One of the battles we lose in campus ministry is honoring the liturgical calendar. The academic calendar trumps any attempts to follow the wonderful flow of the Church year.
You may have had opportunity to attend worship yesterday, before returning to campus. But any talk of building expectations during a four-week journey together was lost on those who knew they would soon exit the community and relocate somewhere else.
Because of the approach of final exams, we have scheduled our Christmas Party for this Friday. In order to share a joyous time with you, the congregation has scheduled its Christmas Dinner for this coming Sunday.
We lose the battle in honoring this liturgical season.
Today is Monday of the week of Advent 1. Advent, the four weeks prior to Christmas, is a time to make ready our lives and our world for the entry of our Christ. It is an essential time, a time to examine where it is in our lives that we will make room for the Christ child. It is a time to reflect on what his birth will mean.
The Gospel lesson for this day is the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Read Matthew 21:1-11. Envision the one we call Messiah, seated on a donkey. It was only after they saw (and perhaps understood) what Jesus was doing that they began to spread their coats and leafy palm branches in his way. The scene is of an unimposing, simple servant, entering.
Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “God is the beyond in the midst of life, not simply where human powers give out at the borders, but in the center of human achievement and joyous living.”
Jesus enters our world as unassuming as possible. His entry is designed in such a way to communicate that he does not desire palaces and places of honor but the chance to be with us in the dirty and dusty streets.
Moving too quickly to some grand and glorious Hallelujah chorus might cause us to miss the significance of what is happening. God is not simply where human powers give out; God is in the very heart of all that we do and are. He is the source of our joyous living.
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