Advent, the Rhythms of Worship

This will be my last post for a week or two since I'll be heading to Wyoming to visit family.

I've been thinking this week about how odd it is that millions of Christians return to the themes of Advent, year after year, attending to many of the same ideas and stories as last year at this time, and that we will do this many more times in the course of our lives. An outsider might peer in at us and judge that we're just not very bright. After all, how many times do you need to hear prophesies about a coming king, stories of his birth, narratives about John the Baptist who prepared his way, accounts of wise men, shepherds and angels? Surely we should have gotten it by now.

The very fact that we return to these themes, these stories, year after year must look peculiar to a speed-of-light information age. In this age in which we're now living, getting information right now is the name of the game. I don't even have to wait for a radio report to find out the newest stock market news (not that I'd want to). Same thing with last night's sports scores. I can type some words on my URL bar and have instant access to almost anything.

To be clear: I'm grateful for that. I really am. I have no qualms at all about the speed-of-light information age. I enjoy researching some of my pet subjects on the web as much as anybody; and I love that I can do it from the comfort of my living room or office.

But I find myself thinking today about how badly I also need to look deeply into things. My web browser can places more information at my fingertips than I can assimilate in a lifetime. But is that really what I most need--to assimilate more and more information? Is that what makes me more fully human? I suspect not.

Which leads me back to Advent and the idea of rhythms of worship. For centuries, the Christian church has practiced rhythms in its worship. During Advent we focus on a certain group of stories, symbols and themes. We do the same during Lent and Easter and Pentecost. The whole idea here is not to assimilate more and more and more information, but to be formed by those stories, symbols and themes. In other words, worship is about formation, not information.

If you think about it, the themes of worship we've been considering in Advent are incredibly simple. The foretelling of a coming king, the preparation for his arrival, the challenge of John the Baptist, the advent of Jesus in humility and powerlessness. And yet, I can't help but think that entering deeply into these stories and themes will change us. In fact, doing it year after year after year might just help us to see how radically different these stories and themes are from the hot-topics of the day. And maybe, just maybe, pondering them deeply and carefully will form us a bit more in the likeness of the one who meets us at the manger.