The purpose of Advent is to set aside some time to prepare ourselves for a celebration of the birth of Christ. In the West, we decadent Latins, marked the season by celebrating a feast at the end, and the more disciplined Eastern Greek Christians underwent a great fast in preparation for the coming of Christ.
In a sense this dichotomy of feasting and fasting well marks what the Lutheran Tradition calls the Law and the Gospel. There is a sense in which Christ taught a harsher more difficult morality than any of the Old Testament dietary regulations. This was because Christ ordered men to be – literally – perfect (Matthew 5:48). To follow the Law with a true heart filled with love towards God. At least in the Old Testament you just weren’t allowed to hate your neighbour, in the New, you had to love him. In remembrance of this harsh but righteous standard of morality Jesus judged the world by, it is good for Christians to be penitent, to do acts and live a life that exudes repentence and holiness. But as one bishop said so brilliantly: the final lesson of the Law is that we can’t fulfill it. St. James says that if we’re guilty of even one point, we’re guilty of it all (Jms 2:10).
Through our attempted disciplines we realize that the law was our ‘Schoolmaster to lead us to Christ’ (Gal. 3:24). We need another’s righteousness to make up for our abyssmal failures. It is to such people that Christ promises salvation by trusting in him (Jn. 3:16; Jn. 3:36; Jn 6:47). When we call on Christ as our Saviour, we implicitly recognize that we cannot save ourselves. This is where the feasting comes in. Since Christ came to save us from our sins (Mt. 1:21), and died on the cross for all of them, and proclaimed that “it is finished” (Jn 19:30), we can finally celebrate. Christ, our Saviour comes to us as an infant in Advent, born to die, and live again! This is the point of Advent. Jesus is the reason for the season, as the ‘evangelicalism’ goes.
In fasting and feasting, the Church throughout all times has acknowledged this beautiful double truth of Law and Gospel, and so ought we to learn from them.