The liturgical season of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is filled with masculine themes. Sure there is the annunciation, and anticipation of the birth of the Christ Child (fourth Sunday). But Advent itself is very masculine in the lessons it teaches us and the disciplines it offers. In fact, in the early church Advent had nothing to do with Christmas and the birth of the Christ Child, and everything to do with masculinity.
How’s that, you say? Advent is primarily an observance of the second coming of Christ, not the first. It anticipates the time when Jesus will come again in great glory and victory to judge. Judgment is a masculine concept. It means separating and distinguishing. Matthew tells us that the coming King will separate sheep from goats, wheat from tares, true followers from trouble-makers. In the 4th century a full six weeks was devoted to repentance and anticipation of Christ’s glorious return to set up the kingdom of God on earth.
These days two Sundays of Advent (the second and third) are devoted to the forerunner, John the Baptist. Now there is a differentiated man if there ever was one. The son of Zechariah the priest, he stood to inherit a prestigious and well-paying job as priest in the temple. Living in upscale temple apartments. Wearing the best linen robes. Eating the finest food. He walked away from it all to wander about in the wilderness wearing rough sewn camel-skin garments and eating locusts and wild honey. He wanted nothing to do with the corrupt and idolatrous religious establishment of his day, and he left it at great personal cost. A man’s man indeed.
His mission? Isaiah and Malachi furnish that. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, the one preparing the way of the Lord. That Hebrew metaphor suggests a massive highway construction project, where mountains are leveled and valleys filled in to make a level and straight road-bed for the soon-to-visit king. Make it easy for Messiah to come. It is God-breathed masculinity that makes us want to carve something out of this earth, to make life and access better. John carved the way of the Lord into the hearts of a bewildered and oppressed and increasingly secular generation.
His message? Repent. Judgment is coming. Repentance means a total rethinking of the way we live life now, with a resulting fundamental change in the manner of living. It is radical transformation. Judgment, is, as we have observed, separation and making distinction. It is the way God uses his two-edged sword to cut deep into our hearts to distinguish good motives from bad. It is when he moves upon us with sovereign grace and prevails upon us to clean up our act.
The Church, when it was still masculine, gave us Advent, as a guide to continual repentance and renewal. It was intended to be a discipline to help us stay on the straight and narrow.
Incidentally, Christmas in the early church went by almost unnoticed. There was a mass on that day, just like there was a mass for other saints days. But there was no major celebration, no holiday shopping season, no Santa Claus, none of that. The big celebration was reserved for the resurrection of Jesus in the spring. The victorious defeat of sin and death was the preeminent theme. Another very masculine theme.
In fact, Christmas was no big deal until the 19th century, when we began to significantly feminize the Church. When we began to think in feminine terms the observance of birth of a baby rose to prominence in our thought. One of the Sundays in Advent, the fourth, gave way to the announcement of the birth of a Child.
Now, sadly, Advent is almost lost and almost impossible to keep. The commercial Christmas season, which begins in August, has encroached and pressed into the church. We don’t think much about repentance and judgment and the hard work necessary to make it easy for Jesus to come. We are too busy partying and staging reenactments of the nativity and indulging children. Liturgical churches are at best weak on Advent, and the non-liturgical (the ones who threw away the traditions of the fathers) have scrapped it altogether and march to the tune of the commercial marketplace and the civil calendar. We do a lot of cute things with kids, but we don’t do much to shape our hearts and lives for the coming of Jesus. In fact, I think we are better shaped to accommodate the culture around us.
The tragic thing about that is that it needs to be the other way around. We need to be impacting the culture. We need to be differentiated enough, like John the Baptist, to walk away from the accepted way of doing things and all the fringe benefits associated with it, to be the voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. We do not serve a baby in a manger. We serve a victorious Jesus who put death to death and returns to rule and reign as sovereign God.
How’s that, you say? Advent is primarily an observance of the second coming of Christ, not the first. It anticipates the time when Jesus will come again in great glory and victory to judge. Judgment is a masculine concept. It means separating and distinguishing. Matthew tells us that the coming King will separate sheep from goats, wheat from tares, true followers from trouble-makers. In the 4th century a full six weeks was devoted to repentance and anticipation of Christ’s glorious return to set up the kingdom of God on earth.
These days two Sundays of Advent (the second and third) are devoted to the forerunner, John the Baptist. Now there is a differentiated man if there ever was one. The son of Zechariah the priest, he stood to inherit a prestigious and well-paying job as priest in the temple. Living in upscale temple apartments. Wearing the best linen robes. Eating the finest food. He walked away from it all to wander about in the wilderness wearing rough sewn camel-skin garments and eating locusts and wild honey. He wanted nothing to do with the corrupt and idolatrous religious establishment of his day, and he left it at great personal cost. A man’s man indeed.
His mission? Isaiah and Malachi furnish that. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, the one preparing the way of the Lord. That Hebrew metaphor suggests a massive highway construction project, where mountains are leveled and valleys filled in to make a level and straight road-bed for the soon-to-visit king. Make it easy for Messiah to come. It is God-breathed masculinity that makes us want to carve something out of this earth, to make life and access better. John carved the way of the Lord into the hearts of a bewildered and oppressed and increasingly secular generation.
His message? Repent. Judgment is coming. Repentance means a total rethinking of the way we live life now, with a resulting fundamental change in the manner of living. It is radical transformation. Judgment, is, as we have observed, separation and making distinction. It is the way God uses his two-edged sword to cut deep into our hearts to distinguish good motives from bad. It is when he moves upon us with sovereign grace and prevails upon us to clean up our act.
The Church, when it was still masculine, gave us Advent, as a guide to continual repentance and renewal. It was intended to be a discipline to help us stay on the straight and narrow.
Incidentally, Christmas in the early church went by almost unnoticed. There was a mass on that day, just like there was a mass for other saints days. But there was no major celebration, no holiday shopping season, no Santa Claus, none of that. The big celebration was reserved for the resurrection of Jesus in the spring. The victorious defeat of sin and death was the preeminent theme. Another very masculine theme.
In fact, Christmas was no big deal until the 19th century, when we began to significantly feminize the Church. When we began to think in feminine terms the observance of birth of a baby rose to prominence in our thought. One of the Sundays in Advent, the fourth, gave way to the announcement of the birth of a Child.
Now, sadly, Advent is almost lost and almost impossible to keep. The commercial Christmas season, which begins in August, has encroached and pressed into the church. We don’t think much about repentance and judgment and the hard work necessary to make it easy for Jesus to come. We are too busy partying and staging reenactments of the nativity and indulging children. Liturgical churches are at best weak on Advent, and the non-liturgical (the ones who threw away the traditions of the fathers) have scrapped it altogether and march to the tune of the commercial marketplace and the civil calendar. We do a lot of cute things with kids, but we don’t do much to shape our hearts and lives for the coming of Jesus. In fact, I think we are better shaped to accommodate the culture around us.
The tragic thing about that is that it needs to be the other way around. We need to be impacting the culture. We need to be differentiated enough, like John the Baptist, to walk away from the accepted way of doing things and all the fringe benefits associated with it, to be the voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. We do not serve a baby in a manger. We serve a victorious Jesus who put death to death and returns to rule and reign as sovereign God.
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