Ep. 46: Advent, Christ’s Birth, & December Traditions

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus from THE INDOUBT SHOW. We got a wonderful program today. We actually have a familiar voice who’s going to be hosting the interview, Daniel Markin, who used to be a host at INDOUBT for a few years. He’s going to be interviewing his dad, Johnny Markin. They’re talking about advent, the importance of this season, what the advent tradition means, and how Christmas actually doesn’t just point to the birth, but to also the second coming of Jesus. Just want to remind you, we have our calendar year-end that is happening. Our goal with the ministry is to raise $45,000 by December 31st. And we would love your support if you feel led to do that. You can go to indoubt.ca or you can call the office at 1-800-663-2425. God bless.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to INDOUBT. My name is Daniel Markin. Whether you’re new to the show or maybe you’re familiar to INDOUBT, I’m a familiar voice to this program. I’m an old voice. I’m back in the saddle so to speak, taking over a little podcast here. Andrew asked if I could jump in because all the Christmas crazy stuff is going on. At Christmastime, sometimes we need a helping hand, and so I’m here. And I’ve got an amazing guest with us today on the program. And this guest just so happens to be my dad, Johnny Markin. He’s a friend of the show and a familiar face on this program, and so we’re going to be talking a little bit about advent since we’re right here in the Christmas season and we’re thinking about Christmas.

You’ve probably already seen at church if you’re attending, and the Christmas decorations are out. You might see at the front of your stage, a number of candles, advent candles. So we’re going to be talking about Christmas, advent, kind of making a whole discussion around that. So Johnny Markin, my dad, welcome back to INDOUBT. It’s good to see you.

Johnny Markin:

Thanks, Daniel. It’s good to be back. I remember doing that episodes with you down in the studio in Abbotsford, it must’ve been two, three years ago. And we went on about our favorite hymns. That was a fun one.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. We did. Didn’t we? My favorite one I think, one of them was Crown Him With Many Crowns.

Johnny Markin:

One of mine was in fact, seasonally, it was Hark The Herald Angels Sing, which is pertinent to today.

Daniel Markin:

And so why don’t we jump in a little bit here and talk a little bit about advent?

Johnny Markin:

Sure.

Daniel Markin:

So as we think about the season of advent, we might hear that a lot of the time, we have advent calendars. On first glance without … I imagine most people think advent is, oh, it’s just a countdown. Right?

Johnny Markin:

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Markin:

24 days until Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and here we go. Right? Some of us do that with chocolate calendars. I do it with a Star Wars Lego calendar, where every day I count down, I get another little built. But what actually is the season of advent?

Johnny Markin:

Okay. So advent is a season of preparation. And if you’re familiar at all with the season of Lent around Easter, then it’s the same kind of idea. You’re leading up to something. And so what we have is this sense of beginning the Christian year, which does at advent. Effectively, what the Christian calendar does is, it immerses you into the story of God and takes you cyclically every year through the story of God in Christ and then the church. And it forms faith in you because you’re always immersed in that story, you’re always remembering it. And you see how your life fits into God’s bigger plan and bigger story.

And so advent is about the story. It’s about the aching and the longing of the people of God in the Old Testament, waiting for Messiah and walking through some of the drudgery and the difficulties. And it begins with the cries of Isaiah, where he is calling them to repentance, and then saying, “Look, down the road,” he looks at the suffering servant and he looks beyond that to the great day of Messiah, when all righteousness comes to the forefront and the ruler of all, the king of kings is on the throne and justice is perfect. And so you have this sense of we here in the modern era thinking, “Yeah, we know we’re in the now and the not yet.”

There’s a lot of stuff going on in our lives, in our personal lives, in our nation, in the world. And so we cry out with lament, and that’s how advent starts. It’s like taking that moment to unplug from everything else and saying, “Okay, God, what’s your plan in this?” And so we begin the journey of thinking not just about Jesus’ first birth, because that would just be nostalgia. It’s a countdown to nostalgia. But Christian faith has an element of, the word is eschatology, it’s looking forward to the return of Jesus. So really, advent is about Jesus’ second coming, not only his first coming. The first was a down payment, but his full reign of the kingdom comes at his second, at his return.

