Today we begin the Christian year. It is the first Sunday in the Advent season and as we enter into this new year, our hearts are moved with anticipation of what the coming year will hold of the blessings of our Lord. But let us not rush through this Advent season - it will pass soon enough. Let us take time to reflect upon Advent and its meaning and allow the Lord time and space to bring these lessons home to us.
Advent is primarily the season of anticipation of the celebration of the birth of Christ. But how are we to anticipate this celebration?
Advent is really a complex event. Throughout the Church and throughout history, Advent has been a time, not only of listening to the joy of the angels and the shepherds and the wise men, but of listening to the call of John the Baptist to make ready the way of the Lord with repentance, and the cry of the Spirit and the Bride in Revelation, saying, “Come, Lord Jesus,” for we, like those Jewish believers who awaited the first coming of the Messiah, have our own coming of the Messiah to look forward to: the second coming, with all that that means of both joy and fear.
This multifaceted understanding of Advent is reflected in the Collect and Propers for today, the first Sunday in Advent. In them, we are reminded that we who believe in Christ are to live in the light of the coming of Christ which we will experience, His coming on the Resurrection Day, the Day of the fullness of our salvation.
In Romans 13, Paul speaks of us as those who have been asleep, spiritually asleep. In times past, we have lived our lives on this earth as if it would always be night and we could indulge ourselves in living that is displeasing to God, violating His moral law. We have lived dreaming that there would be no consequences to our actions. But this was all a lie and God has opened our eyes to recognise that the Day is at hand. God has raised His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead, the firstborn of the new life to come, and He is coming again to bring us into the fullness of the salvation He has purchased for us. Things have changed. We are now the children of Light, destined for the Day, and the Day approaches. Therefore, it is only fitting that we live in the Light of that Day, the Light that is already ours and that will be ours. We should not only wake up and get out of the bed of self-indulgence and self-centeredness, but we should put on our clothes, the armour of light, and get ready to enter this Day that is dawning.
Advent is a time to remember all of this. Christ’s first coming foreshadows His final coming, in which we shall share. Yes, we do rejoice in those special aspects of His first coming, and are glad to look back to the baby born in the manger and recall the amazing condescension of the Son of God in His taking on human flesh. We too sing the Magnificat and revel in the fulflilment of ancient prophecy and the fullness of the times come to pass and the salvation God then brought to His people. But when are we living? We are not living in those days and a lot has happened since then! We are in the days of a new waiting and anticipation of a new coming: the final coming, to bring to consummation the purposes of God. We should therefore live as those who find themselves in such an exciting and meaningful time.
This, of course, necessitates self-examination. Paul challenges us to ask ourselves the question: are we living in a spiritually sleepy manner or are we awake? Do we live in the light we now have and anticipate the light to come, or are we indulging our selves in the thinking and habits of darkness. This is a time of the year to examine ourselves to be sure we are ready to receive our Lord’s coming with good conscience and gladness, for the whole point of Christ’s coming in the first place was to save His people from their sins.
As we examine ourselves, the natural place to begin is with the basic, fundamental morality of the ten commandments. According to Paul in Romans 2, this is the law by which Christ will judge us when he returns. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit has been given to the church that we might be able to keep the Law of God. Here in ch. 13, he tells us of the motivation that enables us to keep the law, and that motivation is love. Love fulfills the law for it is a motivating power that leads us to loving action.
So, how are we doing in the way of God‘s commands? As we ask ourselves this question, we must avoid our modern tendency to sentimentalism. It is common in our day for people to think that if they intended to do something right then their failure to do it doesn’t matter. But this is wrong; it demonstrates an impoverished understanding of morality and justice. Paul does not say love fulfils the law by giving us good feelings about our neighbour. He says that love fulfils the law because it does no harm to one’s neighbour. It does what the law says we are to do. The point of Romans 13 is right motivation worked out in right action.
Are we keeping God’s commands? As we seek to be ready for his coming, surely an examination of ourselves in the light of His Law is the best place to start.
But we have presented before us in our Scripture readings another means of examining our selves. This is by asking ourselves if we are attending to prayer. Let us beware that we are not in the same position as those Jews were when Jesus came to Jerusalem to present Himself publicly as the long awaited Messiah, as we read in Matthew 21. This coming of Christ, like His birth in Bethlehem, is another foreshadowing of the final coming that is before us. When He comes again, He comes to judge the earth, and, as Scripture reminds us, God’s judgement begins with house of God. The Jews cried Hosanna in the Highest and rejoiced at his coming as He rode into Jerusalem on that day, but they found themselves hearing His rebukes in the Temple, for they had not been ready for His coming by watching for that coming in prayer. Rather, they had been indulging themselves in the things of this world.
