Advent

[From Our Worth to Him: Devotions for Christian Worship by Mark Paustian. All rights reserved.]

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

I, a poor John the Baptist, made my way through a tangle of wheelchairs in a run-down nursing home. I was there to mark an Advent service I will never forget. I was there to do as God instructed Isaiah: “Comfort, comfort my people” (Isaiah 40:1). So I told a story. A dad and his boy had been hopelessly lost in a blinding snowstorm somewhere deep in the wilderness. A reporter asked the father, “How did you make it? How could you possibly survive?” His answer? “God knew where we were.”

In the course of my message, I played with the brilliant themes of Advent—the already, the now, and the not yet of Jesus’ coming. I hollered my line over and over across the spaces of age and infirmity between us: “God knows where you are!” Staff gathered in the doorway to see what all the shouting was about. Some turned back to their work. Others stayed to sing the achingly beautiful song:

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear” (CW 327:1).

The memory hurts. My bride asked me afterwards, “Did you see what was happening?” I did. I saw wrinkled faces buried in veiny hands. I saw giant tears spilling into laps. I saw naked anguish. I am ashamed to think how little I understood back then of the wound I was exposing and how thoughtlessly I poked my fingers in. People fading in the prison of themselves. People left too much alone.

I dearly hope I said enough. “Loved ones, God knows where you are!”

Advent begins, as does the church year itself, in darkness. We restrain our glorias for a time. It is so that Christmas may come in as a burst. The antidote to the sentimentality of the season is to stare directly into the great dark, not away. Through all the wheelchairs and white hair blow the rumors of the things that are bigger than we are. We must resist denial and face our situation.

Lord, we are not making it! You must come! You have to come!

What are we under the shadow of death? Are you young? Not for long. We have heard the fire-and-brimstone sermon every fatality preaches—“You also.” It insists on being heard.

What are we against the world? How we strain under an indifferent sky, using up our very selves in trying to get it all just so. The world, hostile and broken, refuses. Even at Christmas. Especially then.

We are no match for the devil, that snarling, irrational hatred, that prowling, personal evil who delights in misery and feeds on despair and knows where to insert the blade.

God knows the worst of me. I cannot escape myself and my perpetual flirtation with the dark, my complicity with the world, my ear for the enemy of my soul, my dying. I am no match for me.

For there to be rescue, it could not come in any way that is reasonable. It could not possibly have happened, until it did. Divinity looked on our desperate situation, not away. He felt our need like a kick in the stomach. Our struggle, the common pain of the sinner—oh, the good I want to do!—lay heavy on that great heart. So he came, grace rushing forward to take our side against the sin we so hate.

The coming that is already. In that great show of weakness, God invaded our world. Nothing that is could hold him back. Catch again the full shock of love taking flesh like yours. Through grey infant eyes he saw how things are and was not indifferent. He walked in the broken glass of grief that was not his own but that of the whole world. He got everything right that you ever got wrong or ever will. He died for you. He rose. The thing is done.

The coming that is now. The one who loved you so much then so loves you still. Remember the water and Word that made you his completely. He still loves to join you in the meal of bread and wine, his very body and blood. By Word and sacrament, he would tear your gaze away from all that wounds and terrifies. He could do no better if he stood visibly before you, shining in his own light, madly waving his arms. “Do not be afraid! I am here! I am now!”

The coming that is not yet. No more looking hopefully to this world to stop being for a few days what it is. Advent orients us to a time beyond history and to a better, unbreakable world to come. You know God. He could never leave you like this. Jesus looks at you with eyes of fire that burn with an infinite affection. He knows where you are. He is on his way.

In times past, the color of Advent was always penitential purple for the sorrow about ourselves and for the forgiveness that sweetens the wait. In recent decades and still today, the preferred color of Advent is deep blue.

An in-between color. Not quite the azure sky at midday, but neither is it the full black of midnight. It is an in-between color for the in-between time in which we live. Already the infant Redeemer-King. Not yet the dazzling Son.

Advent begins in darkness. Those candles are not sentimental. They appear and flicker like stars and evoke the hard-won moods of the season: this fierce longing for Jesus and for home, this compassion for an unprepared world, and this desire to give ourselves and our gladness to it.

O sin, O death, O devil, O me, you are no match for Jesus Christ my Lord.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel. (CW 327: refrain)

TO THINK ABOUT

The Advent season, with its already—not yet themes, perfectly mirrors our true situation. How can we keep our normal preparations for the holidays from overwhelming it?

PRAYER

Jesus, thank you for your great arrival into a world that did not deserve you. Thank you for being near in Word and sacrament. We can hardly wait to see you face to face. Please use us as you help many more to see the wonder of you down the pointing finger of John. Amen.

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