Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

The church is not called to be a “change agent”—God is the agent of change. The Lord of the kosmos has already wrought the Great Exchange in his cross and resurrection, and the life of the people of God is sustained by that mighty enterprise.26 The calling of the church is to place itself where God is already at work. The church lives, therefore, without fear, in faith that the cosmic change of regime has already been accomplished.

The New Testament presents us with not two but three agencies: God, the human being, and an Enemy who is variously called Satan, the devil, Beelzebul, “the ruler of this world,” and “the prince of the power of the air,” among other biblical designations. It has been given to this Enemy to enslave humanity, and indeed all of creation, until such time as God sees fit. When Jesus appears, the time is at hand; we are those “upon whom the end of the ages has come” (I Cor. 10:11).

Of all the seasons and holy days in the church year, Advent is the one most obviously grounded in apocalyptic theology, especially since it is most attuned to the apocalyptic passages in the Bible.

the truly radical nature of the Advent promise, which sweeps away cheap comforts and superficial reassurances and, in the midst of the most world-overturning circumstances, still testifies that “Behold, I am coming soon! . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:12, 13).41

All the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God’s righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his “making right” (verb) all that has been wrong. Clearly, human justice is a very limited enterprise compared to the ultimate making-right of God in the promised day of judgment.

The very familiar John 3:16 verse is constantly quoted apart from its context, which is misleading: “God so loved the world (kosmos) that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” The reference to condemnation is significant. The Son comes to judge the world, but not to condemn it. The implication is clear: the world deserves condemnation, but will be saved instead, through the Son. Therefore it is not accurate simply to say “God so loved the world . . .” without reference to the full context with all its implications.

Hope and promise are at the center of the Advent proclamation. A great many sermons are essentially exhortations, and exhortation (“Let us . . .”) is powerless unless the hearers are already on their feet doing whatever it is. As I have tried to pass along to young preachers, every biblical sermon should give a reason for hope, and every biblical sermon should contain a promise. Sermons that end with statements like “we are called to . . .” (feed the hungry, celebrate diversity, build shelters for the homeless, and so forth), or questions asking “will we” (seek justice for the poor, fight against racism, march for various causes, etc.), are self-defeating. When sermons end that way, the hearers feel defeated and powerless—except, of course, for the few who are already doing whatever it is, who then can feel superior. For that reason, hortatory sermons are divisive. Sermons in the mode of promise, however, are uplifting and empowering for everyone. Every person in the congregation should feel that a promise has been made to him or her by the God who, unlike human beings, keeps his promises.

I understand but i am not sure if is really universlly true. God is the center, but we still have a role .

Advent is the season of the uncovering: “Bear fruit that befits repentance. . . . Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees”! This is the right time to root out the cover-ups in our own lives, as we wait with bated breath for the lights to come on and the announcement of the angel that God is not against us but for us.

The great theme of Advent is hope, but it is not tolerable to speak of hope unless we are willing to look squarely at the overwhelming presence of evil in our world. Malevolent, disproportionate evil is a profound threat to Christian faith.

Advent, along with the weeks immediately preceding it, is preeminently the season of the second coming. Many of us, growing up in theologically liberal mainline churches, had the doctrine of the second coming trained out of us. “Nobody believes in it anymore,” I was told more than once by clergy. The coming of Jesus into the individual heart was preached and taught as the substitute for the second coming.

When I was a child, I always loved the Advent season. We didn’t have Advent wreaths and Advent calendars in those days; it was the dark purple color in the church and a certain drama in the Bible readings that impressed me. Clearly, there was something expectant and portentous about those weeks. However, I misunderstood the meaning. For many years, I thought that, during Advent, one was supposed to pretend that Jesus hadn’t been born, so that we would be more excited when Christmas came. Needless to say, this stratagem didn’t work. For me, it was a revelation years later to learn that the last weeks of Pentecost and the first weeks of Advent look forward to the second coming of Christ.

The promise of the second coming tells us that God is Victor over Sin and Death. It tells us that evil is vanquished now, in suffering love, and will be vanquished forever in the triumph of God. I cannot tell you why God delays that day, and neither can anyone else. I can only tell you that when we see the resistance of Christians, we see living witness to the hope that is in our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who believe in God hold to the biblical promise that some day we will know the answers in the kingdom of God—and at that point it will no longer make any difference, because there will no longer be even a memory of evil.

