There is a timeless wisdom and majesty in the flow of the church year. We participate with the ages in the anxious waiting for the coming of the Promised One in Advent. We witness with the shepherds and the kings and the wounded people of all time the birthing of God in the earthy space of his creation at Christmas.
Through Lent we know with the One who came to stand with us what it means to love in a world of hate, to make whole in a world of brokenness, to set one's face resolutely to overcome sin and its most potent weapon, death. At Easter we know resurrection, and the power of new life. Resurrection life gives birth to the church at Pentecost, and then we review and reaffirm Sunday after Sunday the beliefs of the faithful as the gospel teachings unfold.
Advent tells us again, Christ is coming. He who has come at a historic point of space and time, comes anew each time a heart turns and opens to him. And when the times are fulfilled he will come again to be with us even beyond the reaches of our time. In Advent we watch and wait expectantly to see the wonderful unfolding of the works of God's love in our own space and time. Each new year is new time, and every year we are occupying a particular space in the workings of our own lives. Advent invites us to come and adore the Christ who has come to dwell in the manger of our own hearts. And for the one who is born anew in Christ, this is an ever new and exciting event.
So I invite you to open yourself to the birthing of the Christ child at this new and pregnant time in your life, that it might become holy time for you. And I invite you to do so through a pondering of the lessons from Scripture which are designated for the four Sundays of Advent in 1977.
First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 1977
Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:37-44
The scene is of cosmic proportions because the event is of cosmic importance. Isaiah tells us that all the nations will be gathered. Many peoples will come to the Lord's mountain that they might be told about the Lord's ways and walk in his paths. Nations will be judged and terms will be imposed. The ways of humanity will be dramatically changed by the coming of Light into the world.
How strange the words sound to our pragmatic and security-conscious ears. There shall be no more training for war and all of our defense stockpiles will be made into implements for feeding hungry people. Apparently this is how Isaiah understands the meaning of "walking in the light of the Lord." We are to feed hungry people rather than to create more and more weapons in order to safeguard ourselves and our possessions.
From time to time the light does break through into the darkness of our storehouse mentality, and we remember the God who gave himself away for us on the cross. But most of the time we are all too happy with having and accumulating and protecting, and we are lulled by the martial air of our stockpiles and the warm feeling of our pleasures. The cosmic judgment day is consigned to the never-never land of our romanticized culture religion. We really don't want to be shaken out of our comfort-drugged sleep by the Word of God who wants us to share with him in his life, death, and resurrection.
But the Word does come—sharply and insistently to wake us up! Paul saw that Word that came to him like a blazing light in the darkness of his own life journey. And he was shaken to the core, so shaken that the stream of his life broke through into a totally new channel, as if diverted by an earthquake. Wake up! That is the message of Advent. Wake up! For the night is far spent and the new day draws near. Wake up; social convention and comfortable normality no longer have meaning. Wake up; The question can no longer be begged. You must commit yourself one way or the other. Of course we don't like that because we are accustomed to straddling fences and hedging our commitments.
The works of darkness are to be put off and we are to walk freely and vulnerably in the life-giving light of the new day. Paul's words have a peculiar power for those who like to think they exercise power in the world. Only a fool is enamored by his own power, which inevitably entangles him in the network of darkness through the compulsive drives of the ego. We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone can clothe us in the fullness of our being and our giving.
Jesus' warning is even more stark. Don't be fools like those who lived in Noah's time. They thought the old man was crazy because he kept sounding alarms in the midst of the tranquility of the normal and the commonplace. Surely if there were to be some calamitous intrusion of the divine into the natural order of things, there would be some awe-inspiring and properly convincing agency of warning. We don't like the uncertainty and the risk of faith. There is too much tension there. And so we lull ourselves in the commonplace.
Jesus tells us the people were unconcerned up until the very last minute, when it was too late. The image of waking from sleep is so apt. A person who is facing a difficult decision, an uncomfortable work situation, or an unresolved conflict in a personal relationship will want to just drift off into sleep and forget it. Sleep is a much-used vehicle of avoidance. We are to stay awake and be watchful. We cannot know the exact time of God's action. The disciple is called to live in the tension of faithful and vigilant expectancy. We cannot perceive the precise timing or method of the breaking in of God's love in any particular situation or relationship. We are called, not to know with absolute certainty, but to be confidently expectant.
