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A perpetual Advent       

Jenny and Pete Leith

Read: Advent Calendar by Rowan Williams

Christ will come, Rowan Williams tells us in his poem Advent Carol, like ‘last leaf’s fall’, like ‘frost’, like ‘dark’, like ‘child’. These pictures of Christ’s advent might, apart from the (perhaps now over-familiar) image of Christ as child, come as something of a surprise to us. Isn’t Christ’s coming into the world about the blossoming of hope, the light in the darkness? How are we to make sense of Christ’s coming as darkness, and as frost? 

The clue, I think, lies in their impermanence. The dark yields to the light. The frost melts away in the rising of the sun. The child grows into the adult. And, of course, the leaf that falls makes way for the budding of new life in the spring. In other words, Christ’s advent points us towards our Easter hope. Christ’s advent leads us towards Christ’s ascension.  

The impermanence of the images used in the poem to describe Christ’s advent also help us to see what it means for us to encounter Christ. When Christ comes to us, he comes not so that we can hold onto or possess him. Rather, Christ comes to call us onward, to draw us ever further away from our settled expectations about who we are and who he is. Christ comes to draw us ever deeper into God’s kingdom, and therefore to draw us outward toward the margins: to address us anew and afresh in the most surprising ways, in those we least expect to bear Christ’s voice. 

What Williams reminds us through this poem is that Christ’s advent is the beginning of a perpetual Advent, in which God is always approaching us so that God might always lead us on.