"For You O Lord, my soul in stillness waits – truly my hope is in God."
John Bell, Taize - Psalm 40
Waiting is hard - plain and simple. We live in a society of instant gratification – of iphones with constant internet access, of fast food chains, and of remote controls. We don’t wait well, and in fact at times it seems we don’t know how to wait at all. It is easy to turn our eyes past the Advent season toward the anticipation of the joy of Christmas morning. Yet the waiting that is built into the Advent season is an essential part of our understanding of the person of God and His actions in history.
The season of Advent, a season of waiting, is designed to cultivate our awareness of God’s radical redemption and healing – past, present, and future. During Advent we hear the prophecies of the Messiah’s coming and we heighten our anticipation for the ultimate fulfillment of all Old Testament promises, when the wolf will lie down with the lamb, death will be swallowed up, and ever tear will be wiped away. While Advent is the first season of the liturgical year, it is first and foremost about the end of time. Advent literally means “coming” or “arrival” and because we celebrate the Advent season prior to Christmas, we often misunderstand Advent to simply be a time to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the birth of a child. While this is certainly an important part of Advent, the primary focus is actually on the second coming of Christ. The Advent season is concerned with the future and the deep soulful yearning for an end to all that is contrary to the ways of God. That said, advent is meant to be a season of hope and promise! We are not aimlessly wandering in the wilderness – history has already been decided, the battle has been won! It is essential that we begin the liturgical year with this focus on God’s holy and central intention – otherwise the story of Jesus which we rehearse from conception and birth to death and resurrection can seem less than what it is: the deliberate fulfilling of divine purpose, worked out through history.
A purposeful tension must be built into our practice of the Advent season. Christ has come, and yet suffering and sin remains. While we remember Israel’s waiting and hoping and we give thanks for Christ’s birth, we also anticipate His second coming at the end of time. For this reason Advent historically began as a penitential season, a time for discipline, preparation and intentional repentance in the expectation and hope of the second coming.
We begin Advent looking to the future: “The reign of God is coming. Prepare!” and we end with the past: “the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Rejoice!” The irony is that the sacred story of the Gospel, to be understood correctly, has to be read backward. It is impossible to fully understand the birth and ministry of Jesus until we know of his death and resurrection, and similarly the past can’t be fully clear to us until we have a firm grasp on the promise of the future. During Advent we are learning how to wait patiently for the future reign of God, not simply how to wait for December 25th to arrive.
Throughout the Advent season we are reminded of the good news we are soon to celebrate: A child is to be born whose name will be Emmanuel, God with us. Even while we await the day of the final reign of God, God is with us, in our midst ensuring victory. And so while we wait the church prays:
Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
Both to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