The irony is that God comes precisely in the lowly and the commonplace. He was speaking to those neighbors of Noah through that humble old man, and his warning went unheeded. The Son of Man came to dwell on earth in a dirty and smelly stable. According to the gospels, Jesus seems to have spent most of his time with the poor, the lowly, and the wounded. He entrusted the beginning of his church to uneducated common laborers and a belligerent leader of the opposition.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta suggests to us where we might find Jesus in our day and every day:
We all long for heaven where God is,
but we have it in our power
to be in heaven with him right now—
to be happy with him at this very
moment.
But being happy with him now means:
loving as he loves,
helping as he helps,
giving as he gives,
serving as he serves,
rescuing as he rescues,
being with him for all the twenty-four
hours,
touching him in his distressing
disguise.
Second Sunday in Advent, December 4, 1977
Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-9, Matthew 3:1-12
"Give some evidence that you mean to reform." The words of John the Baptizer are stark and uncompromising. His warning is as crystal clear as the beam of the sun pouring down in the desert where he preached. "Reform your lives! The reign of God is at hand." Reformation is required of those who want to participate in the new age; those who are ready to throw themselves in with the absolute rule of God. John calls on us to confess our sins and to turn our lives over to the new order of things. In essence we will be born again if we will let our lives be formed anew according to the absolute sway of God's love.
How easily we forget that God is totally unimpressed with our own claims to greatness. It is so seductive, that alluring tune of work's righteousness. It puffs us up and fluffs our feathers for the moment. But it does not win God over to our side, as if God could be manipulated by us in that way. When we see greatness in ourselves, we shut ourselves out from the greatness of God. No, we ought to confess with Paul: "I will all the more gladly boast of my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9).
We live by grace and our lives are to show evidence of that grace at work in and through us. Our lives, our actions, should document the work of re¬formation that is going on inside us. Christ who is to come will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and our lives will be on fire with the works of his grace. And fire, if it feeds on itself, dies. But if it spreads to others, it lives. And grace is expressed both in words and in acts of mercy. The world will know we are in Christ because we act like Christ.
Isaiah describes the one who is to come for us and for all women and men. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him and he will have wisdom and understanding and a healthy fear of the Lord. In him will be combined the counsel of the pastor and the strength of the prophet. He will strike down the ruthless and the wicked with the "rod of his mouth" and will give the poor justice and raise up the afflicted. There will be a gentleness about him which will cause natural enemies to be at peace with one another. He will be a peace maker and a reconciler, and in him the nations will receive a new knowledge and see new possibilities. Even the unchosen Gentiles will now be welcomed to the sacred dwelling of God.
Some persons are shut out of the kingdom by their own arrogance and pride. But others are afraid to claim what is offered to them because they feel unworthy. Like the child who is not chosen to play in the game, so they feel not chosen to enter into the new order of things. It is so easy to feel locked in darkness with no possible way out.
But the Light has come, and no personal darkness or hell can withstand the power of his love. Yes, the ones who feel hated and rejected are also invited and loved. In the words of Abbe de Tourville, "Be bold enough always to believe that God is on your side and wholly yours, whatever you may think of yourself." God can see within each of us that which is essentially good, because he has planted it there in his own image. Jesus comes to every soul to call the inviolable potential forth. Our God is the God of infinite possibility.
And, as Paul reminds us, he is the God of faithful promise and absolute hope. Christ Jesus has come to make us one, and through him we can live in perfect harmony. Clearly, the basis and the only ultimate hope for our ability to accept and love one another is his common acceptance and love for us all. We find our common ground for love and discipleship in the promise and mercy of God. He is the Lord of us all because he became the servant of us all. Therein is the stupendous power of the gospel. His love, which is both saving and transforming, is given in the actions of a servant. As Paul reminds us in Philippians 2:5-11, Jesus is highly exalted by God and given the name above every name, specifically because he was willing to become human like us and to take on the form of a slave for us. Exaltation comes from servanthood in the midst of humanity.
Advent reminds us of that promise and that hope contained in Jesus for all ages and for the specific enfleshment of every life. And we need constantly to be reawakened to the fact that we are one with Christ only as we open ourselves to the ongoing work of re-formation in his love. John the Baptizer warns us that we are to give evidence of our commitment to reform. We are to be like the Christ in whose name we are baptized; to become a servant of others as he came to be a servant of all. Thomas Merton sums it up for us: "Without love and compassion for others, our own apparent love for Christ is a fiction."
In this season of Advent let these words sound and resound in the depths of your soul:
"Reform your lives!
The reign of God is at hand."
Conrad Hoover served as the retreat master of Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.. when this article appeared. His article, "No Choice But to Pray," appeared in the January 1977 issue of Sojourners.
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