And so when we sing some of these songs, it’s got that in mind. It’s not just about, oh, come, Jesus, 2000 years ago. It’s, oh, please come again. This last week, we sang, “Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.” And of course, you can sing that and think about the Old Testament people, but it’s also the church is the new Israel, the spiritual Israel. And we are longing and aching for his return even now. And so there’s that eschatological aspect of the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. In many ways, so we sit in the present, and the past story is very similar to what the future story is going to tell as well. It occurs to me that for thousands of years, they’re waiting for the Messiah to come. And they’re looking forward to that and excited and anticipating that. And then He came. He’s here. Right? And the shepherds go and they see him. And then the story of the man in the temple. His whole life’s purpose was he was going to hold the Messiah, there’s this waiting his whole life for that, this anticipation, and it came.

And then go through history, we have another 2000 years where, again, it seems like we’re in the same spot as how Israel feels. It feels like the Christian faith is under attack, that we’re in some ways, at least culturally, pushed to the wayside from modern mainstream culture. And we are the butt of every joke. In some areas, it’s harder to be a Christian than others. In the marketplace, people lose their jobs. And there is a sense of, like you said, the ransom captive Israel, we are waiting for Christ’s second coming, almost for, yeah, the second Christmas. Maybe that’s the wrong way of putting it. Right? But we are again back in that time of longing.

But because the first time, because he came the first time, and all the prophecies and promises that He’s fulfilled, we have confidence knowing that He is going to come the second time. I think that’s really helpful too, that we have to think about this yearly because otherwise, it would be pretty frustrating or depressing even to just think He’s never going to come. But this season requires us to.

Johnny Markin:

It does. And I think that’s the beauty of the cyclical nature of the Christian calendar. The Christian view of time, the Biblical view of time is both linear in that it has a beginning at creation, it has an end at Christ’s return and the new creation. And yet, at the same time, it’s cyclical in rehearsing that. And there’s a Greek word in First Corinthians 12 when we’re talking about the Lord’s table. He says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And that word, remembrance, is the Greek word, anamnesis, which sounds like amnesia, but it’s actually the opposite. And so for the Christian believer, we utilize the Christian calendar in seasons like advent and it immerses us into the story so that we remember the story, so that we don’t forget. In other words, we do, we enact anamnesis events. We do anamnesis so we don’t get amnesia.

Daniel Markin:

Amnesia is to forget and anamnesis is to remember. And so how do you remember? Well, often through repetition. Right? We all did the … I mean, that’s how I learned my multiplication. Right? You just look at it, you kept looking at it, and eventually just remember what the multiples are. And then same with memorizing scripture, you just keep looking at it and reading it.

Johnny Markin:

I think that’s interesting. Memorizing scripture, you wind up saying it out loud. Remembering your times tables, you say it out loud. Remembering articles of faith, you say them out loud. And so there’s an aspect of performing something, an action that is done. I mean, Robert Weber’s famous for saying, “Worship is a verb.” We do these things and we rehearse the story of God and it helps us remember it all the time. So every week that we sit at the Lord’s table and we break the bread, and we pour the cup, we’re doing what Jesus did. That’s taking an action from the past and pulling it into the present. But why? Not just to go, “Oh, isn’t that nice?” Because it points to the future, it’s that eschatological hope again. It’s throughout everything that we do.

The greatest hymns we have are all pointing to that day, that great day of His return. And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll. Those are the moments we know we’ll be made whole and well when the resurrection happens and we are with Christ forever.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. And through the singing of it, we remember it more, which is, throughout history, and you know this, maybe you could touch on this, we sang the psalms. Right? People would sing the scriptures because it’s way easier to remember that. I mean, I’m sure off the top of our head, many of us could remember song lyrics way quicker than we can remember just passages of scripture. And I think it has to do something with how our brains work. But I think that’s pretty cool that even back in the past, because we’re so much smarter now, we have everything figured out. No, but even back then, they knew. Actually, if you sing it, you tend to remember it better. And there’s something about the way we’ve been wired by God to remember that, and so singing these now again, we remember the truth of God, which also speaks to I think why we should be singing quality songs, so that we’re uttering and reminded and meditating and singing the other truths of God.

Johnny Markin:

Yeah, absolutely. There’s a sense that all of the songs that we find in scripture, the psalms, there’s the Song of Moses and Miriam in Book of Exodus with the great victory. And they wrote these songs down so that they would remember them, so generation after generation would not forget the story. And then we get into the New Testament and we see sections of letters of Paul, where we see Colossians 1:15, He’s the image of the invisible God, that section is thought to be a hymn that people knew in the day and they would sing it, and so remember these amazing theological aspects of the character and divinity of Christ, humanity and divinity.

