As I get old enough to remember my hometown being slightly but permanently different than it is now, I find that a growing number of my memories happened in places that no longer exist. These are important, formative, and gut-wrenching memories- things that shaped who I am and how I see the world- and I can’t ever go back. A. E. Housman wrote it this way:
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills
What spires; what farms are those?
It is the land of lost content
I see it, shining plain
Those happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Sometimes the places I remember become other places. The classroom of an English teacher I had in high school is now a fifth grade classroom, with colorful posters of tips and tricks for math and grammar. I can technically go back, but it’s not the same. I remember how the wind would get caught in the narrow alley between the two modular buildings and sound a mournful retreat as it escaped, and if one had recently read a ghost story, it wasn’t difficult to imagine someone as trapped in loneliness as I was inhabiting the sound.
But even when the location hasn’t changed, I have. So it isn’t really the same anyway.
I find a similar feeling creeping in when I think of Christmas. It’s as though I remember walking through a pristine forest, with dark green trees and white snow and a Narnian lamppost, but when I return I find that the place has been leveled and a strip mall built.
The commercialization of Christmas is a perennial complaint. I heard it all growing up. And as amusing as it is for some of you who know that I’m only twenty-eight to hear me wistfully recall my younger days, remember that even in that short time, huge changes have taken place. Since my childhood, the internet has risen to prominence in American commerce, causing retailers to raise their advertising efforts to fever pitch. In addition, social media has provided a constant stream of images, not of strangers modeling the newest fashions, but my own friends and neighbors displaying a carefully curated exhibit of their “best life now.”
I recently heard a minister make the comment that television’s sole aim is to create discontent. Think about it: how does every commercial go? A task or state of being is described that is uncomfortable or undesirable, and a need is created. Then the product or service being advertised swoops in to fulfill that need, and all they want in return is a few dollars. Is it any wonder that we never seem to catch up? We’re constantly surrounded by discontentment propaganda. As Wordsworth said:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;-
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
we have given our hearts away. A sordid boon!”
The temptation to sin is like an advertisement. It takes a need that you feel, real or perceived, and it advertises itself as the only solution. Over the last century or so, the most common besetting temptations known to mankind have been given a psychological and scientific backing. Lust is now psychosexual development. Self-actualization reigns supreme. And all the while, as Dave Ramsey puts it, we go deeper and deeper into debt to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t even like, and while we shell out more and more money to endless therapy sessions and self-help literature, the real needs of our souls go unfulfilled.
Every human spirit is suffering from being disconnected from its source: the love and holiness of their Creator.
St. Athanasius put it this way:
“The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it…”
That lofty sounding existential problem is brought down to earth by St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
The only hope for the human soul is to be reunited, to be grafted back into the vine. A rose can survive in a vase for a little while, but it won’t grow and thrive unless it’s being nourished by the plant it sprang from. Inevitably, the petals wither and fall to the ground.
Knowing all this, God sent his one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, down to the earth in human form. He lived the life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died, so that by putting our trust in Him, we may gain eternal life.
Christmas, once the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus, has descended into an orgy of “stuff.”
Now, I know that the true meaning of Christmas cannot be compromised. But as I get older, I find that my soul rejoices in the celebration, not of Christmas, but of Advent. In the season of Advent, we live in remembrance of what is past, and eager and exhausted anticipation of what is coming. The French resistance doesn’t make any sense without D-Day. The martyrs beneath the alter cry out, “How long, O Lord?”
There’s a tension in the words of our Lord while He walked among us: we are to live not only as slaves whose master’s return may be long delayed, but also as slaves whose master’s return may be imminent.
A definition of faith that’s been helpful to me is “living one’s life in the light of the promises of God.” Advent allows us to acknowledge and wrestle with the immense difficulty of living in the tension between the “already” and the “not-yet.” We can cry out “how long, O Lord?” when drugs, violence, depression, and the petty pace creeps in from day to day. We can also joyfully proclaim that the year of the Lord’s favor has come.
It’s okay to be sick and tired of being sick and tired. And it’s okay to be hurting and confused and lost. But the day is coming when every tear will be wiped away, after every knee has bowed and every tongue confessed that Jesus is Lord.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Amen.
Housman:
Wordsworth:
Athenasius:
Augustine:
Scriptures:
Saints beneath the altar:
Live as slaves:
The year of the Lord’s Favor:
Even so, come:
