Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

Advent most closely mirrors the daily lives of Christians and of the church, asks the most important ethical questions, presents the most accurate picture of the human condition, and above all, orients us to the future of the God who will come again.

and Advent has been observed as a penitential season, not unlike Lent, in preparation for Christmas up until the very recent past.

The eschatological note of Advent, focusing on the second coming of Christ—the principal subject of this book—has been largely ignored even among the most enthusiastic Advent-lovers of late.

the clear focus on the coming consummation of the kingdom of God in the day of the Lord has been recovered.

William H. Petersen, the founder of the Advent Project, has written, “While there is scant hope of changing the culture around us, the Church need not be a fellow traveler. The call is for the Church to reclaim for the sake of its own life and mission Advent’s focus on the reign of God and, in so doing, to hone once again the counter-cultural edge of the Gospel at the very beginning of the liturgical year.”

Because the church in modern times has turned away from the proclamation of the second coming, an intentional effort must be made to reinstate it.

not expect, is the Advent emphasis on the agency of God, as contrasted with the “works” of human beings. An exclusive emphasis on Advent as a season of preparation risks putting human endeavor in the spotlight for all four weeks of the season.

watching and waiting.

Adventus redemptionis: the incarnate Christ “born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate” Adventus sanctificationis: the presence of Christ in Word and sacrament Adventus glorificamus: the coming in glory to be our judge on the last day12

primary focus on the second coming of Christ, who will arrive in glory on the last day to consummate the kingdom of God.

That is the special note of Advent—its orientation toward the promised future.

Advent, however, differs from the other seasons in that it looks beyond history altogether and awaits Jesus Christ’s coming again “in glory to judge the living and the dead.”14 In the cycle of seasons and festival days that takes the church through the life of Christ, it is Advent that gives us the final consummation; it is the season of the last things.

Here is another way of charting the trajectory of Advent, arguably the richest of the seasons because it celebrates three dimensions at once, embracing themes from the other highlights of the liturgical calendar. Note the order of the three, with the present last:

The past: God’s initiative toward the world in Christ (Christmas) The future: God’s coming victory in Christ (second coming, or parousia, made present by the power of the Spirit at Pentecost) The present: a cruciform (cross-shaped) life of love for the world in the present time (Epiphany, Lent, and Holy Week)

In that respect, as is increasingly being recognized, the life of the Christian community will come to resemble that of the early church rather than the boom years of the last midcentury.

“our lives are hidden with Christ in God; when Christ who is our life appears, then we also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:3–4). Advent contains within itself the crucial

he captures the universal human tendency to cover up our unease and estrangement with sentimentality and denial.

Even if God does not seem to be coming, he would not be God if he himself did not prepare the time and the manner of his own coming. And, being God, he knows what he is doing.

He is the herald of the age to come, as prophesied by Malachi at the very end of the Old Testament.

Thus, in our present lives we are both bearing witness to and waiting expectantly for the coming of the Lord.

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.

“We’re just waiting for doom or for a breakthrough from heaven.”

How do we account for the fact that evil has not been conquered by the Enlightenment?

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.

“God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the

Therefore, far from escaping the world, the Christian disciple finds his or her vocation precisely here: at the collision of the ages where the struggle of the Enemy against God continues, making a space for the conquering love of God for the world.

“Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth” (Isa. 65:17). Before the exile and the destruction of all of Israel’s hopes, there was no need for this kind of promise; the work of God would proceed in the land shown to Moses from afar and given to the descendants of Abraham, with Jerusalem and its temple as the constant sign of God’s presence and favor. When the temple was destroyed and the people carried off to mighty, ultra-pagan Babylon, it seemed to signal the departure of God, the breaking of the promise, and the end of hope. When, therefore, the unknown prophet of the exile began his long prophetic poem with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” a new note was sounded and a completely different basis for hope was proclaimed. It was no longer possible to project a future with God out of the experiences of the past. The apocalyptic outlook that arose during the time of the exile was disjunctive in character; it looked, not to Israel’s past glories and expectations, but to a completely new, unexpected, and most of all undeserved movement of God from the future. Thus, a “breakthrough from heaven.”

disclosure or revelation.

