We start the season of Advent. It is a time of preparation, a time of great expectation and great anticipation.
But exactly what is it that we anticipate? What do we expect to happen? The way we see Advent and Christmas will determine our approach to the celebration.
Do we anticipate the end of the world, as some religious cults always do at this time of the year? Is the essential work of Advent opening our lives to the coming Christ, and learning to live in peace? Is the coming of Christ filled with terror and shivering apprehension? Or is it filled with eager expectation for the coming glory and joy?
The Advent we celebrate in church — hanging of the greens, putting up the decorations, lighting the first Advent candle — invites us to dream dreams of a better world, to allow expectant visions that have nothing to do with the end of the world.
Advent invites us to fill the cup of today with a full measure of tomorrow. The words from the Gospel of Matthew express the Christian hope for a different, brighter future.
In the world of Isaiah’s vision, war was a thing of the past, and the nations of the earth lived together in peace. And this gift from God will arrive whether we’re ready for it or not.
The passage reveals that the Advent of God is much more about surprise than predictability, more about revelation than decoration.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I think it’s wonderful that we place decorations on the chancel or even put up a Christmas tree. But the message of Advent is not to “Put up the decorations!” Rather, it tells us that Christmas will come whether we get ready for it or not.
You need to hear that again: Christmas will come whether we get ready for it or not.
God’s entrance into our lives in the person of Jesus Christ occurs at God’s initiative, and not ours. Christ arrives in our midst not as a reward for our careful preparation for his coming, but as a result of the love and compassion of God. Christ comes to us whether we are ready or not.
Thus, when the disciples asked about the timing of the Second Coming, Jesus said it was the wrong question.
Their question should be what are they supposed to do in the meanwhile, while they are awaiting his coming.
Jesus recalls the familiar story of Noah when he was the only one ready for the flood. The others were doing other things.
When Jesus comes again, he tells his disciples it will come as a surprise, without warning. When that happens, some will be ready, and some will not. Those folks who have forgotten or disbelieved will be greatly disappointed on that day.
Thus, the important thing for us, in this season of Advent, is not WHEN Jesus will be coming again, but what the quality of our waiting will be, in the meantime.
Today, you will find at least one televangelist who will gladly tell you in a convincing manner that this is the time Jesus talked about in scripture, that the world is going to end any day now, and you’d better be ready. And who knows — he might be right!
But what is missing from those televangelists’ pronouncements of coming doom and gloom is a reminder that our concentration is not to be on the future, but on the present–on the quality of the life we are living today.
Jesus does not call us to a passive, do-nothing kind of waiting. Jesus says to the disciples and to us that the way we live together in the world as Kingdom people, as Advent people, is serious business and calls for an active faith.
Isaiah echoes that call. “O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Walking is not passive. It is moving forward, looking at where you step, and at the same time looking at where you are going.
Yes, Advent invites us to look to the future, but its most demanding challenge and most exciting promise come in the announcement that the present is Kingdom time, too.
The incarnation — God coming to dwell in human flesh — declares that the cup of the present is filled to overflowing with the presence of God.
Whether we consider the present to be sunny and bright, fair to partly cloudy, or dismal and gloomy, God sends the Messiah to come to life in it.
Elsewhere, Matthew describes the gift of the season of Advent with a single word: Emmanuel, God with us. Not God HAS BEEN with us; not God WILL BE with us; but God WITH us, right now, TODAY.
The God of all things past and things future is also the God of the here and now. God invites us to live in the present in expectation and awareness of the fact that eternal realities can and do break in at any moment.
Jesus has told us that the kingdom of God is “breaking in” (an interesting choice of words).
Thus, we actively await his coming. We preach “repent and be saved”, “Jesus is coming soon.” But there is much more to the Gospel than that.
Kingdom living is not a call to be so heavenly-minded that we forget that we live in this world; it is not a call to be starry-eyed over the future that we overlook the present.
Advent reminds us that God often breaks in to our lives unexpectedly. And it can be any time. We cannot know the time or the day of our next encounter with the holy. Neither can we predict whether that meeting will be a joyful experience of forgiveness and peace, a call to repentance and responsibility, or some combination of the two (as I suspect it will be).
But we just need to be ready and actively waiting. When we see people helping those in need, we see a glimpse of God’s kingdom; when people learn to love each other even with their differences, we get a glimpse of God’s kingdom; when people work together sharing their gifts, we get to experience God’s kingdom; when there is forgiveness, we experience God’s kingdom.
In his book Dare to Believe
, Dan Baumann compares it to opening a present on Christmas morning. He explains that when he was younger, he would always do a lot of snooping at Christmas time. He would examine wrapped presents, and try to figure out what was in them. One year, he discovered a package with his name on it that was easy to identify. There was no way to disguise the golf clubs inside. Baumann then made this observation: “When Mom wasn’t around, I would go and feel the package, shake it, and pretend that I was on the golf course. The point is, I was already enjoying the pleasures of a future event; namely, the unveiling. It had my name on it. I knew what it was.”
Advent gives us a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. A time of universal peace and universal love under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
It is like when we come around the Lord’s Table–partaking together of the bread and of the cup regardless of who we are. We come because we are all invited by God. And as we partake of the bread and of the cup, we, too, have a foretaste of the Kingdom of God where everyone is forgiven, no matter what, and everyone shares the joy of our oneness in Christ.
My friends, each one of us lives in the shadow of the apocalypse — the dark reality of the end of our time, and the end of the world’s time. That is the warning of Advent.
But there is also good news. There is the promise of Advent — the promise that in the darkness, in the shadows, in the unpredictable anxiety of our unfinished lives, God is present. God is in control, and God will come again.
With each candle we light of the Advent candles, the shadows recede a bit, and the promise comes closer. With each candle we light, we are proclaiming that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome it.
The promise is that wherever there is darkness and dread in our lives, wherever there is darkness and dread in the world, God is present to help us endure. God is in charge, and hope is alive. And as long and as interminable as the night seems, morning will come — in God’s good time and God’s good way.
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