Advent, in many ways, is the most confused season of the Church year.  Liturgically the first Sunday in Advent marks the beginning of the Church year.  Yet the season’s meaning and relevance is poorly understood.  Culturally, Advent is the ultimate shopping season — affording us the opportunity to find that perfect gift that promises to make this the best Christmas ever.  Religiously, Advent is most often understood as a “mini-Lent” — a time to remind the faithful of God’s forthcoming judgment of sinners.  The problem with both of these viewpoints is that Advent’s meaning becomes truncated and reduced to little more than sentimentalism. 

“Sentimentality,” as Gertrude Mueller Nelson notes, “is the emotion we feel when we scoop off a part of the truth, that part which we are willing to accept, and slather it like syrup to cover what we do not want to see.  Usually what we don’t want to see is our own responsibility to the remaining truth.”  A prime example of such sentimentality is experienced in tribalism where one sees one’s own group as not only blameless but entitled.  This is the same mentality that many Christians often embrace during Advent.  God’s judgment is reserved for sinners — those people who aren’t like us:  those people who don’t worship like us, pray like us, or believe like us.  In fact, segments of the church take great delight in envisioning the cataclysmic end of the world and the gruesome judgment awaiting all “sinners.”  Such sentimentality is dangerous because it is nothing more than a half-truth and a half-truth is nothing but a lie.  Spiritually such sentimentality reveals our very soul — exposes our own lack of hope.  As Eric Fromm has observed, “Those whose hope is weak settle for comfort or for violence.”  Our world is a culture that seeks its own comfort — at the expense of the other.  We are a society that chooses violence as its first option — willing to take out any who question our priorities or dare to challenge our comfort, either spiritually or physically.  Ours, we must admit, is a society that is fearful and without hope. 

So, what does Advent offer us today?  Advent, contrary to what many of us believe, is not a penitential season.  Advent is a season of expectancy — a season of expectant waiting.  This, in and of itself, makes it difficult for our society, which assumes instant gratification, to grasp.  Yet patience is the virtue that enables us to prepare ourselves — affording us the opportunity to be rather than do.  It is as we learn to be that we become open to the Spirit and capable of being transformed — becoming whole, becoming holy.  Consequently, Advent is a season of hope — reminding us that things don’t have to be the way they are.  Through the scripture readings of Advent we enact and celebrate paradox — the mystery of the coming together of opposites:  a virgin shall be with child; the blind will see; the deaf will hear; the lame will leap; the dumb will sing; the last are first; the wolf will be the guest of the lamb; the calf and the young lion will hang out together; the lion will eat hay with the ox; and the baby will play next to the cobra’s nest.  These lessons, though often interpreted narrowly as reminders of apocalyptic judgment give us insight into how God intends for us to live our lives:  “And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”  In short, the lessons of Advent hold up our humanity as it is and compares it to the humanity God calls us to embrace.

Advent prepares us for the mystery of Christmas — “the joining of heaven to earth and earth and heaven.”  It is where we recognize and acknowledge that our hope is not in death but life — that when all appears to be swallowed up in darkness, still there is light entering into the world.  And each of us is nothing less than the bearers of that light.  Christmas can only become a reality if we open ourselves to the Spirit and discern the Truth that it is only in the earthy that divinity is revealed, only in the human that the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.  The fullness of time can only be experienced when we choose to embrace the dream of God and incarnate God in our world. 

Advent confronts us with many questions:  Where is our hope?  Do we settle for comfort — pretending that all is right with the world?  Do we settle for violence — pretending that violence is the way of the world and thus justified by God? Or, do we dare to believe God — acknowledging that God is with us?  Are we willing to incarnate God in our world?

The audacity of hope is that regardless of how desperate things may appear, we, this generation, will experience the Advent of the Dream of God — the coming of Christ into our world.  Advent is the season that challenges the status quo and dares us to embrace life instead of death.  Through the incarnation we have been given a new hope — becoming responsible for healing our brokenness and bringing God to birth in the everyday challenges of the human condition.  As the 15^th century mystic Meister Eckhart observed, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God 1,400 years ago and I don’t give birth to God’s son in my person and my culture and my times?” 

Hope, to become reality, must be chosen.  Advent reminds us that that choice remains ours.