December 2025
As I write this note, in the middle of November, Thanksgiving is not even upon us, yet the world has dived headfirst into the commercial Christmas season. Already we are subjected to Christmas music in our coffee shops, stores, and shopping malls. Christmas lists are being written, parties are planned, and Christmas trees are counting down the days till their inevitable end. Everywhere we turn, we are told that the countdown to Christmas has begun.
Yet here in the church, we will spend most of December not celebrating Christmas but celebrating Advent. Despite what Advent calendars might have you believe, Advent is not simply a countdown before the actual day of Christmas. It is its own unique season in the church year, celebrated in our liturgy. It is, without question, a season of waiting and expectation. Yet look at the lectionary texts for the first Sunday of Advent (Matthew 24:36-44) and you will see an anticipation not of the Incarnation, celebrated at Christmas, but of the return of Jesus; not the baby in the manger, but the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven.
Advent is, as the brilliant Anglican preacher Fleming Rutledge puts it in the title of her invaluable book on the season, a celebration of the “once and future coming of Jesus Christ.” It is a season of remembering that what God has done in Jesus is not fully consummated. We live in a world in which there is still much darkness, a world in which sin runs rampant. In the darkness of this season, we remember that our hope for this world is in God alone. So, we wait, living in the time in between the promise and its final fulfillment, for the light of God to break into this world.
In a world that encourages us to focus on only the most superficial aspects of the Christian season, Advent provides a helpful corrective. It reminds us that the season celebrates a radical in-breaking of God into the world, one which changed everything forever. Join me in this season of prayerful expectation.
Grace and Peace,
– Pastor Jeff