Yesterday was the fourth Sunday of Advent. Here is a short piece I wrote for our church. It’s the last of four pieces that I’ve written that seeks to answer the question, What is Advent? (Here you can read the first, second, and third installments.)
Last week we talked about how Advent means “coming.” Before Christmas and the celebration of Jesus’ birth, there is a season of waiting on the arrival of Jesus. We talked about how during Advent, we’re joining with ancient Israel as we await the coming of the promised Messiah who will inaugurate God’s kingdom.
The other side of our waiting is waiting for Jesus to come again. This is just the other side of the same coin. Just as Jesus came at a time of deep darkness and need, when the time was just right, so he will come again.
And so Advent is a time when we look forward to Jesus’ return. Our world continues to be in a bad place, overall. Wars rage on every continent with varying degrees of struggle; divorce claims husbands and wives (and their children) at record highs in our own nation; a person dies every 3.6 seconds simply from not having nutritious food to eat or clean water to drink; close to two hundred million children have no living parents; 1.5 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the US alone in 2010. And, of course, these statistics are just the tip of the iceberg. Add to these the personal tragedies every human being faces in the course of his or her life, and there is little argument against the fact that the world in which we live—the world that God created—is a mess.
When Jesus returns, all will be made right. We wait with eager anticipation for Jesus to return. And the best way to wait is to live out our anticipation. We anticipate the day when all will be made right by living with the appropriate end in mind. We anticipate the day when all will be made right when we pray, “Let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Our prayer is for all creation finally to be reconciled back to God.
But for now, we live in the tension between the present reality and the future hope. We are people who live between the darkness and the light. We know that Light is coming, is ready to flood the earth, to dispel all darkness. But our world is still dark. There is still deep pain, loneliness, illness, death. There is no apparent end in sight. But Advent—the gospel—forms us to be a people who proclaim that there is Light even today. And not only to proclaim, but to pray and work for the Light to break through the darkness even now. There will come a day when all will be Light. For now, we wait with active anticipation for that day to dawn, for the Light to come.
The Jesus Way 