That’s why one of the principal images of Advent is that of the watchtower. Those who serve God still stand in a dark place, but we strain forward with expectation and an unconquerable hope toward the horizon where the Sun of Righteousness will appear someday with healing in his wings.

There is a unique paradox at the center of our Christian narrative. God submitted himself to the very worst that human sin could do; as our representative, he comes under his own judgment. And on the third day he was raised victorious over evil and death. This really happened. No one made it up. That is the only thing that keeps me believing. This is the only “transcendent narrative” that can stand up to the scrutiny of Barry Bearak’s bitter challenge. But now listen. If all we do is tell the story over and over and talk about how superior it is to other stories, that will convince no one. The one thing that impresses nonbelievers, the only thing that testifies to the truth of our narrative, is a Christlike life. The only thing that truly glorifies Jesus in this world is costly action in his name on behalf of those for whom he died. There is a sense of crisis at this time of year because the coming of Jesus calls every mortal arrangement into question.

“Truly, thou art a God who hidest thyself.” Maybe some of you like Latin—it seems to be back in vogue in some high schools. The name for this idea in Latin is Deus absconditus, the hidden God. But that doesn’t quite get at what Isaiah is saying, because we need to understand that God is not just hidden on general principles. If God is hidden, it is because he hides himself. He means to be hidden. It is God’s nature to be out of the reach of our senses. There is a distance between God and ourselves that cannot be bridged from our side. One of the main reasons we need to know the Old Testament intimately is that the God revealed in it—the God who is the father of Jesus Christ—is huge and elusive.

There are two different ways of asking “Where is God? Why does God hide himself?” One way is scornful, hostile, and truly God-less, like the abuse and mockery hurled at Jesus on the cross: “He trusted in God to deliver him, so let God deliver him!” The people who yelled that insult thought they knew who God was and what God would and would not do (Matt. 27:43; also Ps. 22:8). But the other way of asking, like the poet Cowper’s way, comes from deep faith. It comes from having at least a partial knowledge of God and of the darkness that opposes God. This is a thread that runs through the whole discussion of the hiddenness of God. Anyone who has received even a tiny glimpse of the majesty, holiness, and righteousness of God will have an increased sense of the darkness, disorder, and malevolence that’s loose in the world. These forces would swallow us up had not God set in motion his great plan to reclaim his creation. This is what Isaiah celebrates above all.

The first epistle of Peter is a letter from a God’s-eye view, and the view it gives is of the church. We can never say it often enough: the Bible is addressed, for the most part, not to individuals, but to the people of God.7 We need to say still more. As Peter puts it in various ways over and over throughout the letter, the people of God have been constituted, not by their own preferences or choices, but by God’s prior choice, first of Israel, and then, through Jesus Christ, of the church. The church resists, endures, and conquers not through its own efforts, let alone its merits, but because of the call, the commission, and the continuing presence of God. “The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you.” The church lives out of (not “into” but “out of”) its foundation upon the “living stone” (I Pet. 2:6), which is Christ, out of its baptism into his death and resurrection, out of its promised future guaranteed by his Holy Spirit. It is this certainty that gives courage for resistance.

But where is that justice to come from? Where is the power that not only can defeat cancer, heal the planet, and overcome our murderous instincts but also is able to make everything right again and restore what was lost? Let’s take a look at the psalm we just read, the first two verses: In thee, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! In thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline thy ear to me, and save me! (Ps. 71:1–2) Throughout the Psalms it is continually repeated: God is the One who saves, the One who is powerful to deliver. God alone can make right what is wrong. God alone can overcome death and the demons.

They come not so much from another place “up there” as from another sphere of reality altogether. When angels appear, it means that the kingdom of God has irrupted into this earthly orb. Angels have no other function than to do God’s bidding.

When Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world, he did not step onto an empty stage. He entered a world that was already occupied by a hostile power. We do not become Christians in a vacuum. Somebody else was here ahead of us who had to be pushed out; he is actively trying to get his space back.2

Many Christians have heard about this armor of God in a vague sort of way, but few of us have grasped its actual meaning. The armor that God has given you to fight your battles, our battles, the church’s battles is God’s own armor. Think of the firefighter who passes on his helmet to his son. God has been clothed in this armor since before the creation; it is part of him. It was worn by him in the Passover and the exodus. It was proven by him before the walls of Jericho, in the court of Ahab and Jezebel, in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. The belt of truth is not philosophical or scientific truth; it is Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the Truth.” The breastplate of righteousness is not your righteousness or mine; it is Christ’s righteousness. When you put on the shoes of peace, it is not you who are making peace; it is God. The shield of faith is given to you by him, by the one who answers the prayer, “I believe; help my unbelief.” All these weapons are given to you by the one who forged them. In no sense are they your own achievement. We do not earn the right to wear the armor of God; it is given to us. Todd

That’s what it means to trust in God as the ruler of Death. Every baptism is a victory over Death.

