Today the season of Advent begins, and the first candle on our
Advent wreath is now lit. Advent is a special season of watching and
waiting; of looking for the subtle and surprising signs of God’s presence in
the world. I love Advent because it has a spiritual subtlety that is very
necessary in the commercialized excess of the holiday season. It reminds
me that I could miss the presence of God if I’m not looking carefully for
it. Advent is about cleaning your lens and looking at the world and
yourself in a new way.
So look around this morning. Take a good look. If
you hadn’t noticed, this is the best time of year at Kent. The best.
We should have signs put up, so you remember. Instead, our Advent wreath
hangs in the chancel, as a gentle reminder to savor the moment as we prepare
for Christmas. You may remember keeping an Advent calendar as a
child. Those were good times--a time of wonder at new things, but the
anticipation and beauty of the season are still here, reaching you in new ways
if you stop to look around. A strange thing happened to me earlier this
week—something just felt wrong, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I
was out of sorts. And then I realized what I was missing. I was
here at Kent, but I wasn’t stressed out. These two weeks and change are
quite a few notches less stressful than any other time of the year. It is
a time to just be, or as close as we come to mindful relaxation as a community.
And this time together doesn’t end with final exams, or the goodbyes of spring,
but rather a chapel service, one that is different from the others.
People really sing the Christmas carols. Vacation will hang in the
air with the Lessons and Carols service, before we go our separate ways and
rejoin our families for the holidays.
So today, on this first Sunday of Advent, I will tell you a
story from my past, from long ago; a story that is both funny and sad, tragic
and comic. And I survived, just barely, to tell you the tale this morning.
To make a long story just a little shorter, I once stole a Christmas tree. This
event is part of my permanent files. I
will have to take you back to my first year of divinity school at the General
Theological Seminary in Manhattan, to a time before you were born. At
General Seminary, there is always a reading of “’Twas the Night Before
Christmas,” with all of the children from the seminary and the neighborhood
gathered around the massive fireplace in the common area. A favorite
reader of the story was the then Governor of New York Mario Cuomo. His
son Andrew is the current governor. However, my own controversial
ministry to General Seminary was more along the lines of “The Grinch Who Stole
Christmas.” And I was the Grinch.
It all began so simply on a December day of cold and wintry
Advent gloom. Like today. It was
then that I first noticed the early appearance, the premature arrival
that is, of a Christmas tree on the afternoon of December 6th,
1989. Ah, the Christmas tree;
this is a yearly tradition which has no scriptural support, or theological
justification, or religious meaning whatsoever. The Christmas tree is actually
Pagan in its origins. The tree in question was set up in the exact middle
of the Oxford style Close of General Seminary. The children of the neighborhood
had decorated the tree to celebrate St. Nicholas Day on December 6th. I
hadn’t known that last fact when I first began plotting the Pagan tree’s
downfall, but it wouldn’t have stopped me. I was young and impetuous back
then, madly egotistical, and full of brio. Among other
things.
But here’s the problem; technically, religiously speaking,
the tree, which has—let me repeat—no religious meaning, should not make
an appearance until December 24th, the beginning of the Christmas
season, after Advent is over. That’s the proper order of things. The tree should then stand for the twelve
days of Christmas (like the song), and then go down at Epiphany on January 6th
when the wise men arrive. This is how things should be if you’re going to
be technical, which I certainly was for the sake of comedy.
I wasn’t planning to steal the tree, not exactly, just to move
it, under the veneer of satire and the cover of darkness. Due to the
great size of the tree, I needed some help; a few disciples if you will.
So I shared my Advent plan for a commando strike with two of my classmates, who
are now both priests, here in the Northeast. We went into holy Advent
motion in the first hour of 7 December, a day that still lives in infamy at
General Seminary. We Advent guardians were clad in black cassock; our
visages were darkened with face paint—just three ghosts of the seminary tidying
things up to insure a pure Advent. As I said, the season of Christmas
begins on December 24th, and not a minute before.
The tree was coming down.
Strange church mischief was in the midnight air.
We three, we merry Advent Police, left a lovely sign in
purple calligraphy (the color of Advent) in the very spot where the tree had
been raised the day before. Our calling card sign boldly read: “Beware
you secular n’er do wells! The Advent Police.” Naturally, I
chose the Dean of General Seminary as the honorary commander of the Advent
Police. So we moved the tree into his office. The Dean’s office was
far too small for the enormous Christmas tree. Even placed at an angle,
it was still bent at the top by the ceiling, forming an upside down L
shape. The angel on top was set sideways by our mad midnight work; but
the tree still looked very pretty, quite special, when we turned on the
Christmas lights in the dark office. Surely we had laid the groundwork
for a lovely day at the helm for the veteran Dean. It is more blessed to
give than to receive. A letter of introduction from the mysterious and
apocalyptic Advent Police was waiting for the good priest on his desk. What
a glorious night it was. We even rang the bell in the seminary tower
to celebrate the holy Advent and our heroic actions.
But my Advent adventure, or misadventure, became my
very own painful Christmas lesson by the next morning.
I learned, so much, by the very next day.
Here are the lessons I learned:
1) I discovered, very quickly, that one person’s satire
is, sometimes, another person’s disciplinary investigation. And
it’s not very fun to be the subject of a disciplinary investigation when you’re
supposed to be in divinity school to be a priest. It is also better to
confess when everything points to you. The Assistant Dean came to my dorm
room before breakfast to ask me a few questions about my whereabouts on the
previous night.
How did they know it was me? How? I ask you.
2) A Dean, however stern and foreboding, can be a very
kind and compassionate figure of authority at the same time, especially when
you’re in trouble. It often doesn’t feel like it at the time—only when
you look back years later. The Dean put me on probation, even though some
members of the faculty wanted the perpetrators expelled. Yes, I was now a
perp.
3) Almost the most
important lesson. I’m not as funny as I
think I am. I learned that a good idea in the middle of the night can be
a very bad idea by 9 AM the next morning. Let me say this again: a good
idea in the middle of the night can be a very bad one by
morning.
4) The very most important. One person’s familiar
holiday can be a small child’s very first Christmas, or the first time
decorating a tree. Think of the magic of your first real snowfall, or the
first time hearing the story of the birth of Jesus, or hearing the rich beauty
of the Lessons and Carols service. It’s always somebody’s first
time. Everywhere, all the time. Or
this year could be the first time a person you know really feels the true
spirit of this season, a time of giving not just receiving. And it can also
be a loved one’s last Christmas. Near the end of your life, I have no
doubt that sharing a Christmas with your family is a foretaste of heaven
itself.
It was through my failure as a Christmas Grinch that I learned
the important lesson of this season. Ours is not a God of doom, but
rather a God of grace, love, forgiveness, and unspeakable beauty. A God
who makes each of us a beginner when it comes to experiencing, and sharing, the
mystery of Love. Advent is a time to make a home for God. Inside of you. This is a time to reconnect with God’s love,
or to experience it for the very first time.
God gave, and still gives, everything to win our hearts, and to
save our souls, that we too may give freely to each other and to our world as
we have received God’s love and mercy. Love is not simply what we
expected, or what we needed; it is more than we can possibly imagine. The
only gift we can give back to God is the very best of who we are: to live again
the good life of compassion, forgiveness, and charity to one another, in word
and deed. That God may no longer be a
stranger in the world, and in our hearts. May God bless all of you, and
your families, in the days and weeks to come.
