Remember Palm Sunday? “Hosanna” is what we cried, joining ourselves to the memory of the crowds that welcomed Christ as the Son of David; as the triumphant fulfilment of Ps. 118. And then, we hung them on Holy Week, just as our Lord was hung on a cross. We watched them dry, wilt, wither. They turned brittle in their battle against the passing of the year. They reminded us (or, at least, were supposed to remind us) of the story in which we find ourselves.

Elbows, hair, eyes, shades of melanin, larynx, colon, earlobes, fingernails, big-toes, and all the rest of it. God made this thing this way for his glory and called it good.

Carnival is a word composed to two other Latin words: caro [meat/flesh] + levare [to lift, to remove]. It is the count-down to Ash Wednesday when all of the “meats, sweets, and treats” are suspended, waved between heaven and earth like the shoulder of the ox in Leviticus. They aren’t gone, they are raised, lifted-up into the glory cloud of God before being given back to us as a better and more glorious meal. But, of course, while we may understand the divine purposes of their annual suspension during Lent, we still miss them.

By bringing our lights into the church on Candlemas we halt the Promethean myth: our technology is not something we develop without limit so as to achieve a collective godhood. The liturgy sets the limits and boundaries of our technological development. Liturgy also establishes the biblical purpose for technology. Our songs, our instruments, our lights, and our technology, are find their meaning by being brought in the liturgy to God, who speaks to us from his Word.

They realize their nakedness and are ashamed. Of what are they ashamed? Of everything. It’s not merely the sight of the naked body (something they were probably used to) but of its new nakedness when exposed as sinful, separate from God, and fallen. Their nakedness now stands as witness to their existence against God, as does all of the creation. If all of creation points back to the Creator, then all of the voices of the created world are aflame with the reminder of the One they’ve left. They have made the Lord their enemy. And they are in a garden where everything sings the name of the Lord.

Candlemas remembers the presentation of Christ in the Temple –that day when Mary and Joseph brought the Christchild to the temple, to offer sacrifices in accordance with the Law, and were hailed by Anna and Simeon (Lk. 2.22-40). Historically this was a very important feast, particularly for women. Stories flood medieval texts of miracles, visionary encounters, and mystical encounters experienced by women who understood that this day was a day in God’s story uniquely celebrating their role in it.

You see? Mystery of all mysteries: the Sublime has become a baby, and not just a baby, but this baby with all of the particulars that make him beautiful: cheeks, eyes, coloration, toes, knots of hair, DNA, unique kinds of stink, etc.

Christianity, you see, is chock-full of foolery, one might even say we invented it: from the at least as early as the Flood, God has thrown the folly of our wisdom into boisterous relief against the wisdom of his (seeming) foolishness. For the flood was the one of the first moments in scripture where a pattern emerges that is neither tragic nor epic, but comedic: the strong with all of their seriousness (so miserably serious) try to drown-out the voice of God, but are themselves drowned-out. It is a kind of dark-comedy waaaay before dark comedy was a thing. One arrives at Genesis 9 shaking and a little overwhelmed, and yet filled with a kind of hopeful wonder: “Oh my, it worked… the Ark worked… I didn’t think it would, but it did… perhaps… perhaps this whole human-story thing might actually turn-out okay in the end afterall.”

[…] Christmas is pregnant with the Cross. That delightful red painted on all of our candy-canes, and ribboned bows, and wrapping paper, and ugly sweaters, and Santa hats, and holly berries, is of course blood red. And even around the manger we gather to sing “nails, thorns, shall pierce Him through, the Cross be born for me for you” […]

Advent is about the coming of the King.

Yes, that this King is fully God and fully man is properly part of the Advent proclamation. But we mustn’t exclude the fact of Christ’s Kingship from the gospel news.