It is by living a life of prayer that we live spiritually awake. As we attend to prayer privately, in our families, and in the congregation, we are paying attention to spiritual affairs. We are spending time thinking about our spiritual condition and the spiritual needs of our neighbours. Instead of spending our time in this world preoccupied with our own little concerns, we involve ourselves in the grand, eternal concerns of the Kingdom of God. Indeed, we join with the Holy Spirit and the universal church in whom He dwells by expressing our longing for the Kingdom of God to come and for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Our waiting on God is a kind of passive obedience. We are willing to let God have His time in our lives and in our concerns. But there is also an active waiting; a waiting that contributes to the thing for which we wait. Our prayers are a means of waiting actively. We are doing something about the kingdom of God. We are bringing the kingdom of God to earth, now and in its final denouement, as we ask God to act and bring this kingdom into our lives.
But while prayer is a means of actively waiting on God, it is also a means of passive waiting. As we pray and our vision of our Lord and of His grand purposes for His kingdom are thereby enlarged, we find the grace of patience which we so desperately need to endure those hardships that are ours in this world as we must wait for our salvation to be complete. We find the patience we need with our own sins and failures; we find the patience we need with other people; and we find comfort in the patience of God. We breathe that calm spirit of heaven, that knows no hurry, but only the perfect will of God. Prayer then is both an active and a passive way in which we stay awake in the sleepy world and keep at the ready for the coming of the Son of Man.
In the gospel of Luke, we learn that there were believing Jews who did attend the Temple for the right reasons and in the right spirit. We know the names of some of them: Simeon and Anna. These two, and I’m sure there were more, lived their lives in light of that first coming of the Lord. They were awake. They were both obedient to God’s law and prayerful. And when He was presented to them in the Temple by his parents, they recognised Him and delighted in Him and were not ashamed.
Let us take these old Jewish saints as our examples this Advent season, by living in the Light of the Lord’s coming. Instead of thinking of ways we can indulge our flesh, let us love one another, keeping God’s commands, and continue steadfastly in prayer. Let us join the cry of the Spirit and the Bride in Revelation, saying, “Come, Lord Jesus,” keeping spiritually awake and ready, for the Day we long for is at hand.
Advent is primarily the season of anticipation of the celebration of the birth of Christ. But how are we to anticipate this celebration?
Advent is really a complex event. Throughout the Church and throughout history, Advent has been a time, not only of listening to the joy of the angels and the shepherds and the wise men, but of listening to the call of John the Baptist to make ready the way of the Lord with repentance, and the cry of the Spirit and the Bride in Revelation, saying, “Come, Lord Jesus,” for we, like those Jewish believers who awaited the first coming of the Messiah, have our own coming of the Messiah to look forward to: the second coming, with all that that means of both joy and fear.
This multifaceted understanding of Advent is reflected in the Collect and Propers for today, the first Sunday in Advent. In them, we are reminded that we who believe in Christ are to live in the light of the coming of Christ which we will experience, His coming on the Resurrection Day, the Day of the fullness of our salvation.
In Romans 13, Paul speaks of us as those who have been asleep, spiritually asleep. In times past, we have lived our lives on this earth as if it would always be night and we could indulge ourselves in living that is displeasing to God, violating His moral law. We have lived dreaming that there would be no consequences to our actions. But this was all a lie and God has opened our eyes to recognise that the Day is at hand. God has raised His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead, the firstborn of the new life to come, and He is coming again to bring us into the fullness of the salvation He has purchased for us. Things have changed. We are now the children of Light, destined for the Day, and the Day approaches. Therefore, it is only fitting that we live in the Light of that Day, the Light that is already ours and that will be ours. We should not only wake up and get out of the bed of self-indulgence and self-centeredness, but we should put on our clothes, the armour of light, and get ready to enter this Day that is dawning.
Advent is a time to remember all of this. Christ’s first coming foreshadows His final coming, in which we shall share. Yes, we do rejoice in those special aspects of His first coming, and are glad to look back to the baby born in the manger and recall the amazing condescension of the Son of God in His taking on human flesh. We too sing the Magnificat and revel in the fulflilment of ancient prophecy and the fullness of the times come to pass and the salvation God then brought to His people. But when are we living? We are not living in those days and a lot has happened since then! We are in the days of a new waiting and anticipation of a new coming: the final coming, to bring to consummation the purposes of God. We should therefore live as those who find themselves in such an exciting and meaningful time.
