O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
We’re all waiting for something – test results, the semester to be over, the chance to open Christmas presents, an upcoming trip. Advent is a season all about waiting. In fact, that’s what the name of the season means. Advent comes from a Latin word that means “arrival” or “coming.” It was the word for the ceremonial arrival of the emperor in a city. Advent is a season in which the Church prepares us for the coming of Christ.
“But, hasn’t he already been here?,” you might ask. Yes, Jesus has already come in history, that’s the story the manger scene helps us to remember. And in about 25 minutes, Jesus will come again in mystery as the bread is broken and the wine in poured out in remembrance of his Passion. But neither of these are what Advent is about. Advent is not a season that is preparing us for Christmas. It’s confusing because Advent comes right before Christmas, but Advent isn’t about preparing to remember that something happened a long time ago in Bethlehem. No, Advent is about reminding us that we are still waiting for Jesus Christ to come again in majesty, in clouds descending.
And this is where a lot of Christians with the label of “progressive” really struggle with Advent. In our secular and modern world, a lot of people dismiss the idea of a Second Coming as antiquated and superstitious. They point to Scripture and say, “Look, Paul, even Jesus, seem to think that the end was coming in their generations, and it didn’t happen then.” “Christianity is still a good religion about justice and love,” they say, “but we can stop waiting for something that clearly isn’t going to happen.”
Some of this is due to what we might call chronological snobbery. We think we’re living in the middle of time, but that’s simply not the case. The 2,000 years since the time of Jesus and today is nothing when compared to the vast scale of time. If the entire history of the universe began on January 1st at midnight, humans would not show up until the twelve seconds on December 31st. Two-hundred and thirty million years of human history collapse into twelve seconds of the year. Over the course of 2024, how often have we worried twelve seconds? Exactly, the point is that what seems like a long delay to us is not even the blink of an eye.
Another reason why we’re so dismissive of the idea of Jesus coming again is that we simply don’t have the imagination that would allow for such a happening. I’ll say more about this later, but we live in a closed universe. Jesus coming again creates a crisis of conflict between the scientific method and faith. If Jesus is coming back, where is he now? And if he’s coming later, why not now? Have we not yet reached enough suffering that we need to wait longer for justice to be done on earth as it is in heaven? These questions are impossible to reconcile with our sense of how things work, or ought to work. We just don’t have the intellectual space for the idea of the Second Coming, so we dismiss it among friends and embarrassingly deny that we’re one of “those” Christians when it comes up in society.
I don’t know about you all, but I’ve seen enough of human history to not have my hope grounded here. For all our advances in health, technology, medicine, and economics, there’s still a lot of suffering, violence, and inequality. I need hope that is deeper than human capability. I long for justice that is not subject to a court’s decision. I want healing that is more than superficial. Advent is where such hope is found. Advent is God’s promise that the work of love and redemption, though they have begun in the calling of Israel and the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, are not complete.
This is why the liturgical color for the season is a deep, royal blue. The color reminds us that we are waiting on our king to arrive, and it’s also intended to be the color of twilight. It’s what is known as the “time between the times” in Celtic spirituality. Advent declares that it will not remain nighttime forever. The sun has dawned and though it is not yet the brightness of the day, those beams of light shine upon our path as a promise of what is yet to come.
With that introduction to the season, we now turn to the readings for this First Sunday of Advent. Over the four Sundays of Advent, the sermons are going to focus on what it is like to be a people who are waiting for this dawning light from four different perspectives. Today, we’ll consider the prophets, and on the following Sundays we’ll wait alongside John the Baptist, the establishment, and Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Today, we wait with the prophets. As one Jewish scholar put it, the prophets of Israel are among the most disturbing people to have ever lived. The prophets are those who rebuke, challenge, and disrupt. Prophets generally live outside of the mainstream and have us ask questions that we’re rather not consider. Prophets, such as Micah, Isaiah, Amos, Daniel, or Jeremiah are not diviners; they don’t predict the future or anything like that. Instead, the prophets are those who help us to interpret the world and our lives through a divine perspective. These prophets, along with the apostles, are sometimes portrayed as a tree. As Jesus says, he is the vine and we are the branches. The branches have flowers and fruits of Jesus’ message of mercy, peace, and love. The prophets don’t predict Jesus’ coming as much as they point towards the fruits of faith.
So the ministry of a prophet is something like trying to convince someone who doesn’t like to eat vegetables that they really ought to. Prophets deliver messages from God, messages intended to lead us to health, justice, and liberation. But we’re used to diet of pizza, candy, and ice cream. Someone coming in and telling us “You might try to some broccoli, spinach, and apples,” isn’t always going to be well received. Prophets announce the promises of God, but so often we fill ourselves with other things and don’t have an appetite for what they bring.
