Silent Expectation

When I was home at Thanksgiving, I found myself watching quite a big of television with my family. (I don’t watch a whole lot of any TV at work and I was sick.  So I mostly basked in this very low key pastime.)  And, because it was Thanksgiving (which may as well be the Christmas shotgun rather than holding its own significant importance, but alas, I digress), watching television came with the infamous addition of Christmas commercials.

I. Hate. Christmas. Commercials.  **

I hate them.  Mostly because they focus on things which don’t matter.  In the slightest.  I blogged about this once before.  More more more for me me me.  I cringe at Christmas commercials because I hate the focus on the commercialism.  We’ve got it all wrong.

So there I was, at home, when a caroling group in red sweaters stands precariously in a kitchen (really?  Because that’s realistic!) singing “go go go go go go go!” and I replied with an irritated and snarky “no no no no no no no no!”  My mother, after an exchange about the commercial’s stupidity replied with a well-intentioned “well mute the sucker!”

Something’s missing from those commercials.  Plenty, I say with my limited recalling from my time as an Advertising and Public Relations student.  But my transition to spending the rest of my college years as a Youth Ministry student leaves me without a doubt.  We’re missing the Christ.  A few years ago I blogged “The ChristmasRemnant”…a conversation between the characters left behind after a Christmas season. The realization the Son was missing.  Glaringly missing.  If we cared, truly cared, the pieces and parts would be missing and just the Son would remain.  He is the missing piece. 

I could and do “mute the sucker” Christmas commercials all day.  But the problem remains.  It’s not the commercials my world (or even, regrettably, my own life) is muting.  It’s the Christ.  We’ve muted the Christ out of Christmas.

Contemplating the ways in which I and we have silenced Christ made me think of something else, however.  It made me think of when God Himself was silent.  In a way the actions of the Israelites, those He called as His own, their lack of obedience and failure to follow became a precursor for this silence.  But God chose to be silent.  For 400 years!  In my Bible, three pages exist between the books of Malachi and Matthew.  A blank page on the backside of Malachi, a new page indicating the start of the New Testament and a blank page before Matthew.  In those three pages exists 400 years.  400 years where no teacher and no prophet brought a word from the Lord. 400 years where no new words or instructions were given to the people God had called to His side and His heart. 400 years of silence…

I think about the times in my life where God has felt silent to me.  Where I couldn’t hear or feel or see Him amidst the garbage and piece of my life.  Unbearable, impossibly, dark.  How hard it was to go seeking for God when I knew His existence and not His presence… 

It made me wonder, a childlike fascinated sense of both wonder and awe, at the realization of Advent.  The church calendar recognizes and celebrates a time of Advent, a season of waiting.  A season of expectation.  A period of preparing our hearts and minds and souls for the coming of the Messiah.  What must have it been like for the remnant of Israel to wait?  What was it like those 400 years?  They had the prophecies, the innumerable mentions of a King and Savior to come.  One of my favorites sits in Isaiah 9: “For unto us a child is born, for unto us a child is given.  And the government shall rest on his shoulders.  And he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace...” (Isaiah9:6)  So many promises to behold!  To wait in hope and expectation of those promises!  That first Advent…when would the waiting end and with what or whom would it end?

And then the silence ended.

On the first of those three precarious pages reads a self written note:  “400 years…and God was silent.  Anika, you think you grow tired and weary of waiting for God to show up?  I tell you this: if ever you go seeking, you will find.  What comes after these 400 years made it so that “God with us” was a promise fulfilled and sustained. Hold out your hands, hold our your hear.  The cost is great; the pain to be expected.  But the God of Hosts, Lord of Angel’s Armies seek to love and bless you and to love and bless through you. Even when God feels silent with you, may He never be silent through you.  Proclaim the joy and presence of the Emmanuel…”

Silence was ended with Emmanuel.  What came on the end of that silence was “God with us”.  Isaiah 7:14 tells us to expect (and Matthew 1:23 gives proof of fulfillment) that “the virgin will bring forth a son and He shall be call Emmanuel…” 

The magic of Christmas is the transcendence of realizing the perfect love a God for His creation became tangible in a baby boy who grew and lived to die to live.  So that we would never have to know a life where God wasn’t with us.

And not only is He with us but He is in us.  His Spirit is something our imperfect and earthly bodies hold.  One of my favorite “theology degree” terms, which has stuck with me above the rest, is the term “Theotokos”.  It is a Greek term that was used by the very early church to describe Mary.  Theo meaning “God” and tokos meaning “to carry” or “to hold” or “to bear”.  The literal translation is “God Bearer”.  Mary was considered the one who bore God. 

And we are called to be Theotokos’ as well.  To carry Christ that we may bear Him to the world.  2 Corinthians 4:(7-10) was once the heart of my philosophy of ministry.  And it comes with the calling of a Theotokos.  “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  We are hard pressed on ever side, but not crushed; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body…”

But to realize we are to be far more than one known to give good gifts but also as one holding the Greatest Gift ever to have been given!

As we draw nearer and nearer to the day of Christmas, may we embrace the expectation of waiting.  Of true Advent.  May we, however, not be silent in our expectation.  The 400 year wait is long since over.  Emmanuel has come!  Take the mute button off.  Bear Christ to the world!  May He never be silent through you… Proclaim the joy and the presence of the Emmanuel! 

*Admittedly, after a significant absence of posts on my blogs, this wasn’t originally a blog post at all.  Instead, it was the rough construction of notes compiled as pieces came during a church service which I then, 24 hours later, turned into a Monday morning staff devo.  My notes transcribed make up this blog post, instead.  But I’ve managed more Christmas blogs than not, so I felt it was only appropriate to post. 

**Okay, I’ll admit, I do sort of look forward to the one where the Hershey Kisses play Carol of the Bells.  And that one Folder’s commercial where the brother comes home surprisingly.  And this year I saw a Meijer’s ad where a family is lighting a house and admiring it and then they go inside and the viewer assumes its their own house they decorated until the elderly neighbor drives home aghast and a little boy is watching out his window.  That one made my heart smile.