Conversation in another part of the blogosphere has been about the need to restore the idea of Advent as a penitential season. Learned histories of Advent combined with erudite parsing of the meaning of penitential concluded with a call to restore Advent preaching to a bolder engagement with sin, repentance, death, heaven and hell. Of course that engagement would be tempered with the joyful hope that is ours in Christ Jesus so that on That Day “we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.” As far as conversation among theologians goes, I thought it scored some very worthy points. The problem, it seemed to me, is that ordinary Christians sitting in the pews would understand little of that.
To, in any sense, restore Advent as a penitential season, we cannot start where the 19th century church left off. We have to start where the people are. I suspect that if you asked a cross section of pew sitters to define what a penitential season might mean, they would come up with a season of dark, glum, foreboding, joyless people sitting around in self-flagellation over their sinfulness. I could be wrong, but as guesses go I’ll bet I’m not too far away.
So the question becomes, how do we take that in a different direction so that we can understand penitence in the sense of an honest self-reflection calling us to joy filled repentance as ones forgiven by God who has given us new life and strengthened our renewed intention to grow in discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ? That would make Advent a season of joyful solemnity, or maybe solemn joyfulness, which may sound like a tension filled oxymoron, but then that is exactly what Advent is.