A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
November 27, 2005
Ancient Reading: From the Book of Isaiah
Modern Reading: from Fresh Bread and Other Gifts of Spiritual Nourishment by Joyce Rupp, p. 150
Copyright 2005, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
In the Unitarian Universalst church where I grew up, during Advent, there would be a wreath with four white candles. At each of the four Sundays, the minister chose one of the children in the congregation to come up and light the candle and make a wish for the world. For me, Advent was something about waiting on hope. The elements or symbols of this hope: circle, light, and a wonder child.
Globalization is not just a modern experience, I am learning, as I research into the roots and traditions of ritual and religion. Advent comes out of the Christian tradition and marks the four Sundays before Christmas, as a time to prepare for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah or the Christ child. Messiah comes from the Hebrew word messiach which means anointed one. Christos is the Greek for this term. In ancient times, an anointed one was a king. Kingship was viewed as having a divine mandate, so a king was God’s or the gods’ representative on earth. According to the Bible the Jews had waited on hope for generations for a messiah to come to free them of the rule of latest empire. Isaiah’s prophecy of a child who would come to "be a great light", the King of Peace, "Emmanuel" or "God with Us" is this ancient messianic promise. Jews are still waiting the Messiah. He (or she) has not yet arrived. For Christians, Jesus is that Messiah. For Orthodox Christianity, it was not his life but his death and resurrection that redeemed the world. And just as Jews await the Messiah, many Christians await the second coming of Jesus Christ as the glorious day that will heal the earth.
But as I discussed last year in my sermon about the traditions of Christmas, part of what we celebrate has it roots in the pagan cultures that both Judaism and Christianity encountered in the Near East and the Roman world, and that Christianity encountered in Northern and Western Europe and Ireland and the British Isles. The circle, the coming of light, and the wonder child belong to the universe. Advent has less connection to pagan tradition than other Christmas customs but it contains whispers of these traditions, beginning with the wreath.
The wreath is a circle made of evergreens. In Christianity, this circle symbolizes God’s immortality, the greens the everlasting life promised to believers of Jesus Christ. But the evergreen wreath originated amongst the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples of the North. Winter was a very serious business in these cold, cold lands and the fear that the ancient peoples had to counter was that winter might last forever. The longest night of the year was long and it was easy to believe that the light of the sun would not come back. The circle of the wreath was a symbol of the cycles of the seasons, the wheel of the year. Winter was the last turn in the wheel of the year before the cycle would start again. The evergreens reminded people of the green of life that would come again soon. The snow would melt. The light would return.
The return of light is the second symbol of waiting on hope. The Winter Solstice, December 21, marks the moment when the light is at its least. From this day until the Summer Solstice, the sun will shine a little more each day. Gathering around lit fires and burning candles was a way for ancient peoples to remind themselves of the sunlight. It was a way to exert a little power over the darkness and the mysteries it held of life and death, the power of love, passion, and sexuality, the workings of less gentle spirits, the time of severest cold, and secrecy, trickery, and things appearing different from what they were in the day.
Light takes on a slightly different meaning in the Christian tradition. Jesus was seen as the light of the nations, the one who lead people to see the truth of God, to salvation, to wholeness, to peace. Darkness was not just the long cold winter night but the darkness of oppression: the harsh rule of outside empires that invaded and enslaved, taxed the population to near starvation and forced their gods upon the conquered. The candles of the eight nights of Hanukkah grow out of a similar experience of the light of liberation after long oppression, although in the Hanukkah story, the Maccabees successfully drive out the Syrians from the Temple. The candles of the Advent wreath were symbols of this slowly growing light as each draws closer to the birth of Jesus, the Holy Wonder Child. Many Christian churches use three blue or purple candles to symbolize the royal coming of the King, with a rose colored candle for the third Sunday, marking the half-way point to the joy of Christmas.
