What is it about advent?
The Bible gives us two Greek words for time: kairos and chronos.
You can see the word, “chronological” in one of the two terms - and chronos is the word for “time” that talks about order. Time marching forward from past, to present, into the future.
Kairos, on the other hand, is different. Kairos is God’s timing. It’s almost a timeless sense of time - where all things are held together in God’s hands for the time appointed. My liturgy and life students will know that I often say, “We are kairos people in a chronos world.”
We live under the oppression of time: being on time, being late, planners and calendars, full weekends, and time away for rest. But we also live as God’s people and are freely living in kairos time, too. The Holy Spirit reveals a sense of call or purpose. We experience hope, even in times that seem hopeless.
This whole “kairos people in a chronos word” thing is akin to what Martin Luther says in the small catechism about the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come” - “The kingdom of God certainly comes by itself without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may come to us also.”
The thing about Advent is that it breaks open our sense of time. We experience the chronos of the cultural march toward Christmas and yet we linger in Kairos recognizing that there’s a season that pulls us in to slow us down and help us focus again on Christ’s coming.
In a supplemental resource for the ELW, advent is a time where we remember “Christ comes not only in a past event but also in our present life and the world’s unfolding future. So it is that Advent is not about Mary’s pregnancy, but about the church’s continual prayer that God will come to us, bringing life to a dying world.”*
For those using the Revised Common Lectionary, the readings cycle us through past, present, and future. The Old Testament readings proclaim in hope how glorious God’s coming will be. The second reading invites patience. Meanwhile the gospel readings undo the current order of things and call us to repentance and justice through the voice of John the Baptist.
The advent wreath echoes ancient human symbols of the sun and the life it brings. For those in the northern hemisphere who begin to experience longer, colder nights, the candles on the wreath increase our sense of warmth and light as Christmas draws near. The color blue is meant to represent the blue of our hope and the blue of our waiting.
Here as the calendar swings into the last month of 2024, we have time to pause and consider: God has come, is coming, will come to us, bringing life to a dying world.
God’s kairos Word breaks in while we wait for “God’s kingdom to come among us also.”
Advent doesn’t band-aid things that hurt. It’s not “magical” or “magnetic” that it can make things right or pull us back - although it may give us perspective. Advent is a chance to name what it is that we’re all doing in the midst of our finitude. We’re waiting. We wait. We will continue to wait for the day God promises to make everything new.
As we wait, there are little pokes of light that surround us. They come from the tree in the sanctuary, from the stars in the sky, from the words of children. As we wait, God invites us to watch with an active energy that brings life and enlightens the world with justice seeking, peace making, and healing. God brings life to a dying world. We don’t have to wait to see that happening all around us. May you catch a glimpse of that light while you wait, too.
Pastor Jenn Pockat
Associate to the Bishop
Director for Relationships and Resources
Stars on a dark blue sky at dusk.
*(Ramshaw and Tieg, Keeping Time: The Church’s Years. Using Evangelical Worship Volume Three. Minneapolis: Fortress press, 2009).
