Traditionally, Christians celebrate the Advent season during the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day. But some extend the celebration to seven weeks for practical and religious reasons.
RaseL Shoubi/Getty
hide caption
toggle caption
RaseL Shoubi/Getty
Traditionally, Christians celebrate the Advent season during the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day. But some extend the celebration to seven weeks for practical and religious reasons.
RaseL Shoubi/Getty
When he was a chaplain on a college campus in the Boston area, the Rev. Cameron Partridge saw how stressed his students were in the weeks leading up to Christmas break.
“You know, you have the end of the semester,” Partridge says. “You have exams. Preparing to go home. So Advent barely needs to be observed.”
Advent is a period observed in many Christian traditions, usually during the four weeks leading up to Christmas. But Partridge decided to start Advent a few weeks early, for a total of seven weeks.
This change, he said, gave students “an opportunity to really be present together and observe it together, which could ground in a time of great intensity.”
It’s a foundation Partridge brought with him when he came to lead St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco seven years ago.
On the second Sunday in November this year, the Episcopal priest began his sermon by saying, “Hello, St. Aidan, and welcome to Advent.”
He then preached on the significance of the season, saying it “places us in the coming of the divine reign – God’s dream.”
Partridge says this Advent theme of divine rule – rather than just a prelude to Christmas – is more poignant this year, given the conflict in the Holy Land.
“We can’t pretend everything is okay,” he says. “There is turmoil in the world, and it’s real, it’s hard, and it affects people deeply.”
And what people are looking for, Partridge says, is assurance that during Advent the Church resists violence and earthly powers.
Bible readings during Advent focus on justice and peace
The current decision to begin marking the season earlier began in 2005, when the Rev. William Petersen brought together a group of clergy, professors and church musicians at the North American Academy of Liturgy. They formed something called the Advent Project.
Petersen’s interest in the project arose from analyzing the biblical texts designated for the seven weeks before Christmas in the Revised Common Lectionary, which many denominations use to guide their Sunday morning readings.
“The real emphasis of this season is on the pursuit of justice and peace,” Petersen says. “In the world we live in right now, you can’t get more relevant than that.”
Petersen is the retired dean of Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary and the author of the book What are we waiting for? : Reimagining Advent for the time to come.
He argues that the expansion of Advent beyond waiting for Jesus in the manger to embrace the hope for a just and peaceful world described by the Hebrew prophets is evident in these lectionary texts.
“Advent has its own integrity,” Petersen says. “It’s not just about preparing for Christmas or counting down.”
Advent itself, he says, is countercultural.
The idea that Advent goes far beyond Christmas is of course not in line with more popular commercial thinking about the season, which usually involves little more than cardboard calendars with doors hiding behind them chocolates, Legos or even small bottles of whiskey. them.
Petersen says the biblical readings can be interpreted as prophesying the coming of Jesus, but they also speak of a completely different world – a world in which lions and lambs lie down together and in which the humble are lifted up. .
Advent for Christians, Petersen believes, is as much about hope for the second coming of Jesus – sometimes called the second coming – which will usher in the reign of God, as it is as much about commemorating the first coming of God in the person of Jesus. in first century Palestine.
Expanding Advent Expands to Language About God
Among the practices of an expanded Advent is the use of what are called the Great Antiphons O. These are liturgical prayers sung more traditionally during the seven days before Christmas Eve and which are addressed to Jesus through various metaphors: wisdom, lord, root, key, dawn, king and god with us.
One way to observe the expanded Advent is, each Sunday of the seven weeks, to focus on one of the images of the O Antiphons, which expands God’s discourse beyond the exclusively masculine imagery that many contemporary believers find it disturbing.
“We get all these other images of God,” says the Rev. Suzanne Wenonah Duchesne, “that are very different from God on a throne.”
Duchesne, a Methodist minister who teaches worship and preaching at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, says this expanded vocabulary is more imaginative, humble and loving.
And she found congregations receptive to this change.
“I had a small church in West Philadelphia where I did what I call a subversive Advent,” Duchesne says, “where I didn’t tell them what I was doing.”
Rather than announcing that she would start the season a few weeks early, she simply began preaching on Advent themes and asked church musicians to hold back Christmas music until December 25.
Using regularly designated biblical texts, she remembers preaching about “what the reign of God could be and what it could look like in our lives.”
It is a world that Duchesne describes as one of justice, care and compassion.
Advent liturgies form Christians for community
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chicago also ushers in the theme of Advent, God’s hope for the world, at the start of the year.
This theme is evident as Pastor Michelle Sevig leads worship, wearing the blue liturgical vestments associated with the season. This is also evident in the language of his opening prayer:
“O God of justice and love, you illuminate our path of life with the words of your son. Give us the light we need. And awaken us to the needs of others. Through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen .”
The congregation also began singing traditional Advent hymns early on. Pastor Craig Mueller says scripture, song and prayer shape this community at Holy Trinity and spending more time during Advent gives his flock more space to think about the world as it is and imagine the world as it could be.
“It’s a shame that many people equate Christianity with doctrines and beliefs,” he says, “rather than what rituals might do to shape us over time.”
Ultimately, says Mueller, these practices teach Christians what it means to be human.
“I don’t know if there are other ways to do this in the same way as ritual – and ritual in community,” he says.
All of this is intended to help his congregation know “that we are part of something bigger than ourselves,” Mueller says. “It draws us into the community.”
Experiencing this Advent liturgy trains Christians to persevere through the sorrow of violence and rejoice in the hope of peace, says Cameron Partridge of St. Aidan’s in San Francisco. It brings together people of all differences in a war-ravaged world that is not yet the one God longs for.
“By embedding itself in the already and the not yet,” says Partridge, “Advent can anchor and strengthen us in all of this uncertainty and help give us – from that anchor – the ability to connect. “
