gospelmind

Advent songs

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Silent nights, chestnuts roasting on open fires, bleak midwinter and silver bells.

Trick is, it's not Christmas. It's Advent. Our culture has rushed us into a premature Christmas fixation, mostly because it sells things.

Real conversation between myself and Caleb Porter, Aaron's son, well before Thankgiving:

Caleb: Why does that store already have Christmas decorations? It's not even Thanksgiving!

Ben: Because they want your money, Caleb.

Caleb: Oh...

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against Christmas music, so long as it's played between the Friday after Thanksgiving and January 6 (Epiphany). But what does frustrate me is how we've forgotten Advent songs.

Why does this concern me? Well, mainly because Advent songs give voice to the longing and need for Christ that I've been discussing over the past few posts. Christmas songs rejoice in fulfillment; Advent songs look toward what is still unfulfilled. We need both.

So, in an effort to promote Advent celebration everywhere, here is a list of some of my favorite Advent hymns, and links to newer recordings of them. Enjoy!

• O Come, O Come Emmanuel
  • Bebo Norman
  • Night Heron Consort [instrumental]
  • Sufjan Stevens
• Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
  • Fernando Ortega
• Comfort, Comfort Ye My People
  • JG
• Christ Whose Glory Fills The Skies
  • High Street Hymns
• Of the Father's Love Begotten
  • Ordinary Time
  • Night Heron Consort [instrumental, Divinum Mysterium]
• Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
  • Bifrost Arts
  • Ordinary Time
  • High Street Hymns
• Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendor
  • JG
  • Ordinary Time
• Veiled in Darkness
  • Bifrost Arts
  • High Street Hymns

Advent and the end of all things

For someone who grew up with Advent as simply 4 more weeks of Christmas, the readings in the Common Lectionary can be somewhat surprising. The Lectionary provides an order of readings for Sundays, used by many denominations—Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, etc. It reflects the church seasons, and the choice of texts for each week is one of the primary ways that many Christians interact with the church calendar.

So when Advent comes along and the readings are about the end of the world, that can be a bit odd.

Advent is not simply a longer span of time to enjoy eggnog lattes, Silent Night and Christmas trees. (Though I do enjoy those, a lot.) It's also a time for us to fix our hope and longing on Christ's return.

As I said yesterday, Advent lets us speak our longing openly and plainly, by helping us fix it on Christ. One way this season does that is by reminding us that all the things around us are going to fade away.

We know very little about what it will be like when Christ returns—but we do know that it will be very different. So different that the things which obsess and worry us now will not even be on the radar.

Advent is a time to breathe deeply, and remember that the Gospel frees us not only from our sins but from our fears and fixations as well.

We take to heart the words of the apostle John:

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. 

1 John 2:15-17

Advent—does it matter?

I've had a lot of discussions over the past week about Advent. Mostly because I'm brimming with delight and bubbly joy at the sheer thought of the season. This tends to bewilder people.

"What is Advent, anyway?" most people ask. A few have related stories of how terrible Christmas was for them in childhood—December was a month of stress and family discord. Others had churches where candles were lit, for reasons mostly unclear. For very few people does Advent, as a season, register as even mildly important.

Of course this goes for the entire Church calendar, which was somehow ejected from the Protestant church along with the papal bathwater. Many evangelicals turn up their nose slightly at the mention of Lent (abstaining? sounds like legalism to us!), and know Christmas and Easter only as single-day holidays, marked more by their secular dressings (Black Friday, Easter eggs) than their liturgical settings (Advent wreaths, Lenten fasting).

Does this forgetfulness matter? I think it does, for a few reasons:

• I'm hesitant to reject traditions too quickly. By all means let us hold to what is good and reject what is false. And, yes, let's breath life into tradition instead of letting it get stale. All the same it seems unwise—if not arrogant—to assume that what fed the church for 1500+ years doesn't concern us.
• We desperately need every tool available to us for remembering and living inside the Gospel. As a professor of mine said, "Any stick to beat the Devil." The church calendar is a mighty useful stick.
• We are going to live in some sort of calendar, regardless. Do we really want our primary understanding of time to be an academic, financial, or civil calendar? Are the seasons going to be marked by our patriotic holidays and our big sales, but not by the life of Christ?
• It takes time to absorb weighty, life-altering truths. It seems unfair to expect anyone to ramp up to the mysteries of Christmas and Easter in a day or two. Churches do their people a disservice by sneaking up to these celebrations without word of preparation.
• Why on earth would we not want more time to celebrate? Am I missing something? If Christmas is good for a day, why not eight? If we're really excited about Jesus' return, why not take four Sundays of the year and remember to long for it? If we are truly sorrowful over our sin and longing for healing, why not focus on the Cross for 40 days?