A Reflection from The Rev. David Hoster
Dear People of St. James’,
As I write this reflection for you, the countdown to NASA’s first operational astronaut launch in nine years stands at T-minus two hours, thirty minutes. For over sixty years, the NASA countdown clock has been part of our modern consciousness, magnifying our investment in the success of space missions while it ratchets up our anxiety over the serious risk our astronauts face. Most of us are intimately familiar with growing excitement coupled with mounting anxiety as the moment of launch nears tick by tick.
Countdowns not of the NASA variety come to mind as well. During pandemic isolation, many of us have picked up take-out at a restaurant and then driven home with the package on the back seat. If you live in Georgetown, as I do, the trip from one of my favorite restaurants in Austin takes awhile—long enough for the aromas of dinner to prompt my entire digestive system to kick in a biological countdown through all the familiar mileposts on the way to my front door. That spiritual term we so often use—hungering—gets to be pretty physical.
I suspect, too, that we’re also oppressively familiar with counting down years, then months, then weeks and finally days to the election last week. Now, we’re counting down days until the electoral college meets to act, or until January 20 when a new president is inaugurated. Feelings of dread, hope, head-banging frustration and occasional exhilaration all exaggerate this year’s totally unique experience of political countdown.
You know where I’m headed with all this. Advent is the season when we prepare for God’s approaching physical presence in the world at Christmas. Advent wreaths and Advent calendars are our countdown clocks, ticking away the days and weeks until Christmas Eve. Yet candles and paper windows seem a bit bland compared to what’s really at stake in Christmas. Perhaps our Advent experience would be well served by augmentation with the visceral stirring of a NASA countdown clock, dinner calling graphically from the back seat, or our investment in a national transition.
For Advent asks us to do something profoundly important to our souls. Advent asks us to take seriously what it means to live in a world where God is far, far away, Jesus has not yet come, and we are on our own, confronting forces that threaten to overwhelm us. The biblical people who were driven by deep emotion to risk a hard desert crossing for baptism by John in the River Jordan yearned for something they could scarcely name without even knowing that a countdown was in progress. They just went because they had to. They were Advent people, yearning, searching, anticipating. We should hunger no less than they do for a world in which God comes vibrantly alive.
Advent makes clear to us exactly why we cannot live without Jesus. Advent is the sound of our souls calling for God. Advent is a vacuum crying out to be filled. Perhaps immediate injustice, or a social and political time of transition, or the mortally politicized reality of Covid, or the peril of unemployment and eviction, or seemingly implacable hostile divisions within our population, or fear raised the conduct of government in unworthy hands, or the sight of a familiar restaurant boarded up—perhaps some or all of these things make the Advent countdown clock tick louder than usual this year—our yearning for Jesus made nearly unbearable.
The days between now and December 24 are meant for visceral yearning, though. We should embrace how fearfully limited our powers are and how profoundly we need the inner transformation Jesus will bring. Jesus means more, the more we need him, and this year we need him very much indeed.
The Rev. David Hoster
