O Lord, we wait in hope for your coming ☩ in the of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The song on the radio tells us that this is the most wonderful time of the year, and it is. Advent is a special season for us as people of faith. It has been said that the Church remembers three different comings of our Lord Jesus Christ – as he comes in history, mystery, and majesty. As far as Jesus’ coming in history, we think of the Incarnation which we will celebrate more fully from December 25 through January 5. Jesus also comes to us in mystery each time that we gather in his name to break bread and share the cup. And there is his coming in majesty at the end of all things to culminate his reign of shalom and love. It is this final coming of Jesus Christ in majesty that Advent focuses on, which is why Advent is such a majestic time for us as Christians.
Majesty surrounds us in our liturgy in Advent, which is most apparent in the music of Advent, which is the most robust, moving, and magnificent that the Church has to offer. As we enter into this sacred season, I would suggest that Advent has four movements and the outstanding hymnody that we have this morning will guide us through these four aspects of Advent.
We begin with Veni, Emmanuel which will be used as our offertory anthem throughout the season. This hymn, which dates to the 9th century, sets the tone for where we find ourselves in Advent. Advent is an in-between season. Already, we know of the Incarnation of the God of Israel into the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Already, we know that he was crucified and three days later, rose again. Already, we know that the Spirit of God has been poured out on all flesh on the day of Pentecost. But not yet has the fullness of God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Not yet has the wolf laid down with the lamb. Not yet have we beat our swords into plowshares. Though the outcome of all things is secure in the grace of God, we are still plagued by the reality of Sin and Death.
Veni Emmanuel names this reality when it prays “O come, O come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile.” We are captive Israel – still captive to disasters, selfishness, and injustice. One preacher often remarks that “Advent begins in the dark.” Indeed, for us to experience the depth of this season, we too, must begin in the darkness of our captivity. This is the reality that Jesus names in Luke when he speaks of distress among the nations, the roaring of the seas, and people fainting from fear. By recognizing that we are captive, we realize that we need liberation. And it is not a liberation that we ourselves can manufacture. How many more times will we fool ourselves into thinking a workshop will change society, or that a politician will fix our nation, or that policy will solve poverty? One of the prayers that we use in Lent states that “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.” This is our reality. We are captive and we do not hold the key to the cell door. We begin Advent in the darkness of that reality.
We then come to Merton which proclaims “Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding: ‘Christ is nigh,’ it seems to say.” This is the lesson of the Advent wreath in musical form. As we saw in Veni Emmanuel, there is darkness. But there is also a bright light. Though it is easy to stay in the darkness of despair and hopelessness, Advent calls us who have accepted the darkness as normal to awaken to the light.
This hope is what the prophet Jeremiah is calling our attention to. In his day, darkness was pervasive. God’s promise that a descendant of David would be on the throne seemed to be all but forgotten. The people were in Exile, the Temple had been destroyed, and the Davidic kingship was over. We might feel that way – that God’s promises of peace, and healing, and mercy have been neglected. Maybe you feel that God has rejected you or forgotten about you. It could be that this time of year is difficult for you – it reminds you of the brokenness of your family, the dark and cold days drive you to depression, the cookies, gifts, and lights don’t seem to satisfy your desire to be loved and accepted.
The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that even when all seems to be hopeless, that God’s promises remain secure. Jeremiah relays the message from God, “The days are surely coming when I will fulfill the promise… I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David.” This is where the tradition of the Jesse Tree is rooted. The prophet Isaiah also speaks of this hope, writing “A shoot shall come out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” And so even when the tree has been reduced a stump that seems to be lifeless, even when life seems to be gone, a green shoot of new life will come. Advent alerts us to this hope in God’s never-failing promises, orienting us towards the thrilling voice that is announcing the Good News of the dawning light. As the hymn Merton puts it, “Christ, our sun, all sloth dispelling, shines upon the morning skies.” Hope is the second movement of Advent, and it stands in direct opposition to the darkness in which we began.
In light of this hope, we then come to Wachet Auf, that truly beautiful tune that was first composed by Bach. The alarm has sounded and “the Bridegroom is in sight” and so the exhortation is for us sleepers to wake. The hymn tells us “Your lamps prepare and hasten there, that you the wedding feast may share.” Once we wake up to the reality that there is hope, that the darkness is not all-conquering, that the purifying light of Christ is coming, we then prepare ourselves. On the fourth Sunday of Advent, our prayer will be that God so purify us so when Christ comes, he will find in us a mansion prepared for himself.
