When Jeremiah wrote to the Jews exiled in Babylon, he warned them very specifically about listening to the false prophets, who promised a speedy homecoming from Babylon, picking up as though nothing had changed. Those prophets had told the people what they wanted to hear; but Jeremiah talks about a deeper meaning to adversity and hardship. The exiles will come home - that is true - but not for a long time, and not until God's purposes are made good. In the meantime, they are to settle down, build homes, raise families, and seek the welfare of the foreign country in which they find themselves.
The thing about prophecy is that it can be read to suit nearly every agenda. In our own day we often find it difficult to imagine God's word directed to an entire nation. We may hear the call to repentance and justice, but we think of it as a call to
individuals
. As Christians, however, we claim meaning and purpose for our lives, not as independent persons, but as members of Christ's body. We rejoice together, we suffer together, and we live our ordinary lives together. Always together. And "together" means not only those people with whose opinions we agree, but all those for whom Christ lived and died. And that means everyone, not just the visible Church.
Which brings us to Advent. We check the news every day, and often the reality is ugly, and it screams for attention like a spoiled child. But we live in the "now and the not yet." We look toward the celebration of Christmas, the birth of Christ, which we observe as a real event of some 2000 years ago; that is our "now." Advent is more than that, though. In it we look with expectation toward the coming of Christ in glory, "not yet," but just as real and certain as His first coming. Here at St. Anne's we are reminded of that reality every time we look up at the Christus Victor above the choir. It is the perfect picture of the now and the not yet - the cross is there, and it is a necessary part of our story, but it is not the ultimate reality.
Advent is the season of the now and the not yet.
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
- Collect for the 1
st
Sunday of Advent
