Pastor John Wright

This Sunday begins the new Christian year as the first Sunday of Advent. Christians historically have not celebrated "new year" with great vigor. I don't think that this is an accident. Christians have a sense of time, not established by "natural cycles" of planetary trips around a sun, but by God's past, present, and future activity in Jesus Christ. The Christian year focuses on our living, as Augustine said, in "the times between the times." The Christian calendar orders life according to "the mystery of our faith" that we confess in the Eucharistic prayer: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, or what we experience in simaltaneous presence of the past, present, and future life in Christ in the elements of the body and blood of Christ at the Lord's Supper. In all the ways that really matter, we live in the same "year" as the apostle Paul, Irenaeus, St. Benedict, St. Francis, John Wesley, Phineas Bresee -- the time when God has already defeated sin, death, and Satan in Jesus Christ and called us to participate in the future time now, even surrounded by the death throes of death, awaiting the restoration of all things in Christ. This age is not our time -- our time has come, and our time is coming. Therefore, the life we live we live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

Advent thus begins with looking to the end and calling us to this end now. Unfortunately in American Christianity arising out of certain 19th century movements, Protestant evangelical Christians have understood "end" in a strictly chronological sense -- thus such things as The Left Behind series speak of the "end" without ever really speaking as Christians of the "end." Scriptures do speak of an end chronologically in the return of Christ -- a realistic "eschatology" that uses lots of different imagery to describe the indescribable in the coming of the fullness of God's kingdom in Christ on earth as it is in heaven as a divine gift, not a human accomplishment. Yet Scriptures speak of the "end" chronologically to emphasize the importance of our experiencing the "end" as the full accomplishment of God's Spirit working in our lives to the fullness of God's purposes for us. Given the uncertainty of the chronological "end", let us focus on the "end" of fully participating in God's life through Christ in the Spirit today.

Zechariah 14:4-9

The Zecahriah passage looks towards a divine revelation in Jerusalem, accompanied by God's saints or holy ones. Jerusalem also serves as a type, a spiritual figure, of the life of the church. Notice the "direction" of the passage -- it is in the coming of God as king to the world with the saints to fully establish God's reign rather than the removal of the saints from the world as the world falls apart. The literal imagery holds a spiritual meaning in its very concrete imagery. What does the fullness of the reign of God look like? What would it be to experience this? Is this kingdom accomplished by human activity? What is the role of God in the continued life amidst creation in this new Jerusalem?

Luke 21:25-31

Let's turn to the Gospel reading next. Whereas the Zecharian passages uses Jerusalem imagery, Jesus in Luke uses wider, cosmological language. The coming of God as king is now revealed to be the coming of the "son of man" -- as described in Daniel 7. The imagery again is real and traumatic. Yet what is the instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples? Why? What is the fullness of redemption? Is the nearness of the kingdom something that the disciples bring about? Is the kingdom built or received? What is the difference and importance of this?

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

If the OT and Gospel readings focus on the coming and nature of the end in creation, the Epistle reading speaks to the life of the church awaiting the coming "end" of creation brought about as a gift by God. Notice Paul's thankfulness (eucharista) for the congregation because of God's faithfulness to them and their faithfulness to God. Does Paul believe that this congregation is the "perfect" congregation, with no needs? What is the nature of the need that Paul wants to fulfill by coming to them personnally?

The first part of the passage is important because it sets the tone for the second part of the passage -- Paul's prayer for the church in this time between the times. How is the congregation to live between the first and second comings of Jesus Christ? Yet as Paul looks forward to the "end", the "coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints," what is the particular thing for which he prays? What is God's end for each on of our lives in light of the coming "end" of the kingdom in Christ's return? Why is this end important? How does Paul's exhortation amidst the present life of the congregation relate to his prayer for each one of the believers at the end of the passage? How does personal holiness accomplish the end of one's life in light of the coming? Notice that this holiness is not a human accomplishment, but a gift of God by the Spirit -- just like the kingdom.

If holiness is the goal of human life, of course this raises the question of what holiness is. This is worthy of much attention and prayer and discernment. Two dangers need avoided: one is a "laundry list" of what holiness looks like that results in a personal or political moralism; the second is a relativistic view of holiness that defines it through the eye's of the beholder -- not God. I am convinced that holiness is God's Spirit that forms our characters and habits into the fullness of the image of God for which God created us, an image that we see in its fullness in Jesus Christ, and through him, the lives of the saints, maybe some famous, but largely invisible to the world. Perhaps you can share at the time speaking of your encounter with "holy" persons as a means of beginning a discernment of the proper end that God calls us to in this time between the times.

Have a wonderful time together!