In the Advent wreathes I knew as a child, the candles were white. The light of the season we celebrated were the hopes for healing the world: more kindness, more compassion, more justice, more peace. In the church where I served my internship, the congregation’s Advent wreath used four differently colored candles to represent the four directions of the earth centered and modern Pagan traditions. Whatever the colors, I am moved by the nurturing of the light, growing it week to week. It reminds that "the impossible will take a little while" but that we must keep at it, keep trying to create the conditions that give hope a chance.
The last and central element of Advent is awaiting or preparing for the arrival of the Wonder Child. The early Christian Church Fathers did not want the masses to celebrate Jesus’ birth. They were afraid that it would get mixed up in the pagan traditions of the peoples they had converted. It was not until the fourth century that Christmas became a church celebration. And indeed, the date chosen, December 25th, coincided with the myths of the magical births of child-gods and sun gods: Apollo, Saturnalia and Sol of the Greek and Romans, Mithras of the Persians, Angus of the Celts, and Mabon, the child-god of the Welsh. The birth, or rebirth, of these gods celebrated again the cycle of the year, when the sun conquered the dark or the cold to give humankind the source of life that it needed to survive. Studying the history of Christianity, it is easy to see how Jesus the human prophet evolved in to the Christ, divine son. Mithras, the sun-god of the Persians, was attended by shepherds at his birth. At the end of his time on earth, he returned to his divine father, and had a last supper, yes with bread and wine, the night before. He did not die but ascended into heaven where he abides until the end of the world. If this sounds familiar, it should. The Jewish roots of the story of Jesus merged and mixed with the pagan influences through the centuries that followed, creating the new faith. But as I said earlier, globalization being what it is, the new comes out of retelling, reworking, and renewing in the changing and evolving contexts of the times and experiences of people. That is why I found stories and myths to more compelling and truthful than doctrines. Doctrines attempt to nail down the story or myth into fact. But in story and myth, we are able to revisit eternal truths and longings in the context of our understandings and environments, holding hands with our ancestors within the ancient narratives but not being imprisoned in them.
So, what does Advent mean for Unitarian Universalists, if we choose to celebrate it? I resonate with the its inviting us to step away from the craziness and consumerism of the season to think about what Christmas is really all about. I love the imagery in Joyce Rupp’s meditation of Advent as a nesting time. " Prepare a nest for the heart. Patch up the broken parts. Place more softness at the center. Sit and warm the home with prayer. Give the Christ (the Holy Child) a dwelling place." I especially love "place more softness at the center." If there is anything we need in the world and in our lives, it is more softness at the center.
Even within Unitarian Universalism, we celebrate different things at Advent and Christmas. For some of us, it begins the turn in the wheel of the year, the winter solstice and the hope for spring. For others of us, it is the story of Jesus’ birth and his family’s struggle to find shelter and warmth, celebrating the story of the one who came to embody the Spirit of Love, who taught of a way of justice and love in our relationships with one another and the Holy that still speaks powerfully two thousand years later. For others of us, it is celebrating more generally the importance of family and friends, and our hopes for our larger world. It is a time of giving as well as receiving. But no matter the story or the context we choose, if any, the root remains: waiting on and nurturing hope in difficult times.
Perhaps Judaism right, the messiah is yet to come. Perhaps Christianity is right, that Jesus is the messiah, and we missed it. Perhaps there is no messiah. History tells me that we have been given many messiahs, some famous, most nameless, who have lived their lives and risked their deaths to speak truth to power and to show us a way of living with one another in right relationship, in ways that heal us and our world. We are still learning what it means, this peace on earth and good will toward all. Advent teaches us to prepare the way. Prepare a nest for the heart. Patch up the broken parts. Place more softness at the center. Sit and warm the home with prayer or with good energy and healing thoughts. Give the Spirit of Love a dwelling place. Grow the light in the darkness so we can find a way to this abiding hope for peace, for goodwill, for joy to the world.