Christianity has entered the Advent and Christmas season. The first Sunday in Advent, this year 30 November, marks the beginning of the church year. Perhaps we should have held a New Year’s Eve party on 29 November. Being just two days off Thanksgiving, however, that might have been a bit much for most people to handle. In that vein, some turkeys have been advocating the replacement of Thanksgiving with a Church New Year’s Eve party. As unlikely as such a holiday substitution might be, some of this year’s turkey progeny are already planning to propagate their cause next year.

Sadly but not unexpectedly, this year’s turkey holiday supplanting supporters were sacrificed for thousands of grateful Americans wittingly or unwittingly celebrating the Pilgrims’ survival in the New World in search of religious freedom. When considering the Pilgrims’ plight, would you leave your homeland with a handful of travelers, venture to Europe, and then sail across a vast ocean to an unknown continent just to escape English religious oppression? Since most of us find it difficult, if not impossible to leave the comfort of our beds on Sunday morning to battle minimal traffic to land in a padded pew at our local parish, risking life and limb for the sake of free worship is probably out of the question.

In that light, how much more unlikely is the story of the promise given to Adam and Eve that Eve’s “seed” would conquer the forces of evil and would rescue humanity from the powers of sin and death? To think that God, instead of punishing Adam and Eve for falling into unbelief and following the serpent’s temptations, forgave them their trespass and then promised them that one of their progeny, one of Eve’s seed, would be sacrificed to effect the forgiveness of sin for all humanity, seems highly unlikely at best.

If we follow the story, this promise was given to one family, and they passed the promise to one of their progeny. That son started his own family in order to communicate the promise to another generation. In all the history of the people of Israel, this is how the promise of the Messiah was propagated. Although the tribes of Israel grew into various kingdoms, were conquered and exiled because of their rampant sinfulness, eventually some of them were freed to return to their homeland, a chided and chastened people, to propagate the promise. With Jerusalem rebuild, would God now send his Messiah to restore the glory of the Davidic monarchy?

God would restore Israel’s royal lineage, but the means and method in so doing resembled more the situation of Adam and Eve. God would speak to Mary, a young woman betrothed to a man named Joseph, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:31-33). In Mary, Eve’s promised seed would come to fruition.

We generally take it for granted when we read the biblical stories that the story of the promised seed necessarily weaves and winds its way safely and assuredly through history. From our vantage point, we view viewing biblical happenings and progress as secret spectators, knowing that, of course, it all had to happen that way because it is in the Bible. Viewed from our eveyr day perspective, how unlikely is a promise given to one newly sinful couple to be realized generations later in a newly betrothed pair, who from an outsiders perspective, would appear to be “living in sin”?

The seed of Christ promised by the Holy Spirit to Mary would be planted by Jesus in the hearts of many people in his day. That seed would then be put to death on the tree of the cross and buried in the ground. God’s promises, however, do not die. They are the source of life in the face of death, of forgiveness in the midst of vengeance, and of grace when surrounded by murderous hate.

By virtue of Christ’s resurrection, the promised seed made incarnate at that first Christmas is still given from one person to another, particularly from individual couples to their children. Likewise, church families in their various forms of teaching, preaching, praying, and praising plant the same seeds of Christ’s gospel in the hearts and minds of each new church generation. In that sense, the first Sunday in Advent is an ideal Day of Thanksgiving for all us pilgrims, venturing through our world of sin and sorrow, yet buoyed by Christ’s promises, to celebrate the freedom from sin and death given to all humanity in Christ Jesus, our one and only Lord.