I never thought I\u2019d be the one in the family begging to turn on the all-Christmas-all-the-time radio station\u2014in our case, Wish 99.7, Pittsburgh\u2019s official Christmas station\u2014especially not the day before Advent. But this year I was the first to tune in. How else to get Adele turned off?<\/p>\n
The several previous days of Thanksgiving food preparation, with my wife spending so many hours in the kitchen, found the plaintive melodies of Adele escaping the kitchen into every corner of the house every minute of the day.<\/p>\n
I can see clearly in my mind my six-year-old daughter, Mary Clare, on the eve of Thanksgiving, drunk on sleeplessness, standing in the kitchen on her stool\u2014she\u2019s wearing her turquoise pajamas and matching earmuffs\u2014ladling pumpkin pie filling into pie shells and belting, you guessed it, \u201cHello.\u201d I hope our insurance covers visits to the otolaryngologist.<\/p>\n
With all the hype, one could be forgiven for thinking that the advent we\u2019d been waiting for was the arrival of Adele\u2019s new album.<\/p>\n
The other night when I was washing dishes, someone beat me to the music selection\u2014\u201cHello,\u201d again. But this time I listened to the words, and as I listened, I thought, \u201cThis actually isn\u2019t so bad for Advent.\u201d Having these deep thoughts is one of the hazards of being the nightly dishwasher.<\/p>\n
In earlier albums, if I remember correctly, Adele is glad to be rid of the guy or guys in her life (I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re all the same guy, and, as we professors say, you can\u2019t trust Wikipedia). I used to say, \u201cI\u2019d hate to be the guy she\u2019s singing about.\u201d But \u201cHello\u201d is different. To use a theologically-charged word, it expresses longing for reconciliation.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s calling from the \u201cother side,\u201d and this isn\u2019t the first time. She\u2019s sorry for \u201cbreaking your heart.\u201d But he won\u2019t answer, at least not in the six minutes it takes to finish the song. She wistfully recollects an earlier time in their relationship before some kind of fall (another theologically-laden word).<\/p>\n
Here we have a ruptured, unhealed relationship. And the song is not optimistic; there\u2019s nothing she can do to fix things. After a thousand times pressing \u201cignore\u201d on his phone, what\u2019s the chance he\u2019s going to answer next time?<\/p>\n
Maybe I started having these luminous thoughts because in a recent chapel service at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary we\u2019d sung all seven verses of \u201cO, Come, O Come, Emmanuel\u201d\u2014it took only slightly longer than \u201cHello\u201d\u2014and the last verse was still on my mind: \u201cO come, Desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind; bid envy, strife, and discord cease; fill the whole world with heaven\u2019s peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
A verse about longing for the healing of ruptured relationships. Had Adele found an inspiration in the Advent musical canon?<\/p>\n
The ruptures are many and deep: within families and relationships; between Fox News devotees and MSNBC watchers; between nation states, among races, within cultures. If this were a sermon, the list would go on. Who of us doesn\u2019t know something of these breakdowns and something of the longing for their healing?<\/p>\n
And not least the healing of the rupture between God and humanity.<\/p>\n
What we await in Advent is the full healing, God\u2019s restoration of all things, that time when \u201cmourning and crying and pain will be no more\u201d (Rev. 21:4). We long for it even knowing it will put out of business all the Adeles who sing songs about the brokenness.<\/p>\n
On balance, I think we\u2019ll be able to deal with that, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
So, well into Advent, I\u2019ve heard \u201cSanta Baby\u201d six times, three different versions a day of \u201cFrosty the Snow Man\u201d, 20 of the several hundred arrangements of \u201cSleigh Ride\u201d\u2014I think it might be time to turn Adele back on, even at the risk of missing \u201cI Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas,\u201d my seasonal favorite. Who knows? I might have another deep thought.<\/p>\n
Mary Clare, get your earmuffs. It\u2019s time to sing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens is associate professor of leadership and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and teaches courses in the MDiv, Doctor of Ministry, and Continuing Education programs. Before coming to PTS he served urban and rural churches for eight years in North Carolina as co-pastor with his wife Ginger. He has written multiple books including <\/em>The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices which was called \u201cthis decades best work in ecclesiology\u201d by <\/em>The Christian Century.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I never thought I\u2019d be the one in the family begging to turn on the all-Christmas-all-the-time radio station\u2014in our case, Wish 99.7, Pittsburgh\u2019s official Christmas station\u2014especially not the day before Advent. But this year I was the first to tune in. How else to get Adele turned off? The several previous days of Thanksgiving food…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[190],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theological-reflection","tag-adele-adele-and-advent-theology"],"yoast_head":"\r\n