This, of course, necessitates self-examination. Paul challenges us to ask ourselves the question: are we living in a spiritually sleepy manner or are we awake? Do we live in the light we now have and anticipate the light to come, or are we indulging our selves in the thinking and habits of darkness. This is a time of the year to examine ourselves to be sure we are ready to receive our Lord’s coming with good conscience and gladness, for the whole point of Christ’s coming in the first place was to save His people from their sins.
As we examine ourselves, the natural place to begin is with the basic, fundamental morality of the ten commandments. According to Paul in Romans 2, this is the law by which Christ will judge us when he returns. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit has been given to the church that we might be able to keep the Law of God. Here in ch. 13, he tells us of the motivation that enables us to keep the law, and that motivation is love. Love fulfills the law for it is a motivating power that leads us to loving action.
So, how are we doing in the way of God‘s commands? As we ask ourselves this question, we must avoid our modern tendency to sentimentalism. It is common in our day for people to think that if they intended to do something right then their failure to do it doesn’t matter. But this is wrong; it demonstrates an impoverished understanding of morality and justice. Paul does not say love fulfils the law by giving us good feelings about our neighbour. He says that love fulfils the law because it does no harm to one’s neighbour. It does what the law says we are to do. The point of Romans 13 is right motivation worked out in right action.
Are we keeping God’s commands? As we seek to be ready for his coming, surely an examination of ourselves in the light of His Law is the best place to start.
But we have presented before us in our Scripture readings another means of examining our selves. This is by asking ourselves if we are attending to prayer. Let us beware that we are not in the same position as those Jews were when Jesus came to Jerusalem to present Himself publicly as the long awaited Messiah, as we read in Matthew 21. This coming of Christ, like His birth in Bethlehem, is another foreshadowing of the final coming that is before us. When He comes again, He comes to judge the earth, and, as Scripture reminds us, God’s judgement begins with house of God. The Jews cried Hosanna in the Highest and rejoiced at his coming as He rode into Jerusalem on that day, but they found themselves hearing His rebukes in the Temple, for they had not been ready for His coming by watching for that coming in prayer. Rather, they had been indulging themselves in the things of this world.
It is by living a life of prayer that we live spiritually awake. As we attend to prayer privately, in our families, and in the congregation, we are paying attention to spiritual affairs. We are spending time thinking about our spiritual condition and the spiritual needs of our neighbours. Instead of spending our time in this world preoccupied with our own little concerns, we involve ourselves in the grand, eternal concerns of the Kingdom of God. Indeed, we join with the Holy Spirit and the universal church in whom He dwells by expressing our longing for the Kingdom of God to come and for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Our waiting on God is a kind of passive obedience. We are willing to let God have His time in our lives and in our concerns. But there is also an active waiting; a waiting that contributes to the thing for which we wait. Our prayers are a means of waiting actively. We are doing something about the kingdom of God. We are bringing the kingdom of God to earth, now and in its final denouement, as we ask God to act and bring this kingdom into our lives.
But while prayer is a means of actively waiting on God, it is also a means of passive waiting. As we pray and our vision of our Lord and of His grand purposes for His kingdom are thereby enlarged, we find the grace of patience which we so desperately need to endure those hardships that are ours in this world as we must wait for our salvation to be complete. We find the patience we need with our own sins and failures; we find the patience we need with other people; and we find comfort in the patience of God. We breathe that calm spirit of heaven, that knows no hurry, but only the perfect will of God. Prayer then is both an active and a passive way in which we stay awake in the sleepy world and keep at the ready for the coming of the Son of Man.
In the gospel of Luke, we learn that there were believing Jews who did attend the Temple for the right reasons and in the right spirit. We know the names of some of them: Simeon and Anna. These two, and I’m sure there were more, lived their lives in light of that first coming of the Lord. They were awake. They were both obedient to God’s law and prayerful. And when He was presented to them in the Temple by his parents, they recognised Him and delighted in Him and were not ashamed.
Let us take these old Jewish saints as our examples this Advent season, by living in the Light of the Lord’s coming. Instead of thinking of ways we can indulge our flesh, let us love one another, keeping God’s commands, and continue steadfastly in prayer. Let us join the cry of the Spirit and the Bride in Revelation, saying, “Come, Lord Jesus,” keeping spiritually awake and ready, for the Day we long for is at hand.
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