Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of my favorite seasons of the year is Advent. It feels, to me, like the quintessentially Anglican season. There are some churches that are all Resurrection all the time. They just always want it to be Easter. No crucifixes in those churches. Nothing too messy or too real. No time for grief or reflection — just joy, joy, joy all the time.

There are other churches where it feels like Lent all the time. No time for joy for there is repenting to do! No fun, no love, no humor. I’ve visited those churches too and I find myself wondering when the redemption of humanity became such a dreadfully dreary thing!

Yet Advent is not quite Lent and it’s not yet Easter. It’s almost a celebration but not quite yet. With its mix of reflection, repentance, anticipation, and preparation it feels like something quite Anglican. We’re not a slap happy people, certainly. But we’re no bores either, dragging our forgiven tails about like we’ve been kicked again by God.

What I like about Advent is that it’s a season that mixes that of cosmic import — the coming of the Messiah — with the most real and menial of tasks. Buy the ham. Mail the postcards. Replace the light bulbs to get ready to decorate. We do all those small things to prepare for a time when we celebrate a thing of infinite beauty bound up in the seemingly insignificant form of a child.

So Advent feels like a very Anglican season. There are set ways we do things every year. There’s a precise mix of family, community, religious, and national customs we will observe. There are songs we will sing, there are dishes we will cook, there are guests we will invite.

Yet all that is upended this year, isn’t it? It’s untidy in a very un-Anglican way. It’s deeply disturbing to me to have all the routines of the season thrown off or tossed aside. Yet here we are, aren’t we? In this season, we are in anticipation for something unknown, lamenting the good old days, and doing it all as a cosmic mystery comes careening down whether we’ve prepared properly or not.

If that’s not perfectly Anglican, I don’t know what is.

So let’s enter this season knowing it will be like no other and expecting nothing less than a miracle. Let’s mark it with the mix of sober-minded recognition of the realities of our days knowing that even amidst those days we look ahead to more than we can ask or imagine.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert