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O Adonai — “O Lord”
The Fourth Sunday Of Advent
We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son Jesus Christ cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fourth Sunday Of Advent
O Adonai -- “O Lord”
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A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
✛
No more Advents, please?
The more time passes the more I love Advent more than any other season of the church year. But the more time passes the more prepared I am never to observe another Advent season again.
It seems there are only two Advents that are of any consequence, and these two are essential to our understanding of the Christian faith and hope more than any others. You can go through your entire Christian pilgrimage and not know a thing about the second Advent ever observed right down to last year’s observance, and you’ll be just fine. The jury’s still out on this one! But each of us must come to understand and know the implications of the two most important Advents ever observed and yet to be observed: they are the first Advent and the last one.
The first Advent happened in this wise. When God created the universe, and then us, we were innocent of sin, but then we became acquainted with it and have been on intimate terms ever since. From that first fallen moment until now God has persisted in helping us try to long for him more than we long for anything else. He began this persistent work, first, by gathering a nation together, think Israel, and he forged a special relationship with them. Israel became a kingdom with a king, think Jerusalem and David, and God promised the kingdom would never end, and that an heir of David would reign over it forever.
Later these promises seemed to be voided when the nation dissolved because of foreign conquest and subjugation, think Babylonian exile. Prior to exile, during it, and afterwards, God sent prophets both to warn and encourage the people that whether the people kept theirs or not, God always keeps his word, and that his promises to them were still in full force and effect, and that they should expect him to deliver on that king and kingdom that would never end.
Jerusalem and its temple were reestablished after the exile in Babylon, but this time the kingdom was a shadow of its former self. In time it became nothing more than a client state ruled by Rome whose emperor was Caesar Augustus. Augustus needed money, and proposed taxing his empire, so he issued a decree requiring everyone to return to the town of his birth to register for the tax.
A young girl named Mary, who was living in a town about sixty miles or so north of Jerusalem, was visited by an angel, and though she had never had intimate relations with a man, through the interventions of the Holy Spirit she conceived a child. She was already betrothed to a man named Joseph, and though he was troubled at learning of Mary’s condition, married her anyway. Because Joseph was originally from the South, he had to take his pregnant wife on the 80 mile journey past Jerusalem to his home town of Bethlehem to register for the tax. It was while they were in Bethlehem that Mary had her baby that she named Jesus. The waiting was over. Christ’s first advent was accomplished.
The first Advent is historical and nonnegotiable to the Christian faith. We who claim the title Christian acknowledge that there was a time in human history when Christ was not in the world physically like you and I are now, but then he was. Prior to his human life, many people over many generations lived in hope that they would witness the Christ’s appearing. At a certain time in history, in a particular place, all those hopes and expectations were met and fulfilled, first in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ conceived and made flesh in the womb of his mother, Mary. Secondly, and joyfully in his nativity when humans began to meet the Lord face-to-face. Christ’s first Advent was accomplished.
The last Advent began in this wise. Mary’s son grew up, and spent the last three years of his adult life traveling, teaching, preaching, and performing amazing signs. His life was ended when he was executed by order of the state. Thus, he died. Some of his friends buried him in a tomb. Three days later he was found to be alive again. Nobody saw him climb out of the tomb, but in the month or so following this resurrection, many people claimed to see him and speak with him; they found him very much alive, but somehow better.
After forty days he left his friends and followers; they didn’t see him any more after that. But before he left them he told them that they should keep themselves in a constant state of anticipation, readiness, and preparation because he was going to come back. And if they thought his first quiet and pastoral Advent was miraculous and world changing, his second coming would be so shattering that even the dead would take note as they are shaken out of their graves and the flesh put back on their bones.
Jesus’ friends stayed ready for this general resurrection, observing a perpetual advent every day of their lives. But they all died or were killed before Jesus came back again. And after two or three hundred years, we have written records of the church praying that Jesus would hurry up and come again in power and great triumph. And the Christian family in every generation since then has been praying, hasten the coming of your kingdom O, Lord. In other words, hurry up, and come back among us. Christ’s last Advent has not been accomplished, but we give voice to a longing that it be accomplished, and that right soon.
You and I, and our brother and sister Christians throughout all the world are the present generation of believers and disciples, priests and evangelists, teachers, apostles, and martyrs, once again taking up our yearly prayer that this Advent become for us the most important advent of them all— the last one.
We want this one to be the one in which our Lord Jesus Christ answers the numberless infinities of sighs and groans and supplications to return to us Lord Jesus. Come on clouds of glory, let the trumpet blast, the seals be broken, let the graves be opened. Shake us, sift us, judge us, save us, resurrect us— even so Lord Jesus come among us. And bring with you that final and eternal age of life with you, in which there is no more sorrow, no more dying, no more longing and supplication, just the very real, living, glorious presence of Jesus Christ, that will be seen without tears, and seen face-to-face, never to go away again, and us never to have to say goodbye again, not to Jesus, not to one another, not to those we love most in the world.
And when you come to believe the fullness of the Christian faith with all your heart, you begin to discern what good, good news Jesus’ last advent means for all creation of which humans are a very good part. And when you discern that you begin longing for its redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ, and you begin to find yourself praying, from the depths of your soul, that this advent become for us the best one of all— that is, the last one of all.
O, Lord no more Advents, please?