As a character in a Barbara Pym novel says, “The trouble with doing good works is that one can never be said to have done one’s share.”3 In the final analysis, all we can say is, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

He who thinks himself safe is in the greatest danger. The man who trembles to think of himself before the judgment seat is closer to the kingdom of heaven than the one who complacently assumes he is on the side of the angels. The coming of Jesus Christ as judge of the world calls every single person’s existence into question. There is no human merit anywhere to bail us out. We cannot rely on any known good deeds; the complete astonishment of the redeemed and the shattered confidence of the condemned are clear evidence of this. The works of mercy done by those on the right hand were spontaneous acts performed without any thought of reward. They do not even remember doing them: “Lord, when did we see thee?”

The parable of the last judgment is not about totaling up one’s own good deeds, whether politically correct or incorrect. It is about serving Christ the Lord.

I don’t want to be misunderstood here. Osama bin Laden and his network of terrorists must be stopped. Period. It looks as though that grim task will be the work of our generation. But America must not lose its soul in the process, and Christians must help to see that that does not happen.

The very definition of grace is “favor shown to the undeserving.” That’s what makes it “amazing grace.” If it were favor shown to the deserving, it wouldn’t be amazing.

us, our love for him, shining through in spite of everything.

Advent looks, not to the birth of a baby, but to the long-anticipated day of the Lord when the old age of Sin and Death will pass away.

The New Testament Greek word for this is metanoia, repentance. It doesn’t just mean being sorry. It means a change of life. It means reorientation toward a different goal—the kingdom of God. It means a whole different way of being. It doesn’t mean loss of self-esteem—quite the contrary. Repentance is for the strong. Perhaps you have noticed this. The person who steps forward and takes responsibility is the leader, not the weakling.

If this were not enough evidence, the characteristic liturgical petition of Advent is Maranatha—come, Lord Jesus! It is certainly not a prayer for Jesus to come again as a helpless baby; it is the longing cry of God’s people for him to return in power and glory, when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10–11). All but one or two of our Advent hymns—you can look in the front of the hymnal yourself if you don’t believe me—are oriented toward the second advent, the second coming of Jesus.1

Repetition is part of discipleship here

John the Baptist’s lonely, austere style of life bears witness to a reality that is coming, a reality that will expose all worldly realities, all earthly conditions, all human promises as fraudulent and transitory. His appearance on the scene at this time of year exposes our pretensions for what they really are. Never have we needed him more! For here in this city we are in a culture where a big decision is whether or not to get a face-lift, while around the world people do not know if they will be able to eat or work or worship or see their children grow up. When John the Baptist—probably the most single-minded person who ever lived—said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” his whole being, his entire existence, was on fire with the reality of the One Who Comes. He was in the grip of what I’ve been calling apocalyptic transvision—that vision given to the church that sees through the appearances of this world to the blazing power and holiness of the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist is the ultimate embodiment of the apocalyptic character of Christian faith—faith that is oriented not to the past but to the future, not to the repetition of religious exercises but to the person of the Messiah, not to arrangements as they are but to an utterly new authority and dominion. In the most extraordinary way, John is truly our contemporary; he stands at the very precipice of the collision of two forces, at the juncture where the world’s resistance to God meets the irres...

I don’t need to hear exhortations to repent. I need power from outside myself to make me different.

This is the contradiction of Advent. As Victor Preller preached to us so unforgettably on Christ the King Sunday, the way of the conquering Messiah is the way of his suffering. Advent tells us that Christmas is not really Christmas if all we are thinking about is a nice little baby. The baby will grow up, and all the violence that the rulers of this world can devise will expend itself upon his broken, bloody, naked body. As Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Grace . . . operates surrounded by evil.”13 From the time of John the Baptist until now the kingdom has suffered violence. The shadow of the cross falls across the manger.

Things are as bad as they seem, and we are not innocent.