Experiencing Advent as a movement

LOUISVILLE — As he does this time every year, the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick, executive for the Synod of the Covenant, offered a webinar last week designed for pastors and other leaders preparing to preach during Advent.

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Participants in the webinar, which can be viewed here, shared what Advent conjures up for them. Participants spoke of preparation time, “in contrast to the preparation of wrapping gifts and shopping. It’s a set-apart, introspective time,” said one. Another called Advent “holy anticipation, to see what God will be doing in the world.”

Their answers surprised Hardwick. “I was thinking you were going to say ‘stress, because we’re pastors with too much work to do’ or ‘I want to do my Christmas cards but I can’t because I have too many services to take part in.’”

“For me,” one participant said, “Advent represents that liminal space where, yes, we are closing the book on the calendar, but we’re also opening the liturgical year. It’s a both/and.”

Advent “may be the time of the greatest difference between the way we are thinking about what’s going on and the way people who are listening to our sermons are thinking about what’s going on,” Hardwick said.

Another participant offered this insight: “It’s a time when the spiritual world can be acceptable to the secular world.”

Typically, throughout Advent many of us think about the arrival of the Baby Jesus, Hardwick said. “But more precisely, it’s God breaking into the world to make all things new and just.” Christ’s return “is also the way God will do this, once and for all,” he said. “If we are only thinking of the coming of the Baby Jesus, we are perhaps shrinking the work of God to make everything new in a final, glorious, complete way.”

Advent as a movement

Think of Advent as a movement, Hardwick suggested — from brokenness to wholeness, from the Fall to the Reign of God, from yearning for deliverance “to the very manifestation of God’s coming in judgment and in life-giving solidarity with humanity,” he said.

After asking participants about what brokenness needs to become whole in their community, Hardwick offered a few possibilities:

• Despair, sadness and grief. “It’s often a time people miss the ones they love,” he said.
• Polarization and political disruption
• Economic uncertainty, such as the administration’s imposition of tariffs
• Violence of all kinds
• The turmoil over immigration policy. “What does it mean to love our neighbors?” Hardwick asked.

Participants expressed the brokenness they see in their faith communities, including “not having a real connection with God,” “grief over the death of longtime members,” “loss of membership and grief over what the church was” and “the church and the world have changed so much they’re unrecognizable.”

“There’s a lot of brokenness going on, and that’s not even thinking of the individuals in our congregations who face things,” Hardwick said. “Each person comes to church with their own brokenness and disappointment.”

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Then Hardwick reminded attendees that God gives us the gift of shalom. He asked: What does that look like in your community? What difference does Jesus’ coming make in your people’s lives?

“All brokenness is temporary,” one participant said. Another noted the importance of “letting go of the busyness of the season.”

“A pretty good way to destroy shalom,” Hardwick said, “is to have no sabbath and to be captured by the busyness of the season.”

Yet another attendee said she’s “hoping Advent will be a wider view of what God is doing.”

Participants divided into small groups to discuss some of the Revised Common Lectionary scriptural passages during the Sundays of Advent in Year A, found here, here, here and here, as well as the scriptures for Christmas Eve, which are here. The groups searched for common themes in either the Old Testament passages from Isaiah or the New Testament ones from Matthew, with Luke 2:1-14 (15-20) serving as the focus gospel account for Christmas Eve.

The webinar concluded with a look at suggested resources in categories including from the lectionary, non-lectionary “Advent in Advent,” and “Christmas in Advent” preaching options.

Hardwick highlighted a number of Advent resources, including many he’s used as a preacher. One he likes is word studies provided by BibleProject. Four are on the Advent themes of hope, peace, joy and love and can be found here, here, here and here.

Synod of the Covenant’s monthly Equipping Preachers webinars are also available to preachers outside the bounds of the synod. Beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Oct. 1, Dr. Tim Slemmons, Professor of Homiletics and Worship and the director of the Doctor of Ministry program at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, will speak on “Well Chosen: Charting a Year’s Course Through the Scriptures.” Learn more and register here.