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Advent: The Forgotten Season of Waiting · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jordan.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we're looking at Advent, the forgotten season of waiting.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Every December, the world rushes towards Christmas.
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  SPEAKER_00: Lights go up in November,
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  SPEAKER_00: stores play carols before Thanksgiving,
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  SPEAKER_00: and we start the countdown,
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  SPEAKER_00: check the shipping dates,
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  SPEAKER_00: and hope the next package arrives before the 25th.
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  But in the church's ancient calendar,
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  December was never meant to be a countdown.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was meant to be a slowing down.
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  SPEAKER_00: a holy pause before the celebration, a season called Advent.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Advent wasn't about decorating the tree,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was about preparing the heart,
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  a time to sit in the ache of waiting and rediscover the beauty
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  of longing for God.
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  So before there were twinkling lights or the 12 Days of
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  Christmas playlist,
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  or before we unthawed Mariah Carey to sing that one song over
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  and over again,
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  SPEAKER_00: there was Advent,
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  SPEAKER_00: a season that began in darkness.
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  The word Advent comes from the Latin Adventist,
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  meaning arrival or coming.
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  It was the church's way of saying,
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  before you celebrate that he came,
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  remember why he had to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because Advent begins with a problem.
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  Not the problem of shopping lists or crowded calendars,
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  but the problem of sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: The distance between what we were made for and what we've become.
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  The world's ache for justice,
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  it's hunger for peace,
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  it's longing for light.
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  Those aren't just seasonal moods,
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  they're symptoms of a deeper separation.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the fourth century,
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  Christians in what is now France and Spain began to mark these
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  weeks with fasting
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  SPEAKER_00: and prayer.
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  SPEAKER_00: They called it a second Lent,
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  SPEAKER_00: not because it repeated Easter,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because it prepared the heart for God's descent.
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  It was a recognition that before joy can be born,
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  repentance must conceive it.
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  SPEAKER_00: They weren't counting down the days until gifts.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were yearning for grace.
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  SPEAKER_00: For the early church, Advent was a double horizon.
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  SPEAKER_00: They looked backward in gratitude to Bethlehem,
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  SPEAKER_00: when God entered history in flesh,
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  SPEAKER_00: and forward in expectation to the day when Christ would return in glory.
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  SPEAKER_00: Two comings,
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  SPEAKER_00: one Christ,
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  SPEAKER_00: the first in humility,
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  SPEAKER_00: the second in majesty,
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  SPEAKER_00: the first in a cradle,
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  SPEAKER_00: the second on a cloud.
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  SPEAKER_00: Advent held them both together, like inhaling,
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  SPEAKER_00: and exhaling the same divine breath.
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  And that's why in the ancient lectionary,
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  the season doesn't open with shepherds or angels.
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  SPEAKER_00: It actually begins with prophets.
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  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah crying in the wilderness,
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  SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist announcing a kingdom that demands repentance,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Paul warning that the night is far gone,
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  SPEAKER_00: the day is at hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because Advent was never meant to start in comfort, it begins in need.
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  The church lit candles,
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  not because the world was bright,
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  but because it wasn't.
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  Each flame was a defiant act of faith,
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  a declaration that even in a long night,
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  SPEAKER_00: The light has not been overcome.
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  SPEAKER_00: Imagine Europe in the early Middle Ages,
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  SPEAKER_00: long before the electric glow of Christmas lights,
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  SPEAKER_00: when winter meant hunger,
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  SPEAKER_00: sickness,
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  SPEAKER_00: and silence.
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  Cold stone chapels dotted the landscape,
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  their stained glass dark until sunrise.
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  SPEAKER_00: Villagers crowded together,
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  SPEAKER_00: breath visible in the air,
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  SPEAKER_00: while priests read Isaiah's word from parchment.
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  SPEAKER_00: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.
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  SPEAKER_00: To those believers, Advent wasn't a sentimental countdown.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a survival, a cry in the dark for God to break through.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because empires were collapsing,
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  SPEAKER_00: plagues returning in cycles,
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  SPEAKER_00: kings rose and fell,
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  SPEAKER_00: and for ordinary people,
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  SPEAKER_00: the world felt like one long Advent,
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  SPEAKER_00: a waiting that never seemed to end.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yet amid that uncertainty,
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  SPEAKER_00: the church offered rhythm,
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  SPEAKER_00: a calendar that insisted history was not random but redeemed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every fast and feast whispered the same truth, God comes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not when we expect, not how we imagine, but always.
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  SPEAKER_00: By the 5th century,
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  SPEAKER_00: bishops in Gaul,
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  SPEAKER_00: modern France,
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  SPEAKER_00: were calling for 40 days of fasting before Christmas,
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  SPEAKER_00: mirroring Lent.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was called the Quadragesima of St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Martin.