In Philippians two, the Kenosis passage. Right? He gave everything up for us, but He will be exalted. And so there’s a bunch of these throughout the New Testament. Even the Magnificat, Mary’s response is timely. The enunciation was a big part of early church history was celebrating the Feast of the Enunciation. Her response was, “Lord, let me be your servant. I am your servant. I will do what you have asked me to do.” And then verses later, we hear her song, which is a song of praise that you have not forgotten the lowly. You have not forgotten your people. And what did that mean for Israel? It meant everything. What does that mean for us today? It still means everything, and so that’s why what we sing in these songs, be it Come, Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel, or Come Now Long Expected Jesus, or any of the other hymns that we will do during advent season are really, really helpful for us, not only on a corporate level, but on a personal, a deeply personal level when we walk through angst.

Daniel Markin:

Let me bring it then back to maybe some of the symbols of advent. What’s with the candles? Right? We see churches, they have them at the front and they mean different things. But don’t they also in the Jewish faith? The name is slipping me. It’s menorah.

Johnny Markin:

Yes.

Daniel Markin:

Right? All the different … They have candles. Is there something to do with light and fire that tie these together? But maybe move us more in the direction of, in the Christian calendar, when do we start using the candles? And what do these candles represent?

Johnny Markin:

Well, of course the church inherited much of its character from the Old Testament and from the Jewish people in the way they celebrated faith. The story of the menorah and Hanukah is from the apocryphal stories that we get, sort of that in between, that inter-testamental period of some of the things around in the Maccabees, but the miracle that took place when the oil didn’t run out and the lights kept burning in the temple. But there is a similarity of the light, which is a symbol of hope. Now when you think about John’s writing in John one, when he says, “The true light was coming into the world,” and Jesus saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” that He was coming into the world and Christ is the light of the world. Right? There is the John seven passage where all the lights are burning at the Feast of Booths and Jesus stands up and says, “Hey, I am the light of the world.”

And so He’s bringing that upon himself, and so now when we think of Jesus, the light of the world, when we in the church light candles, this is where we go to, is Jesus is the light in the darkness. And the process of lighting one candle every week of the advent, of the four advent weeks, there’s an increasing amount of light in the darkness. And that, that is what’s showing us the trajectory towards the fullness of the kingdom, yes, of Christ coming in and the Christ candle on Christmas Day, the fifth candle, which is the tall white candle that you’ll see. But also, the sense that light is increasing.

And we remember this in December when it’s the darkest of periods. I did have a friend who asked, “What do they do in Australia and New Zealand around this time?” Because it’s the longest days of the year. They can still look at the symbolism regardless, but when we look at the roots of where our faith grew in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the darkest period and this is kind of why we have it here, historically, Christmas being at the solstice in Roman or Pagan times. They would celebrate coming of light and then the Christians coming along going, “You want a celebration of light? We’ll show you who the son of righteousness is.” And the S-O-N is the S-U-N. And He is the true light coming into the world. That’s what we celebrate. And so there’s this wonderful imagery.

Daniel Markin:

Well, even to that, don’t we celebrate Easter on the solstice? Is that correct? Because the pagans viewed the solstice as this big event. And the Christians said, “Well, we’ll show you a big event. Here’s the resurrection.”

Johnny Markin:

They align. I think the occurrence of the festivals originally came from the agrarian calendar, and so Pentecost, as a harvest festival, was giving thanks to God. And then it started with it was 50 days Easter, and then 50 days in our calendar. But there was the other aspects of the earlier first fruits, Feast of the First Fruits, and then the other harvest festivals that came along. And now in the Jewish faith, it was always thanksgiving. It was never doing a festival and going there to worship to please God. It was, “Look what God has done.” We’re going to bring as an offering of thanksgiving, our wheat, or our lambs, or our sparrows, or whatever they offer, their doves. And so you have the sense of worship as thanksgiving in the feasts.

There’s another part about the candles because you mentioned you’ll also see the different colors of the candles. And the colors themselves are another symbol. We have all these colors in and around Christmas and advent. Around Christmas, we have green and red. That’s fascinating. And some of that comes from some of the early medieval times, especially in England, where especially the Romans, they saw holly as a symbol of immortality, so you have the sense of the evergreen, just like the evergreen trees and Martin Luther saying, “It’s a symbol of eternal life in Christ.”

