about this Advent love letter is this.  When Paul writes to the church, he assumes that Christmas preparation is serious business.  But it has nothing to do with how the world lives with that commercial orgy.  It is rather that when our lives are set in God’s great drama, we have a quite different agenda.  It is a profound agenda, because it touches the deep reality of how we are to live in God’s mercy.  It will be a prayer we pray for each other that we have enough resolve not to get caught up in the orgy but to create time and energy and space for a serious Advent.  The urgent question always in the final days of Advent is: “Are you ready yet?”

Are you ready with overflowing love?  Are you ready with knowledge and insight?  Are you ready with purity and blamelessness?  Are you ready with a harvest of righteousness?

No, not ready yet. . . but under way toward the great day of fullness.  God will bring our life to completion.  We may be glad and grateful as we wait.

Coming God, make us ready with overflowing love.  May we be on the way to you even as you are on the way to us.  May we be glad and grateful as we wait.  Amen.

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