Advent in the Suburbs

Advent is upon us, but in the land of plenty, how do we live like we need something more?

Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash

Advent is my favorite season, probably more than Christmas. There is something about the waiting, the longing, the anticipating what is to come, that helps remind me that I’m not living in the fullness of what life should be.

Advent routinely draws me into the story of the New Creation that Jesus launched in his first coming and will bring to completion when He returns.

But as a pastor in suburban America, I find this season can easily be clouded with a tizzy of “pre-Christmas” activity that is counter-productive for my congregation’s formation into Christ-likeness.

“Pre-Christmas” is not Advent.

In suburbia, where the stockings tend to be full and the calendars more so, “Pre-Christmas” weighs us down with shopping lists and consumption where the waiting required of Christians during Advent is quickly lost.

During Advent, we are confronted with a sense that things are not as they should be and that we are in need of what the return of Christ will bring.

We sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel,” because this world is captive.

Captive to sin, destruction, pain, and death.

Yet the suburbs, by intention, were designed to promote comfort and ease that teaches us to ignore what is wrong both inside us and in the world around us.

Levittown, NY - One of the first pre-planned communities, a symbol of post-WWII suburbia.

As Kenneth Jackson once wrote, “the physical organization of neighborhoods, roads, yards, houses, and apartments [in the suburbs] — sets up living patterns that condition our behavior.”¹

The original architects of suburban communities sold a dream of paradise, where all your problems go away. Where one could rule their own castle, complete with a yard, white picket fence, and a two-car garage.

Evangelical Christians even contributed to this suburban dreamscape by spiritualizing the suburbs as both a new garden of Eden and as protection from the evils of urban living.

A sign that God was with you: you were prospering comfortably in the suburbs, safe from the bad things happening to people out there in the world.

But that’s the thing about Advent.

If we’re comfortable, we have no need to long for something different. Something more. The waiting of Advent implies we are dissatisfied with the way things are now.

But are we?

Advent only “works” if we live like we need what is on the other side of the waiting.

In the relatively affluent and suburban area in which I minister, this is challenging for many to see as necessary, including myself!

For those of us pastoring, leading, and living in suburban communities like these, we often need to help our congregations recognize their own need and discontents before we can help them enter into the waiting.

How do we do that? Well, one way is by waiting.

In being still, slowing down, and considering how the world is not right, we are opened up to what is not working for us.

Like sediment slowly falling to the bottom of a jar of water that has been shaken, when we slow down, we see clearly what is really happening in our lives.

I often sit with people who have begun to recognize that things have not been working for a long time. Almost without fail they say something like, “How did I not see this before?”

Tragically, it usually takes a divorce, lost job, estranged children, or a dire medical diagnosis before one begins to realize things are broken. But it does not have to be this way.

Thousands of these stories fill our suburban churches but many of them are unexamined because we do not wait.

When we wait we become people who break out of the comfort of our routines. We become more honest about feeling disappointed, sad, angry, or scared.

When we wait we are able to notice the poor and the suffering of other people.

This is no doubt terrifying for those of us who have tried to stay comfortable in our suburban routines. Emotions we have not felt in years sometimes surface. Injustices across the world disturb us.

Someone recently told me they were afraid to stop and be still because of what they might find in the stillness.

Might that be part of the reason we keep up our suburban proclivity for Pre-Christmas busyness? Fear?

There is nothing particularly “Christmasy” or even Christian about living in fear. Yet fear is there. And for those of us who do find fear waiting, there is great hope.

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those walking in darkness a light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2)

This is the very heart of Advent. Longing for the light to come in. Longing for the Light of the World to return. To right every wrong and wipe every tear.

But to get to this very heart of our human frailty and our ultimate longing, we must be willing to wait.

Advent is about waiting. Pre-Christmas is about “busying.”

If we are going to do Advent well in the suburbs this year, we need to be people who wait.

Long for something new when the old isn’t working.

Cry out when things are not ok.

Watch for the Lord to return and make all things new.

1. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 3.