Advent began this past Sunday. For many folks, Advent is just another name for “the Christmas season”. But actually, Advent is its own season, a season of preparation for Christmas. Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter— a time to create space and prepare for a key moment in the Jesus story.
Christians began marking time around the life of Jesus early on in church history, but the church calendar took more shape in later centuries. The whole idea was to keep time in a way that keeps our focus on Jesus. Each season of the “Christian calendar” marks a key moment in the life of Christ.
Advent is one of the rare seasons in the Church Calendar that actually marks two moments in the Jesus Story: the birth of Jesus and the return of Jesus.
Advent is when the remembered joy of Christ’s first arrival awakens our anticipated joy at His return.
In Advent, we find a language for our longing. All is not as it should be, but it will not always be this way. We weep as we wait. We groan and we ache. Advent is when we give voice to the ache and pain and longing in our hearts.
Advent is also when we confess our own participation in the brokenness of the world. Traditionally, it was a season of repentance. Hard to do in the midst of songs of sleigh bells and snow, I admit! But Advent is not only about longing for Christ to come again and put everything back together; it’s about repenting and receiving grace so that we get to be put back together now.
Advent reminds us then that we stand between two “appearings”.
We stand between two proclamations: “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!” and “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, come!”
But there’s one more piece. Advent is not only about longing for Christ to put the world back together, not only about repenting and letting Christ put us back together; it is also participating in bringing wholeness to others.
I learned much of this from N. T. Wright. This week, I was re-reading from Wright’s devotional based on the lectionary (Book of Common Prayer) readings for each Sunday of the year, written while he was the Bishop of Durham. His reflection on the texts for the first Sunday are pure gold.
Readings for the First Sunday of Advent
With the lectionary's new year comes St Matthew, with warnings about the days of Noah. Noah's solitary gospel cameo; he doesn't feature much in the epistles, either. Why not?
The point about Noah's days is that they were ordinary.
Eating, drinking, family life as usual; no signs, no hint of what is to happen. This contrasts with the previous verses, where detailed signs herald Jerusalem's destruction; some suggest that this is a different 'day and hour', the second coming itself, which might occur at any time, not necessarily after a generation. Alternatively, these warnings too can be interpreted as relating to Jerusalem's fall, but as referring narrowly to the specific moment of calamity.
From early days, however, Christians have read this text as referring to the ultimate future, the day for which even AD 70 was just a rehearsal, the day when some will be "taken' (in judgement) and others left' (in mercy). If we wish to read the text this way, however, we must temper it with the emphasis of Paul: do not suppose that you are at the moment simply in darkness, with nothing to do before the great day arrives. The day has already begun to dawn with the coming of Jesus, so that Jesus' followers are already people of the day. The promise— and warning —of God's future is meant to inculcate neither helplessness nor complacency, but rather energy to work as day-people in a world that thinks it's still night.
Paul has his own detailed agenda of what this will mean.
No night-behaviour: many of the sins he lists in v. 13 may have been nocturnal in Rome, but his point is clearly metaphorical, since quarrelling and jealousy keep no special hours. Those who clothe themselves with the Lord of the day must renounce all such behaviour; sinful practices, particularly those of the flesh, will shriek that it's unnatural to say 'nơ' to them, but once the day has dawned the shadows cannot dictate to the sunlight, nor the nightmares to the morning's tasks.
For Paul, then, the great event for which Israel had longed had already arrived in Jesus. This means that prophecies like Isaiah 2 are already brought to birth in God's reality. Paul saw his own mission to the Gentiles as the fulfilment of Isaiah's promise: the nations were already coming in to God's people, to hear the message of salvation that the creator God had entrusted to the Jews, and had fulfilled in the Jewish Messiah. Isaiah's promise of universal peace must therefore be read, like Paul's call to personal holiness, as our present agenda. We must neither look helplessly at a dark and sleeping world, nor think complacently that we, the church, are all right as we are. We must wake people up to the fact that the sun is already shining, and that the judge of the nations is at the door, longing to see his justice and peace enfold the world in a single embrace.
N. T. Wright
Yes and amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
I’m also reading through another excellent Advent devotional this year. It’s a new one from Dr. Amy Orr Ewing called, “Mary’s Voice”. I’ll post an excerpt from some time this season as well.