The Armor of Light. God’s apocalyptic war is fought with different weapons than those of violent earthly wars. Hupomone is particularly important as a gift of the Spirit. Often translated simply “patience,” hupomone can also mean “long-suffering,” “endurance,” or “perseverance.” Eugene Peterson’s phrase is apt: “a long obedience in the same direction.” Dorothy Day wrote that the word “patience” meant suffering. Paul writes, “Love is patient and kind. . . . Love endures all things” (I Cor. 13:4, 7). The armor of light is described in Ephesians 6:10–17, concluding in verse 18 with prayer as perhaps the most powerful weapon of all.

continual vigilance (Watch!) for signs of the kingdom.

God’s future determines the present, rather than the other way round.

Apocalyptic literature, understood imaginatively, is therefore above all intended for the encouragement of the church, a reaffirmation of the promises of God and of the return of Christ to make all things new.

The important thing to understand is that apocalyptic discontinuity does not mean severance from the Old Testament witness. What it does mean is a rereading of the Old Testament in light of the first and second comings of Christ.

The central drama of Advent is that of judgment and redemption, and yet we live in a time of wholesale reaction against the notion of judgment.

The concept of justice is indeed central to the biblical portrait of the God who has revealed himself in his written Word and in the incarnate Word who is his Son. However, the current use of “justice” as a rallying cry for the church is reductive, because it is limited to particular political and economic issues without reference to the righteousness of God. A key to the biblical meaning of justice is found in the fact that the word translated “justice” and “righteousness” is the same word in Hebrew and in Greek. The root of the word becomes, in both Testaments, both a noun and a verb, so that “justice” or “judgment” is the same thing as “righteousness” or “rectification” (making right). The Christian hope is founded in the promise of God that all things will be made new according to his righteousness. 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.

Think about the necessity of holiness (also, righteousness) within the current cultural posture regarding justice and love

is hope (I Cor. 13:13).

Judgment seen in this way, as God coming in his righteousness in the last day to reclaim his creation for himself, loses its fearsome aspect for those who trust in the promise of God to redeem humanity and the kosmos despite all appearances to the contrary. The word “justification” is the right one here. In his righteousness, God will justify—he will make right—all that is wrong. This will cost something. Since it is an ultimate promise, it was made at an ultimate cost. Jesus Christ gave his life for it, but not only his life—the Son of God himself underwent the ultimate judgment of God upon the cross. He absorbed God’s eternal rejection of Sin even though, as Paul says, “he knew no sin.” In one of the most astonishing sentences in all Scripture, God “made him to be sin” so that we are “made the righteousness of God” (II Cor. 5:21). This is the way to understand the judgment of God in the ultimate sense. Mysterious as this verse is, it carries the crucial message that the righteousness of God was made manifest in the judgment upon Sin that Jesus bore and carried away from us in the

ultimate Great Exchange. Therefore, as Paul further declares in ringing tones, “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

come, but to expect him imminently,

is “participation”

And so, when we think in terms of now and not-yet, it is the destiny of all humankind that is envisioned. “Comfort ye my people” is not a message for a solitary self-determined person. It is addressed to all of God’s people in exile, and the original setting in Babylon is widened and expanded to include all the descendants of Abraham (Gen. 12:3) who are no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all

Hope and promise are at the center of the Advent proclamation.

If it is true that there is unique power in the combination of royalty and stooping, then there has never been anything comparable to the errand of the Son of God.

the combination

A god who remained silent in the face of atrocities would not be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus the wrath of God against injustice has broken the terrible silence.

but the prior omissions have robbed us of an opportunity to understand that righteousness and peace cannot kiss until “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against . . . those who by their wickedness suppress the truth”

can rejoice together in the defeat of suffering and death in God’s kingdom.

The Advent season is designed to lead us into an ever-deeper awareness of the solidarity of all human beings in pain and darkness.

Where do we discover the hope that is the preeminent Advent theme? Is there any real basis for hope?