Advent Reflections from the Rev. Merrill Wade
The Advent Season is upon us! Because we Episcopalians still consider such things as church seasons worthwhile, it is important to restate the main themes and motifs of Advent, and how Advent relates to Christmas.
Advent points to the “coming” of Jesus, and we automatically think of the coming of the Christ Child, born on Christmas Day. That gentle and tender arrival of a newborn, such a surprising revelation from the heart of God, is the first of the three major “comings” of the Advent Season. Though we rejoice in that glorious birth, we need to be awake to the other major themes of the season as well.
A second theme of Advent, clearly articulated in Advent prayers on Sunday mornings, is the “second coming” of Jesus Christ, the King of King and Lord of Lords, at the end of time as we know it, to judge the living and the dead. Prophets have always proclaimed, even in the darkest human circumstances, that God will have the last word, that human greed and violence will be answered by a just God. The death and resurrection of Jesus showed that God does not return human violence with more violence, but instead absorbs our hatred and sin on the cross and transcends it with a conquering love that surpasses understanding. We look, therefore, to the “second coming” of Jesus, whenever and however that occurs, with hope, trust, and gratitude, for we are “children of God” and “heirs with Christ” of an eternal Kingdom not made with human hands.
A third theme of Advent is captured in the Collect for the 4th Sunday, (Dec. 23, this year):
Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself… (Book of Common Prayer P. 212)
Jesus is at the heart of our faith. I often refer to Jesus as the “beating heart and human face of God”. He lived a life in Palestine in a certain and finite time in human history, as we say in the Eucharistic prayer, “Christ has died”. We also say, “Christ is risen”, meaning that he is alive, present in eternity and in the here and now. The third theme of Advent reminds us not only to remember Jesus, born way off in the past, for the forgiveness of our sins, or to ponder that fateful second coming, at the end of time, but to rejoice in the “daily visitation” of our Lord. The Risen Christ visits us in our lives of prayer, in our acts of kindness, in the sacraments, the often subtle, even silent ways that the Spirit of Jesus ministers to us and through us.
May you have a holy and happy Advent, rejoicing in the goodness of God and rejoicing in the coming of Jesus, yesterday, today and forevermore. We are blessed.
Faithfully, Merrill