This morning, we heard from Jeremiah, and throughout Advent the first readings will be from other prophets. Jeremiah spoke of God’s promise for justice and righteousness to come. Jeremiah was writing in a time when justice and righteousness were sorely lacking. Corruption, exploitation, and selfishness were rampant. I know it’s hard to imagine such a society, but we’ll just have to try. Most of Jeremiah’s prophecy was, understandably, about judgment and a call for repentance.
Today though, we heard something different. We heard a word of comfort. The banner we have out front is one of those prophetic fruits as announced by Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort, my people.” Yes, there is a time for rebuke, but there is also a need for comfort. We would do well to have a diet of this particular fruit. In our society, the Church is known for its critiques. And, to be very clear, there is a place for that. Poverty, racism, xenophobia, consumerism, and pollution need to be called out. And yet, many of us are tired of our “call-out” culture.
Yes, sometimes we need to call attention to things that are being overlooked, we need to correct things that are misunderstood, we need to name what is broken so that it can be addressed. But prophets are not social justice warriors. Prophets also deliver words of comfort and hope. We are living in a famine of hope right now. Researchers call it the “hopelessness crisis,” as more and more Americans report being pessimistic about the future. Birth rates are plummeting around the world, and especially in Western countries. When people are asked why they aren’t having children, one of the most common reasons is hopelessness, in one form or another.
We are desperate for something to trust, to believe in, to hope in. In what seems like an endless midnight, we need to know that those beams of light are actually coming from the dawn and aren’t just flashlights that will soon fail. This has been true for a long time, and it’s why God gave those words to Jeremiah – “The days are surely coming when I will fulfill the promise I made to bring forth justice and righteousness.”
This promised hope is rooted Advent, in the coming of Christ. There are two ways to understand time. One is that time is a progression: A leads to B, which leads to C, and so on. Only by changing a variable do we get somewhere else. It’s a linear view of things. And that’s how most of us tell time. That’s how the stock market, insurance, and science work: given these data points, this is what we expect to happen. We might all this a future-oriented sense of time. The future is built upon the past and present. And, if the signs are good, we can be optimistic about the future.
The prophets though help us to tell time differently. Prophets like Jeremiah speak about a different sort of time. Instead of operating in a closed system of cause-and-effect, the prophets remind us that that God is doing new things. For the prophets, the future develops not out of the past, but the not-yet. The future is in the hand of God, meaning that instead of vacillating between pessimism and optimism, we can be hopeful. Prophets help us to tell time through the lens of Advent.
God is a God of possible impossibilities, of yet-to-be imagined truths, of beauty that has not yet been created, of songs that have not yet been sung. God was not content to have this promise delivered only through the words of the prophets and written down in a book. No, God wanted this promise to be more tangible. And so, God took on flesh and came among us. Jesus is God’s promise in the flesh. As God’s incarnate promise, Jesus shows us what the end is all about: healing, abundance, mercy, joy, fellowship, and love. That is what lies ahead of us; those are the fruits of the tree of life.
I realize it might sound crazy, but the future is not predicated on the past; the future is determined by the future, and Jesus shows us what the future looks like. That’s why “all shall be well” isn’t optimism only seen through rose-colored glasses. No, “all shall be well” is hope that is planted in the future. Through the prophets, we have access to the fruits of that tree of life now. It’s not that the past determines the future, rather the future reaches into the past and shines the radiance of the yet-to-be dawn into the twilight of our lives. Advent comforts us with a future that is open to God’s redemptive love.
Because of the prophets, we live differently. We live not in the despair of what is, but in anticipation of what is already true at the end. This is what, fundamentally, makes us different as people of faith. We are an Advent people – people who eagerly anticipate what is not yet imaginable and trust in what we cannot yet see.
There are three words that I’ll close with that describe both the prophets, which we thank God for, and give us a way to wait as Advent people: messengers, sentinels, and stewards. As messengers, when we see beams of the dawning light, no matter how faint, we declare it. In moments of reconciliation, in surprises of joy, in times of peace that passes understanding, we help others to see the light of Advent. As sentinels, we anticipate that something is coming and don’t allow ourselves to get stuck in if-then thinking, as we trust that God is up to more than we can ask for or imagine. And as stewards, we guard against those who tell us that we’re just believing in fairy tales, but we insist, as CS Lewis put it, “I believe in the sun not because I have seen it rise, but because by it, I see everything else.”
The traditional prayer of Advent grounds in the hope of the prophets and roots us in faith as messengers, sentinels, and stewards: O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen
