What is Advent really about?

What is Advent really about?

I mean really. What is it really about, church?

Waiting? Sure. But there’s more to it than that. Waiting is a bit of a cop out, don’t you think? We wait for the Lord, but we don’t sit around and do nothing while we wait. It’s not sit around and do nothing, type of waiting. It’s active preparation type of waiting. So what does that mean for the church?

Self-Examination? Absolutely. Ooooo, now we’re getting somewhere. We’re getting into dangerous territory actually. If we take this seriously. What is it that we need to examine church? Watch out. Careful how you answer. Are you going to keep it at the surface level, which is what so much of our society does? Or are you actually going do the hard work of Advent and go deep, down into the dangerous levels which will make us uncomfortable to say the least?

If Advent is about active preparation and anticipation for Jesus and about self-examination and reflection in the preparation, then I wonder how we can do that as church? Over the summer, the ELCA churchwide assembly passed a resolution reconstituting the ELCA. This essentially means that it’s well past time to re-organize the church because the way it is organized if out of date and doesn’t work and isn’t sustainable. That’s the simple version. This reconstitution is not an uncommon thing. It’s the very essence of what we believe as Christians — we claim to believe in life, death, and resurrection. In other words, nothing lives forever.