I grew up privileged. It wasn’t silver-spoon-stuck-to-the-tongue kind of privilege. Having been raised by parents who had survived the Great Depression, my parents diligently avoided ostentation. Dad always bought Plymouths, for heaven’s sake. He was a physician, and he was never really “off duty.” He could have bought nicer (and more dependable) cars, but he didn’t. When I was in high school, he splurged and bought, of all things, a light blue VW Rabbit—just for himself. The only time I saw Dr. Dad work on a car or do something less than honest was when he crawled under that Rabbit and performed a catalytic converterectomy.
Without the catalytic converter, the Rabbit could burn regular gas instead of unleaded.
Because it was cheaper.
I learned to drive a straight-shift in that non-street-legal VW Rabbit.
Car talk aside, my three siblings and I never ever lacked for food, clothing, shelter, health care. We always had everything we needed as well as a good bit of stuff we didn’t. Our enough-and-then-some made us privileged in a world in which far too many people struggle simply to meet their basic human needs—which are, themselves, chief among basic human rights.
For some reason, Christmas has become about satisfying desires for extraneous, material stuff. That means it has become as much (more?) about greed as it is about grace. Even when we buy gifts for things like Angel Tree or donate to Salvation Army, we often say that we’re trying to help others “have a Christmas.” As a child of privilege, and as a dad who did his best to “give his children a Christmas,” I get that. I do. As a pastor who preaches Jesus week after week, I have, by God’s incarnate grace, lost a lot of that, too.
Every year, I still buy a few things for my family at Christmas, but we no longer have presents piled under the tree like sacks of rice and beans in a doomsday prepper’s basement. Having said that, our celebration of the nativity of the Christ does involve preparation. In paradoxical contrast to the commercial carnival of Christmas, the spiritual practice of Advent is a season of letting go. It’s a season during which we make space in our harried lives for quiet mystery and subtle miracle. To make that kind of room, we need less feasting and more fasting—which was the principal Advent practice as the season evolved during the late fourth and early fifth centuries.
Advent invites us into a subversive, counter-cultural observance. During these four weeks, we say Yes to surrender, to emptiness, to what Jesus calls “poverty of spirit.” Letting go is how we prepare ourselves to receive the immeasurable gift of God’s eternal Yes to us in Christ. In Jesus, God says to all Creation, I created you. I love you. I am with you. And I send you out, vulnerable as children, to discover the Christ within you and to embody love in the world.
Now, another Yes: Yes, we all need certain material things. We need food, water, clothing, and shelter. We all need health care. We need human conversation and touch. We need sleep and exercise. We need personal, physical interaction with the natural world. We need exposure to and appreciation for music and art.
It just seems to me that to follow and love the One whose birth we celebrate, we also need to surrender our learned attachments to whatever makes us feel entitled, defensive, and suspicious of others.
And since it requires less getting and more giving to learn to surrender, could it be that we need to focus more intentionally on Advent so that Christmas truly becomes the gift we proclaim it to be?
Peace,
Pastor Allen
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