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  beginning on saint martin's day november 11th farmers would
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  feast one last time
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  before the long fast a practice that survives faintly in modern
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  mardi gras and
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  thanksgiving in rome advent took on a slightly different tone
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  it was shorter four
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  weeks instead of 40 days less penance and more on hope here the
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  focus shifted from
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  self-denial to expectation the belief that creation itself was
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  holding its breath
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  SPEAKER_00: for christ's return
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  SPEAKER_00: And by the 6th century,
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  SPEAKER_00: Pope Gregory the Great gave the season its structure,
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  writing prayers and readings that shaped Western worship for
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  more than a thousand
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  SPEAKER_00: years.
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  And each Sunday carried a theme,
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  drawn from scripture and symbolized by candles.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first, hope, lit against despair.
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  SPEAKER_00: The second, peace amid violence and fear.
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  Third,
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  joy,
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  marked by rose-colored vestments that broke the gloom of
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  purple.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth, love, the quiet blaze before the dawn.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even the hymns were chosen to train the heart for waiting.
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  SPEAKER_00: O Come,
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  SPEAKER_00: O Come,
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  Emmanuel was originally a set of ancient chants sung in
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  monasteries during the
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  SPEAKER_00: final days before Christmas.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each line invoked a different name of Christ.
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  O wisdom,
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  O root of Jesse,
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  O key of David,
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  each one a prophecy,
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  a promise,
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  a plea.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in those centuries, Advent was as much felt as kept.
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  SPEAKER_00: The darkness outside matched the longing inside.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when the final candle was lit,
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  SPEAKER_00: we call it Christ's candle,
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  SPEAKER_00: its flame symbolized not sentiment but revolution.
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  The declaration that the true king had come and that even the
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  empire of night was
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  SPEAKER_00: on borrowed time.
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  SPEAKER_00: For medieval Christians, Advent was the heartbeat of hope.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a theology sung in the cold,
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  SPEAKER_00: belief made visible in candlelight,
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  a season when the church refused to forget that the same Christ
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  who came once in
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  SPEAKER_00: humility would come again in glory.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward to today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most people skip Advent entirely.
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  SPEAKER_00: We race from Thanksgiving straight to Christmas.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our calendars don't have space for waiting.
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  SPEAKER_00: And something gets lost when we rush.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because Advent is the church's protest against hurry.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a season that refuses to let us decorate over our despair.
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  It reminds us that even now,
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  after all the lights and noise,
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  we're still awaiting people.
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  The theologian Fleming Rutledge calls Advent the season of the
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  impossible.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because it asks us to hope before the miracle happens.
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  SPEAKER_00: To believe in the light while we're still sitting in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's why Advent feels so foreign to modern Christians.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because we've been taught to measure faith by outcomes, not by endurance.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Advent doesn't measure success.
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  SPEAKER_00: It trains the soul for patience.
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  SPEAKER_00: It teaches us that waiting isn't wasted when it's waiting with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And at the heart, Advent is a story of a God who chose slowness.
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  SPEAKER_00: A God who doesn't hurry redemption.
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  From the promise in Eden to the cry in Bethlehem,
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  every page of scripture is marked by waiting.
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  SPEAKER_00: Abraham waited for a son.
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  SPEAKER_00: Israel waited for deliverance.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mary waited for a birth that would divide history in two.
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  SPEAKER_00: And now we, the church, we wait again.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not for his first coming, but for his return.
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  SPEAKER_00: Advent is simply a rehearsal of hope.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the discipline of trusting that delay does not mean distance.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's learning to love the in-betweens,
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  SPEAKER_00: because that's where faith grows,
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  SPEAKER_00: not in the fulfillment,
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  SPEAKER_00: but in the tension between promise and fulfillment.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what Nicholas and the early Christians understood.
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  SPEAKER_00: The world doesn't need more noise.
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  SPEAKER_00: It needs more holy anticipation.
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  And maybe this year,
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  Advent is inviting you to recover what hurry has stolen.
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  SPEAKER_00: To light one candle and let that be enough.
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  To sit in the silence,
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  not as an absence of God,
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  but as a space where he arrives.
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  SPEAKER_00: Before Christ came to the manger, he came to the waiting.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, just maybe that's still how he comes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hey,
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  SPEAKER_00: if this episode helped you slow down and see the beauty in waiting,
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  SPEAKER_00: share it with a friend who needs this reminder.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to go deeper into the heart of Advent,
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  SPEAKER_00: check out The Gift of Waiting,
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  SPEAKER_00: a devotional I wrote for this very season.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can find it on TheologyMay.com and Amazon as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: Next week, we'll look at Silent Night, the song that stopped a war.