2 Advent BEGINNING

Black Friday.  Cyber Monday.   These terms from the modern lexicon  involve dates of a different kind from the traditional Advent Calendar.  I am not a Christmas purist, but there is something weird about counting down to Christmas based on shopping opportunities rather than spiritual opportunities!   

When you consider that the gorgeous and theologically deep nativity stories of Luke and Matthew sparked this whole Christmas marketing thing, it’s actually more than weird; it may even be ironic.  How did this begin?

Terry Pratchett, master of irony, speaks of beginnings in his hilarious Christmas novel Hogfather:  

Everything begins somewhere, although many physicists disagree.  (p. 11)

 Beginnings.  The Bible highlights them.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…the Spirit of God moved across the deep….  (Gen. 1:1)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  (John 1:1)

For Christians, God is beginning  (again) in Jesus.   

Jesus, the new Adam, the herald of a new creation, the one understood to be the beginning of a transfigured earth….(The First Christmas, Borg and Crossan, p. 94)  

Jesus, the Beginning of a transfigured earth.   

One person at a time.