But as early Christians, they adopted the practice of decorating with that plant. And it took on religious association, namely the spiky leaves represented Christ’s crown of thorns, and the red berries were his blood. And so you can see how they can usurp what was a symbol of something else, or co-opt it, and give it a Christian meaning because every symbol only has the meaning that’s imbued into it, and so that’s why we can take something and utilize it for the glory of God as part of the theology of sacramentality. You know?

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Well, that speaks to, there’s certain symbols we do not use now. But it seems that with Christianity, there’s been some symbols like the evergreen tree because we all put trees in our house now. Right?

Johnny Markin:

Oh, yeah.

Daniel Markin:

And I think that’s … I mean, I make that link. If that’s a tree that survives all year round and the symbol of the evergreen, it doesn’t die in the winter. Right?

Johnny Markin:

That’s right.

Daniel Markin:

And now we place that in our home to remember that. I’ve also heard it said that if you were to draw an evergreen tree, there’s three points and it’s the trinity.

Johnny Markin:

There we go.

Daniel Markin:

Is that part of it?

Johnny Markin:

It could be. You can imbue the symbolism into these things too.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah.

Johnny Markin:

Let’s go back to the colors for a second because the candles are different shades of colors than the red and the green, which we associate with Christmas. But in advent, the colors are purple or a darkish blue, but purple being the color of repentance, but royalty as well, fasting and royalty. But it’s also the color of suffering. And in doing that, the purple candle reminds us that the manger was all about the cross, and so it connects the two things there. So you have the hope or the prophecy candle, which is week one. You have the peace or the Bethlehem candle, which is number two, week number two. You get the change of color to the rose colored candle of the joy candle, or the shepherd candle in some circles. And that’s the color of joyful transition. Now it’s going from darker to lighter.

It goes back one week, on the fourth week, to the purple again, which is called the candle of love or the candle of the angel, about the angelic announcement. So if you take the colors and you say, “Okay, hope, peace, joy, love,” it gives you themes. If you take it the other way and go, “Prophecy, Bethlehem, shepherd, angel,” look at those ones. Those ones are telling the story of the early parts of the gospel, Matthew one, two, Luke one and two. And so if you remember the candles names, you remember the story of Jesus’ birth.

In another way, in an applied worship way of thinking of the candles, you’ve got the first candle, if it’s hope or prophecy, that is anticipation. Then you’ve got the peace or Bethlehem candle, it’s all about preparation, prepare him room. Let every heart prepare him room. That’s a great advent hymn, and heaven and nature sing. It’s Joy to the World, which interesting, Isaac Watts wrote as His second coming, not about His first coming. But we can see the first leading to the second. So the third candle with peace and Bethlehem would be celebration, and then adoration out of love. And then finally, the fifth candle, which is lit on Christmas Day, is the Christ candle because He is the center of all the focus and that’s why that candle is always in the center of the wreath.

Daniel Markin:

And the center of the wreath now burning most brightly and the tallest, the most pronounced of the candles. It’s all pointing towards that and we’re all aiming towards Christmas morning, which if maybe you’re new to the Christian faith, we don’t actually believe that Jesus was born on Christmas Day, but this is where we choose to celebrate it. You mentioned the Gregorian calendar. Right?

Johnny Markin:

Mm-hmm. And there’s a sense that there have been theologians, historians, who have made cases that potentially, He may have been born at this time of year. But it’s the symbol of light coming into the world which I think carries more weight. In the darkest part of the year, our darkest time of our lives perhaps, and there’s even people who suffer in winter with seasonal affective disorder. Right? They got that lack of sunlight and lack of daylight and they get SAD, they get sad. And so in the darkest part of our year, we light the lights. We put our Christmas lights on. We light our trees up inside and we light candles, and it’s all about that imagery that there is hope in Jesus Christ. And I think that’s the center of all of these things too. They’re wonderful rituals.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, beautiful rituals that reinforce a beautiful story and reinforce rich theology. But they’re simple, and that’s what’s so amazing about looking at a Christmas tree and lights is so peaceful, even to people who don’t know any of that. Right? It’s just maybe it’s that feeling of nostalgia peace and it feels good. But to us Christians, it’s that, and the anticipation, and the hope that’s coming, and the fact that I’m forgiven, and the fact that I am known and loved. The gift keeps on giving in that sense.

