What do you think it means to prepare the way of the Lord? If God sent a messenger to prepare that way, then I’d think the preparation must have been as important as the arrival. If you think about it, there are lots of things for which preparation is so essential that without it, or if the prep is improperly done, you can get into trouble. For example, suppose you get to the end of the semester in school and it’s time to take the final exam, but you haven’t attended most of the classes and you haven’t studied. Taking that final exam would probably produce a lot of anxiety! I used to have that dream near the end of the term every year that I was in school. That’s a lot of anxiety dreams.
John, whom we call the Baptist, received mission instructions directly from God to proclaim the importance of repentance. And repentance simply means turning back toward God. When the prophet Isaiah foretold that mission, he described John as “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” (Luke 3:4-6)
And Malachi’s prophecy is similar: “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight– indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal. 3:1-2a)
These prophecies about the messenger who prepares the way of the Lord don’t sound like messages about joyful preparation for the arrival of a new baby. They sound like warnings. “But who can endure the day of his coming?” Yikes!
It kind of makes you think– Advent has a bit more to it than preparation for Christmas Day– the celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. However we are all trained to think of Advent as the appetizer before the main course– a season to whet our appetites for Christmas. And that’s not really our fault. Christmas has been marketed to us as a completely different cultural celebration for our entire lives. We have been manipulated into thinking about it in exactly the same way people contemplating marriage have been taught that diamonds last forever. They don’t. And we don’t have to reject that other Christmas– the one that must have awe-inspiring lights, a perfectly conical tree that is pre-lit with LEDs that are programmable in five different color patterns, and stockings hung by the chimney with care. I love that Christmas as much as you do. And I love running around my home decorating, staying up too late, and scheming about how I can improve over last year’s decorations. AND… I also love that God is so near to us as to choose to live within us. So why wouldn’t I celebrate both Christmases without having to toss out either one?
I prepare for both holidays– they just have different preparation. For cultural Christmas, I decorate the house with those little Christmas village things my dad gave me when my folks downsized to a condo. I bake, go to parties, hang up lights, and cajole the family into helping me hang up red and silver balls on the tree.
For the other holiday, the one where we celebrate Christ coming into the world, I prepare differently because there are no decorations for that. It’s kind of the opposite, like what you do before decorating. You put away the harvest wreath and the pumpkins and gourds, and you clean, putting things in order in preparation for what is to come.
During Advent, we prepare for the arrival of the messiah, or ready ourselves to receive the Christ consciousness into our hearts by doing the same things. We put our hearts in order, and we do the things we say we will do in our baptismal covenant– renounce evil and other distractions and turn our attention back to God, expectantly awaiting the “Lord whom we seek [who] will suddenly come to the temple.” (Mal. 3:1). We ARE that temple! And who can endure the day of his coming? We can– because Christ has promised us never to let go of our hands in the middle of the street: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20).
The days between now and the conclusion of Advent aren’t that many. Soak them in and savor this time because each one is a gift: the raw materials with which you can leave a legacy of memories for someone else. Whether it’s the cultural time leading up to secular Christmas with silly songs, lots of cookies and ugly sweaters, or it’s that special time where we put away the things that we don’t need in the season of anticipation of the coming of Christ consciousness into our own hearts– Advent; you can have both. But don’t confuse one with the other, because this is where we live and how we must live: one foot in this world and the other in the kingdom of God.