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November 29, 2024
This past summer, our family spent a few days in Salzburg, Austria before trekking through a portion of the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland.
In addition to the beauty of the Alps, what struck me in both Austria and Switzerland was the beauty of the graveyards.
While wandering through the catacombs and cemetery of St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg, I noticed that many of the tombstones did not just have a bouquet of carnations stuck in a holder at the foot of the grave but that each plot was a cultivated garden. Hydrangea bushes four and five feet tall grew on top of plots alongside rose bushes and other perennials. All the flowers were in full bloom, bursting with color and shouts of joy over the remains of monks, faithful church-goers and community members, and priests who were long since buried.
I noticed this in Switzerland as well. In the small town of Lenk, I sat in a graveyard next to a church and watched as people stopped in the late afternoon on their way home from work or school or a busy day to tend to the gardens on top of their loved ones’ graves.
They walked over to the watering station in the cemetery, filled up a watering can, picked up a trowel, and cultivated growth on top of ashes.
It was beautiful. Not only did death seem to be more of an accepted and ordinary part of daily life, but the gardens people cultivated seemed to take an active stance against letting death have the final word in life. While I’m sure these people had buried their loved ones in tears, they were reaping beauty and seeds of joy.
Advent is a great deal like that.
When we light the candles of Advent, candles reminding us of the hope of the prophets, the peace of the child from Bethlehem, the joy of the shepherds on the night of His birth, and the love of Immanuel announced through the angels, we plant gardens on our graves. We remember that death does not surprise us. It is part and parcel of living in this sin-cursed world. But we also remember that death does not have the final say on our year or on our lives. No matter what loss we have experienced or disappointment we have endured, Advent reminds us that we are not left alone in our sorrow whether help or hope. Through His first coming and the promise of His second, Jesus is actively moving towards us lifting our shame, healing our hearts, walking with us through our sorrows, and watering our graves with the hope of His resurrecting power and strength of His enduring love.
Advent is the help we need at the end of the year to see reality through a “multi-lens biblical approach….how things are now, how God first created them to be, and how they will look once redeemed. It insists that human existence today, after Genesis 3, is neither original nor the standard for how things should be, and that we were created for a life better than the one we now live. It asserts that our present state neither ultimately defines us nor confines us….Evil arrives at the party of existence once it is already in full swing, and it leaves before the dancing is over.” Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory
The incarnation of Christ reminds us that God was not content to leave us in our sorrow and suffering, but through the birth of His Son, He planted a garden on our graves, gifting us with the promise that because He came first to live and to die, He will come again to rule and to reign.
So don’t just think of the ritual of Advent as dry, dusty, boring, or dead. Advent comes to us with so much hope and so much healing. It is, in fact, a reenactment of hope, the planting of a garden that says because God remembered His people through the birth of Christ, He will remember us again through His return.
So as you prepare for Advent to begin this coming Sunday, December 1 st , prepare your wreath, prepare your candles, prepare for your family, church, or small group, but most of all, prepare your heart. Anticipate Jesus meeting with you in intimate, healing, and hopeful ways over the next four weeks, helping you plant gardens on all of your graves.