Advent is best approached as a season of preparation and penitence. We live in a world full of darkness and once we are alerted the brightness of the pure light of God’s love, we realize how we fall short. We come to see that we too often stumble in the dark and resist the overwhelming light of Christ. And so we repent. We confess that our best efforts are not leading us out of the darkness, we confess that we need a Savior, we confess that the hope of God is not always the story that we live by, we reposition our priorities so that we can be guided by the light, we wake up to the reality that the reign of God’s love has broken into our world.
Jesus tells us to “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down.” Advent is a time for rousing ourselves from the unhealthy patterns that we’ve fallen into, a time for preparing ourselves to receive the transforming love of God. As I often say when it comes to repentance, it’s not so much about saying that you are sorry or admitting that you were wrong, though that’s a good place to start. But repentance is about change – changing your mind, changing your actions, changing your habits. In Advent, we rigorously examine our lives and see where we’ve allowed ourselves to remain in darkness, we declare our desire to be guided by the light of Christ, we pray for God’s grace to be with us as we strive to “sing to greet our King” throughout our lives, and we beg God for mercy when we fall short. Repentance is the third movement of Advent.
The fourth and final movement of Advent is seen in the hymn Helmsley, which is widely considered by everyone standing in this pulpit as, unquestionably, the greatest hymn of all-time. “Lo! he comes, with clouds descending, Christ the Lord returns to reign.” Advent and our Christian hope, do not work if we ignore this final movement, if we dismiss the belief in the Second Coming. I realize that many people, when they hear of the Second Coming, dismiss it as superstition from a bygone era, as a backwards belief that only uneducated people believe in, as a fear-mongering strategy. To be clear, the Second Coming of Christ is not about the rapture, it is not about the book of Revelation, and it has nothing to do with the Left Behind series of books.
Every Sunday, we proclaim it when we say in the Creed that “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” If we don’t believe it, then why do we say it? There are two reasons why the Second Coming is the lynchpin that holds Advent and Christian hope together. The glory of the Second Coming is that it is the fulfillment of the hope that we saw in the second movement of Advent. The Second Coming proclaims that there will indeed be an end to war, and poverty, and racism, and Sin, and Death. In the end, we will not have division, disease, and despair, but rather, at the end, Christ will come to reign and preside over a kingdom of peace and love. If you take away the hope of the Second Coming, then we’re right back into the darkness which we began in, only there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, it’s just unending darkness. There is so much hope in the trust that Christ will come and set right what has gone disastrously wrong because of sin.
The second reason why Helmsley is so key in understanding Advent and the Second Coming is its depiction of the event. “Every eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty; those who set at nought and sold him, pierced, and nailed him to the tree shall the true Messiah see.” It reminds us that the Cross is the grain of the universe. If the one who comes at the end of time to judge us is Jesus, the one who was rejected, beaten, and killed, the one who showed us the abundance of God’s love, the one who healed the sick and fed the hungry, the one who forgave those who were crucifying him, saying “Father, forgive,” then I am so full of hope for that day when Christ comes to be our judge. The lowly will be lifted up, Sin will be vanquished, Death will be defeated, mercy will overflow because the Crucified and Risen Jesus is the one on the throne.
Just imagine the glory and majesty of the scene – “Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bear, cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers; with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars!” Those glorious scars are not erased, rather they are redeemed. And just as Christ’s scars will be redeemed, so too will ours, and that fills me with such hope. It means that ruthless ways of the world are not true or enduring. But rather, in the end, what will be is the mercy of God.
And so in Advent, we wait for Christ to come and “claim the kingdom for thine own.” But we do not wait passively. This longing for the day when Christ shall reign and him alone makes us witnesses to his future. Advent is a holy sort of time because in Advent we realize that the present is not dictated by the past, but rather by the future. Because we have trust in God’s promises, because we look for Christ to come again in glory, our waiting becomes active witnessing. We strive to witness to the future which is already permeating the present. One theologian has said that “God’s future is God’s call to the present, and the present is when we live in the light of God’s future.”
Because we know how the story ends, we are able to pray the opening Collect that we did this morning: “Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.” Given Christ’s Second Coming, we can cast off our fear, our division, our selfishness. We are given the courage to be bold in our generosity, in our love, in our service to those in need. Our waiting is not done idly, but rather by partaking in God’s future even now.
These majestic hymns guide us through the four movements of Advent: first, we begin in the dark, realizing that things are not yet fully as God would have them to be. Second, the light of hope shines eternally even in this darkness and it is this light which we saw in history when Christ came and which we receive weekly in the mystery of the Eucharist. The third movement is our repentance, our turning away from the darkness and towards the light as we wait for and bear witness to the culmination of the fourth movement when Christ shall come with clouds descending. And so we pray, now and evermore: Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.
