Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

Advent is the right time for the asking of hard questions.

Advent comes to a climax, not only on Christmas Day but also in the massacre of the innocents by Herod. The church has historically observed the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 27, a remarkable conjuncture that remembers a massacre of infants in the same season that we rejoice in the birth of Christ. 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.

Every year, the Advent-to-Christmas momentum proclaims the God who breaks his own silence by coming in person.

The church needs to be reminded of the way it has itself become the manifestation of the hope of Christ’s coming again in glory. We can take courage from the fact that God has actually willed us to be witnesses of the incarnation of Christ, the hope of the world. In the present, God’s Word breaks the silence as his people bear witness to their hope. When the church does this, it impresses even the skeptics; in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books,

We are called to a vocation of protest against suffering. Patience does not mean passivity. Believing that God will come does not imply inaction. Rather, it stirs up the church to hopeful enactments of the reign of Christ.

are “Herod’s Court” and “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” with Rachel’s lament for her children familiar to us from Jeremiah 31:15. The Waverly Consort program vividly depicts Herod and his son as vainglorious empire-builders, as recognizable in their transparently self-aggrandizing tactics as the tycoons and tyrants of today. Profoundly shaken by the Magi’s news of a rival on the horizon, they plot the extermination of all possible threats: “We hear of the birth of a greater king, whose power is over us. Truly we fear that we be taken from our throne. Against that petty king, give word that the battle be begun!” (The hearers, of course, are meant to understand who the petty king is, and who the real king.)