Advent
Advent: The Season of Hope, (Fullness of Time series), Tish Harrison Warren. IVP Formatio (ISBN: 9781514000182) 2023.
Summary: Explores how we may wait with hope around the three advents of Christ, offering themes, prayers, and helpful practices.
I grew up in a tradition that didn’t focus on Advent. At all. Getting ready for Christmas was about presents, decorating, family plans, Christmas music and going to the Christmas Eve candlelight service at my church where we sang “Silent Night” by the light of hand held candles. That was it.
Only in recent years have I learned about the rhythm of the Christian year that begins with the season of Advent. Or come to appreciate the focus on the comings of Jesus, of his Incarnation and return. As I’ve done so, I find myself longing for a third coming–in my life as I encounter Jesus afresh. I want to meet Jesus afresh as I begin this new year in the life of his people!
I was delighted to find these same yearnings in Tish Harrison Warren’s thoughtfully written little book on Advent. This is where she begins–with our yearnings for the three Advents of Jesus. She describes her own awakening understanding of this season with “its quiet beauty and doleful hymns” that reflects our waiting in “darkness before we celebrate the dawn.”
Then in a chapter on longing, she centers on four themes of Advent: waiting and hope, darkness and light, repentance and rest, and emptiness and filling. Following this, she discusses two prophets of Advent who prepared the way of the Lord–Isaiah and John the Baptist. Scripture readings from these two prophets are a focus of the lectionary readings for this season. Warren focuses on cosmic rescue in Isaiah and cosmic justice in the prophecy of John.
In the fourth chapter, titled “Stirrings,” Warren reflects on four collects, or short prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, used during Advent. Particularly illuminating for me was the fourth, a prayer that God would “stir up his power.” She links it to Mary and the Magnificat, a focus of the scripture readings, with her being overshadowed by the power of the Most High. Mary willingly yielded her self to that power, to be the instrument of God’s deliverance, through her son.
The fifth chapter is on “Approaching,” which offers eight practices for Advent. However, Warren doesn’t legislate these but relates her own practice. Rather than rules, these are invitations. Nor does she have rules about when to decorate or when it’s OK to play Christmas music.
Warren writes, “Part of why we observe Advent is to make Christmas weird again, to allow the shock of the incarnation to take us aback once more.” “The most wonderful time of the year” can only really make sense when we emerge from the darkness. Only in longing for deliverance can the wonder of the babe who is the world’s deliverer make sense.
Summing it all up, Warren offers a thoughtfully written guide to our own Advent journey. So, I will be reading the book again with several friends as I wait with longing and hope.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.