Advent 4: Not yet and Now

December 24, 2023

Every seven years, the fourth Sunday of Advent lands on December 24 and coincides with Christmas Eve.  What’s to be done, since Advent is a season of waiting and Santa Claus is coming tonight?  For many Christians, it offers a day of church-going, marking the fourth Sunday of Advent and its purple candle in the morning and then returning to church later in the evening to ignite the white Christ candle and celebrate the birth of the Light.  It’s an odd sort of day—this mixture of not yet and now—which also reflects much of our own life journeys as we wait for what is to come while living in the present and trying to balance both.

In the now, I am reflecting on this 1600’s woodprint created by Rembrandt van Rijn and entitled The Adoration of the Shepherds: With the Lamp.  As I sit with this image, I notice how well van Rijn played with dark and light, the backs of the characters in shadows but their fronts aglow.  I see the small oil lamp, the tiny flame in this scene that sheds so much light that mother and child are awash in it.  But interestingly, what catches my eye more than anything else isn’t the baby in Mary’s lap, but that other child, the little boy with a cap on his head, standing encircled by his father’s (?) arms.

Trust me, I know about the shepherds’ visit to the manger, directed there by heavenly angels.  I’ve seen enough Christmas pageants, received enough Christmas cards, and preached enough Christmas sermons to have that image ingrained forever in memory.  But I never imagined a child being among the shepherds (no disregard to the Little Drummer Boy), only grown men.  No doubt children did help manage the flocks, and surely they were included in the angels’ invitation, and I am comforted by the little boy’s presence there.  While the man above him raises his European cap in startled amazement, the little boy, very much resembling the Christ Child, simply smiles, a placid, content smile.

Perhaps the little boy also recognizes a commonality.  Here is a baby, born in much the same circumstances as he probably had been.  Yet here also are whispers of hope in the middle of poverty, glimmers of light in the middle of darkness, hints of surprise in the middle of the ordinary, and suggestions of possibilities in the middle of limitations.  In the now of that moment carved in wood are wonder, revelation, and the mutual presence of two children.

But what will come next?

That is the tension (and invitation) of this 4^th Advent Sunday/Christmas Eve Day:  not yet, and now; now, and not yet.  “The Light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it” (John 1:5).  As Christmas swiftly approaches, I, for one, would like to be like that little boy, caught up in the reflection of the Light and knowing I can carry it forward into the not yet. 

What about you? What do you see?

Holy-day blessings to you.

Rosemary