The Advent of the Messiah

Advent begins on The First Sunday in Advent (Nov. 28th this year). The final three Sundays of Advent, December 5, 12, and 19, will lead us on to the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. It varies slightly in length, but the season of Advent this year will be twenty-seven days. The Celtic tradition and the Orthodox tradition have forty-day observances of Advent, mirroring in length the season of Lent. Celtic Advent starts on November 15 and ends on December 24. Another distinction is its pronounced penitential tone. One can find humility, abstinence and fasting emphasized more with Celtic observances.

Those penitential themes are not completely missing from our observance of Advent either. Vestments are often either violet or blue, signaling solemn penitence or the joyous expectation of royalty. In almost every aspect, the Season of Advent is a complex mixture of themes. The prominent theme is “The Messiah comes” but the context changes.

1.    We think of it in personal terms of our own hearts receiving the fullness of Christ for a deeper experience of his life within us,

2.    We anticipate the communal celebration of Christmas,

3.    We recall the Messianic expectation of Israel awaiting rescue from the dark years of exile: the period taught to us by the Hebrew prophets,

4.    We ponder the future advent of Christ at the end of time when the kingdom of God is fully consummated.

The characters we think of during Advent are the prophets. This Advent, the Sunday lessons will likely have us hearing from Jeremiah, Malachi, Zephaniah, and Micah. Our hymns will likely recall Isaiah to us. The New Testament figures that come to us in Advent are John the Baptist, (himself, a paragon of Hebrew prophecy), and The Blessed Virgin Mary.

There is a kind of playing with time in Advent. We hold many temporal positions at once. The Holy Eucharist is always like this, to some extent. We are in the here and now, and yet we are encountering the whole story of Salvation in the moment too. We are in the story told and the Gospel proclaimed. Chronos is our usual look at time, a sequential experience with one moment following the last and moving to the next. Kairos is God’s way with time, the past and the future flooding into the present, the eternal Now. In the sacrament, we are doing it all. We are in creation and the final things, the eschaton. We are with Moses sloshing through the damp ground of the seabed left by waters piled up into walls on either side. We are listening to Paul’s letters sent from prison in Rome, and we are witnesses of Christ’s miracles, people at the foot of the cross, or spice bearers at the entrance of the empty tomb. We are Chronos/Kairos pilgrims in our sacramental gatherings of the Eucharist.

In Advent, however, this time-play is even more pronounced. We are people of old, children of Israel desperate for a Savior to get us out of Assyria, or out of Babylon. We are also first-century people of hope in the Roman-occupied Holy Land, wondering when God will come to save us, or how the rabbi pointed out by John the Baptist could possibly be the expected Messiah. We are also people of the current day, wondering how we can open wider our hearts to fully realize the Christ within. (Hymn 74—“Blest be the King whose coming is in the name of God! For him let doors be opened, no hearts against him barred!”) We are people who see destruction and chaos in our world. We deeply consider how we must prepare for the ultimate advent of the Messiah. We know our scriptures are filled with images of the triumphant return and the Judgement.

Let’s finish with these two Advent hymns. The first is a translation of St. Ambrose’s hymn, soft, and reflective of the first advent of the Savior with a gentle plainsong tune. The second is a strong hymn of Charles Wesley, boldly painting a picture of Christ’s second coming, glorious and triumphant. Different as can be, both belonging to Advent:

Redeemer of the nations, come;
reveal yourself in virgin birth,
the birth which ages all adore,
a wondrous birth, befitting God

From human will you do not spring,
but from the Spirit of our God;
O Word of God, come; take our flesh
and grow as child in Mary’s womb. (Hymn 55)

And…

Lo! He comes, with clouds descending,
once for our salvation slain;
thousand thousand saints attending
swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Christ the Lord returns to reign.

Every eye shall now behold him,
robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at nought and sold him,
pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing
shall the true Messiah see. (Hymn 57)