Johnny Markin:

It’s interesting. When we talk about the anticipation, I was not raised in a Christian home that looked at Christmas from a religious perspective. There was a nod given that it was Jesus’ birthday, but all of the anticipation was about what we would find under the tree on Christmas Day. And so there was a sense of all of the material here and now is everything that we have. And we miss the most important part of it, the anticipation of Christ’s first coming is pointing to his second coming. We keep talking about that, but that is everything to us. And if we don’t have the eternal perspective and it’s reminded by all of these symbols, then I think we are truly losing out. And we need to be passing that on to our children, and now from my perspective, my grandchildren.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Just as a little aside, we’re going to be jumping on a plane, leaving here in Saskatchewan, and coming and spending Christmas with you guys and we’re super excited for that.

Johnny Markin:

Fantastic.

Daniel Markin:

And watch them run around. But even with my little girls, I show them, they see the tree and they can’t really talk yet, but they, “Tee, tree,” and they will stare at it and they’re transfixed by it, even the … I’ll hold one of them and we’ll put her hands up against the LED lights and they can see the light coming through their thumb, and they just think that’s the coolest things ever. Right? And so there’s a real beauty to these symbols and actually how they’ll light us, even in the simplest ways and to the simplest of people. And again, it speaks to one of the reasons why I love the Christian faith, is it is for the most intellectual of intellectuals, who as they keep looking for answers, more answers, they keep getting more and more satisfying answers. And to those who just are very simple and are new to the faith, and just maybe don’t consider themselves intellectuals, it also speaks volumes to their soul, their heart, and they’re both equally valid. It’s important to remember, symbols can speak to both types of people.

And we use symbols today all the time. We all recognize logos for brands. Memes, in many ways, are like our … It’s almost like a hieroglyph. It tells a story by looking at it. The Egyptians would draw these pictures. We do that with memes and instantly know the value or the meaning behind it.

Johnny Markin:

It’s true.

Daniel Markin:

Through communication. Right? So it is interesting that as humans, we are continuing to use the same methods of communication and that’s a good thing.

Johnny Markin:

Well, and many people aren’t literary driven, whether they have issues like dyslexia, or whether they just learn better from objects or doing. And for much of the church’s history, the people were not literate, and so they heard the story every Sunday when they met for worship, and that’s where they would find the scriptures. They didn’t have them at home until the Gutenberg Press, so the scrolls were read publicly. And that’s where they heard the story over and over again. And so you had to keep reading it through. And the lectionary that the churches created is a three-year run in which the whole of the Bible is read in public worship. And we inherited that aspect of worship from the synagogue setup of worship, that format, which was to read the scriptures, explain the scriptures, and pray. And in between, they would chant the psalms and their prayers this way, musically too.

And so we inherited that form of worship, and with all of its rich symbolism, it communicates everything about the things that we see in church can communicate. Everything can have a message. And I think when we put together services, when we put together the times that we meet, the gatherings, we should look for those things that communicate. Even just walking in, we see a cross. It speaks of the journey of Jesus and what He’s done for us. And at one point in history, the cross was not a joyful symbol. In the Roman time, it was a symbol of death and destruction. Jesus said, “If you want to follow me, you’ve got to pick up your instrument of death and die daily. You’ve got to do this and deny yourself.” And this is the example he sets for us. But now, we’ve taken and redeemed that symbol and made it a joyous thing. Look, the cross, wow, the beauty of the cross. You know? The wondrous cross.

Daniel Markin:

Amen. Well, thank you for all of this. I mean, we are running out of time. I feel like we could spend a lot of time on this. You could almost do a whole podcast on every day of the advent. But hopefully, this will help our listeners identify with those candles. As you see them, remember that the hope of the fact that Christ will come again. He came for His people then, He will come again for us. The peace that comes from knowing Him, the joy that comes from knowing Him, the love or the angel of Christ coming, and then ultimately, Christ coming.

Johnny Markin:

Absolutely.

Daniel Markin:

Johnny, Dad, thank you again for your time.

Johnny Markin:

Thanks, Daniel, for having me on. It’s been an absolutely joy.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcasts. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.

Hey, this is Andrew from THE INDOUBT SHOW. It is December. And what does that mean for us as a ministry? This is our calendar year-end. It is our goal to raise $45,000 by the end of this year. What is that going to do? It’s going to help prepare for another solid year of ministry and resourcing young people with truth. And so we would love to encourage you to give and be a part of what God is doing with this ministry. You can give at indoubt.ca. Thank you so much. God bless you.