Today marks the beginning of the Advent season. True, we have just finished with Thanksgiving. Our stomachs are still full of turkey, our spirits with thankfulness, and our memories with family and friends. But still, it is already the time to look ahead, for Advent is upon us. Advent is the time when we look toward Christ's coming. We prepare for the time when we will meet Christ face to face. We make ourselves ready to meet our Savior.
When you think about it, in reality we are celebrating two Advent seasons. The first that we celebrate has already passed, and we celebrate it through remembering. We remember how the people of the Old Testament waited for the Messiah to come. We read of the prophecies, which gave them hope, and we look forward to celebrating the day of Jesus' birth. That is the first Advent that we celebrate, the Advent of those who were waiting for Christ to comełEmmanuel-God made flesh.
The second Advent is where we are right now. We are waiting for the Resurrected Christ to come again. We celebrate who Christ was and is and all He has done for us. We strive to emulate Him in word and in deed, and we seek to be like Him in mind as well. We remember Him through the sacraments and as we worship each week. We look for His face in every walk of life. That is our present-day Advent, the time that we are living right now.
So what do we do in this time of two Advents? What is our purpose? What can we expect to happen in our lives?
I like to think of Advent as a time of preparation, of getting ready. And when we look at our Old Testament readings for today we can see how others lived during their Advent time, waiting for the Messiah to come.
In both of our Old Testament readings, Psalm 80 and Isaiah 64, we find people who are desperate. They are calling on God-begging God to come to them and save them from the world that they inhabit. They are people who are waiting for a Savior, waiting to be delivered, waiting for the day that has been promised.
Isaiah's people have been waiting for a long time, and are in a bad way. It almost seems that they think that God has abandoned them, they cry with such fervor. "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down," they cry! They need God in their lives-nothing else can save them. And so, in spite of their feeling of possible abandonment, it is to God that they cry. They know that only God can rescue them from their current situation. They still have faith and they know that God is their only hope. They even appeal to God with the knowledge that they are God's children. "Now consider, we are your people," they say. I wonder if they are trying to remind God or themselves.
The psalm is even more direct, "Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved!" With their prayer of deliverance, the psalmist shows that these people too are an Advent people, waiting for God to send the Messiah, looking to God for their hope-for their salvation.
From these two readings it seems that being an Advent people is all about calling on God for help-about being so desperate that you beg God to come and save you. I think that is right. When we call on God, we are saying that we need God, that we are totally dependent on God to save us, that God is the one we trust; that God is our salvation.
The preparation of Advent-making ourselves ready to meet Christ when He comes again-is all about knowing how much we need God. When we know that, when we realize that God is our only hope, we call on God-making ourselves ready to meet the Divine, whenever that day may be.
We know from our Mark reading that the time that Christ will come again is a mystery to us. We may try to figure it out and through current day prophecies determine the date. But the Bible tells us that we do not know when the time will come. We cannot know. And yet, these are words of hope in Mark's apocalyptic discourse.
Mark is trying to prepare the disciples for the time when He will come again. They were in the same Advent then that we are now. They were waiting for the time when He would rule Heaven and earth forever. Jesus is trying to instill in the disciples a confidence in the second Advent, encouraging them to watch and wait. Be alert, Jesus tells them. Be ready. Place your hope in God. These things will come to pass. Time is in God's hands. God will not leave us alone. God will not leave us without hope. This will happen, Jesus says, and I want you to be ready.
And so here we are-watching and waiting-remembering the first Advent and living in the second. We wonder about the magic and mystery of Advent itself-how and when will Christ come? How can we be ready?
We are ready for Christ to come when we call on Him to save us. We are ready when we realize that we are God's children and that God will not abandon us. We are ready when we live each day as if that were the day when we will meet Him-awake and alert looking for Christ in every aspect of our lives.
We are ready when we know that we need help, and that the help we need belongs to God. We are ready when our only hope comes from God. That is our time of Advent, that is how we wait for Christ to come again. May God grant us the grace to live this time of Advent with expectancy and with hope, calling on our God each and every day. Amen.
Peace,
Rev. Cynthia Bacon
Minister
You may email at:
cbacon@heritagemadison.org
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This page was last updated on December 04, 2002.