On Preaching Advent: Forget What You Know
Melinda Quivik is an ordained ELCA pastor who has served Lutheran churches in three states, and a UCC/Presbyterian congregation in Michigan. A former professor of liturgy and preaching and past president of the North American Academy of Liturgy, she is now the Editor-in-Chief of Liturgy, a mentor with Backstory Preaching, and a liturgical and homiletical scholar whose books include Worship at a Crossroads: Racism and Segregated Sundays (2023), Leading Worship Matters (2017), Serving the Word: Preaching in Worship (2009) with scholar’s contributions to Sundays & Seasons: Preaching and other publications.
It’s pretty hard to preach about the darling baby boy about to be born to save the world when the First Sunday in Advent in Year A we read this scary image in the Gospel:
“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking… and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away…” (Matthew 24:36-44)
Huh?
Ominous destruction!
This isn’t about gentle Jesus, meek and mild, in the cattle trough with the animals gently lowing.
Instead, these words are deliberately setting our sights on what matters.
Because Jesus matters.
Don’t Skip Advent
One year I experienced an entire loss of Advent as it began.
Sadly, one year on the First Sunday in Advent, I attended an ELCA church down the street from our house and immediately inside the front doors of the church encountered little girls in angel dresses with wings on their backs and haloes encircling their heads.
Then I saw that Jesus was a real baby in a manger in the chancel dressed as Santa Claus.
They had skipped straight to Christmas, missing the waiting and meaning of Advent.
This is extreme, to be sure.
Yet, to differing degrees it is common because it is easy to see Advent as the time of preparation for the Nativity, the birth of Jesus.
As we know, every year the cultural push of Christmas starts often before Thanksgiving, creating a stark disconnect between the celebration of Advent (i.e., it’s not the Christmas season yet, so no singing of Christmas hymns) and the music in stores that bombards the ears with jolly songs.
During the Advent season, then, we bake our cookies, wrap gifts, plan meals and parties, and remember past Christmases.
We make ourselves anxious: Will we do enough to make sure This Year Will Finally Live Up To Everybody’s Expectations?
Is that what Advent is for?
Forget What you were always Taught About Advent
Lawrence Stookey’s excellent book, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church, has a few pages at the end of the book called “Forgetting What You Were Always Taught (or, This Book in a Nutshell).”
He lists all the church calendar seasons and festival days followed by two columns.
The first column states for each time in the church calendar what conventional wisdom says about that time.
For Advent, it represents the orientation of many churches as Advent begins: a time to prepare for Jesus’ birth by creating a perfect celebration. The focus is on the past.
Stookey’s second column asks the reader to ditch the usual idea of how to honor a season of the church year in favor of a more biblically responsible sense of how the season should be engaged.
Stookey’s recommendations, based on how the scripture readings give shape to time, are very insightful—and also very challenging.
Here is what Stookey says about Advent:
IF YOU WERE TAUGHT THIS: Advent is primarily about the past expectation of the coming of Messiah
CONSIDER INSTEAD THIS: Advent is primarily about the future, with implications for the present
Stookey says: let the scripture texts overwhelm you with God’s promises for the future.
Three Ways to view Each Week of Advent
1) Through Scripture: What is True and What is Promised
The Gospel of Matthew tells us over the four Sundays of Advent what is true about our lives and what God promises us, acknowledging the struggles of the Human Condition and God’s Action in gracious response.
Each Advent Sunday we hear a sequence of truths:
You must be ready for what you cannot anticipate because the Son-of-Man is coming.
John the Baptist offers a baptism of repentance as he points to the one who will bring a baptism of “the Holy Spirit and fire” so that all flesh will see salvation.
From prison, John the Baptist wants to know whether Jesus is the Messiah, and the disciples tell John that Jesus is a healer.
When Mary is found to be pregnant, Joseph struggles with how to respond and, in the end, heeds the word of God given to him by an angel—a righteous and loving care for Mary.
2) by Focusing on the Future instead of the Past
In addition, to emphasize this shift from past to future/present, the weekly themes show us the future instead of the past.
Advent 1: Because we anticipate a dangerous or at least curious future, the Lord will strengthen us.
Advent 2: Human presumption can give us a sense of entitlement; God responds with the power to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Advent 3: We look for a savior, and, with John, ask whether Jesus is the One; God’s response is the promise of a great prophet.
Advent 4: The cultural pattern that would cause a righteous person (Joseph) to deny his relationship with Mary is overturned by a messenger from the Lord.
3) As a Story Arc of God’s incarnation In the Midst of our Need
Here is yet another way to see this season and find our preaching voice:
The first Sunday locates Advent as a time of shock.
The second Sunday brings Advent down to the earthiness of John the Baptist and the hypocrisy of the religious leaders.
On the third Sunday we are regaled with a litany of how Jesus identifies himself to John the Baptist—and to us—as a healer.
Finally, on the fourth Sunday God’s power becomes evident even through a dream.
These texts and the prophetic words from Isaiah all speak of the reality of our lives: harsh conditions, danger, fear, and helplessness in contrast with the compassion of God who comes to us as one of us with all the neediness of a baby.
Preachers may want to see how to guard against letting the Christmas celebrations veil the vision of the gospel future so that the enormous gift of the incarnation comes through in all its power.
Advent is a time to face ultimate truth—much as on Ash Wednesday when we hear we are to be dust at the last.
In Advent we hear the same ultimacy and the same promise that our dustiness is known thoroughly by God.
Let Advent sing the real worth of our lives loved by God.
It is a cosmic song.