Good News for Those Who Wait
The gospel of Advent for this present darkness.
Seeing as I am a Baptist, I didn’t necessarily grow up with a robust liturgical heritage. While I am not resentful of that by any means, I have learned to appreciate the diversity of liturgies across the broader landscape of orthodoxy, among which is the observance of Advent. Although I haven’t lit any candles or followed any of the collects in the Book of Common Prayer, I have come to value the spirit of Advent and what it is supposed to engender in the hearts and souls of God’s people. Traditionally speaking, Advent usually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day and goes all the way through Christmas Eve. Depending on your denominational traditions, this might involve adorning the sanctuary in blue decor, making wreaths, and lighting candles. Notwithstanding your tradition, though, the weeks leading up to Christmas are often filled with a palpable sense of anticipation as we collectively rejoice in the appearance (epifainō) of the Christ of God and relish in the love, joy, hope, and peace that accompany his arrival.
The liturgical emphasis of Advent, however, is not necessarily about getting us ready to celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus on Christmas Day. As
once pointed out, Advent isn’t a season when we, as the church, pretend that Jesus hasn’t been born yet so we can all get excited about Christmas morning all over again. The weeks leading up to Christmas aren’t meant to invoke corporate amnesia among God’s people so that their holiday cheer is more sincere. “Advent,” Taylor continues, “isn’t about the past. It’s about the future” — and, I’d add, it’s about the present. It is an ecclesiastical moment that is tailor-made to speak to our current moment in time. As we consider how the community of faith lived and acted in the days leading up to Jesus’s First Advent, we are shown how we are to live and act as we await his Second Advent. In other words, just as God’s people in the early days of the New Testament were a people “in waiting,” so, too, are we, as Christ’s church, a people “in waiting.”Like the saints of old, we wait with eager anticipation for the coming of our Lord. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” St. Paul says, “and from it, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). The church waits for the eschatological culmination of their hope, which is none other than the Christ of God bringing to fruition all of God’s promises of restoration, deliverance, and peace (1 Thess. 1:9–10). This time of waiting, though, is not supposed to be marked by fretting or hand-wringing. After all, “God has not given us a spirit of fear,” the apostle says elsewhere, “but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7). The good news of Christ’s first coming is that which imbues us with the conviction to wait patiently and faithfully for his second coming. This conviction is downstream of the message first heralded to petrified shepherds. “Fear not,” the angel boomed, “for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). The birth of the Savior meant that Israel’s time of waiting was over; the promises of God were being realized in that very hour.
Even as the saints of old clung to the word of God’s promise that their Redeemer would one day come, the church of Christ possesses a more certain word of promise since the Redeemer has already come. “We,” St. Peter says, “have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention” (2 Pet. 1:19). Our faith is sure because it rests on the “better promises” of the Christ of God who has come to live, die, and rise again on our behalf (Heb. 8:6). Advent, you see, is a time for remembering and rejoicing in the “better promises” that are already ours in Christ — namely, the forgiveness of sins that is given to us in the body and blood of Jesus. Insofar as we wait, holding fast to the confession of Christ crucified and resurrected for us, our waiting isn’t in vain. It is hopeful and certain since it is tethered not to a promise yet to be fulfilled but to a promise that has become a reality in and through Jesus of Nazareth.
This is where we still are as the church, waiting for the arrival of our Lord and King. But as we do so, this present darkness seems to get deeper, and our waiting seems to grow longer, which is why the gospel of Advent is so potent. “Advent,” writes Anthony Robinson, “positions the church where we do in fact live, between hope and fulfillment, and in contested territory where all that distorts, disfigures, and destroys life, is yet real and powerful.” Rather than ignoring or turning a blind eye to the present, Advent invites us to stare it down with the incontrovertible expectation that he who came is coming again. “Jesus coming down from heaven,” Charles Spurgeon once asserted, “is the pledge that he will take his people up to heaven; his taking our nature is the seal of our being lifted up to stand before his throne.”1 Take heart, sinner, and have a cup of cheer because your Savior and Friend is coming soon.
Grace, peace, and Merry Christmas to you, friends.
Charles Spurgeon, Good Tidings of Great Joy: Christ’s Incarnation the Foundation of Christianity (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2023), 87.