Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“In the church, this is the season of Advent. It’s superficially understood as a time to get ready for Christmas, but in truth it’s the season for contemplating the judgment of God. Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or too glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness. As our Lord Jesus tells us, unless we see the light of God clearly, what we call light is actually darkness: “how great is that darkness!” (Matt. 6:23). Advent bids us take a fearless inventory of the darkness: the darkness without and the darkness within.”

“The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.”

“Our lives are eschatologically stretched between the sneak preview of the new world being born among us in the church, and the old world where the principalities and powers are reluctant to give way. In the meantime, which is the only time the church has ever known, we live as those who know something about the fate of the world that the world does not yet know. And that makes us different. —Will Willimon, Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition”

“The mercy of God does not depend on human virtue for its fulfillment.”

“The entire thrust of this season at the end of the church year is designed to bring us face-to-face with reality—reality about sin and death, reality about the human race, reality about God. Something ultimate has entered our world, something or Someone that calls us to attention, calls us out of our daily preoccupations and our routine points of view. That is what this season with its special biblical readings is designed to reveal”

“Evil is more than the sum of individual misdeeds. Evil has a life of its own. It is not enough to stand aside from it. If it is not actively resisted, it sweeps all before it. Part of a Christian’s calling is to resist evil, and in doing so, to endure to the end.”

“The Eternal has done a temporal act, the Infinite has become a finite fact. “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.”

“New Testament presents us with not two but three agencies: God, the human being, and an Enemy”

“It can be argued that Advent, more than any other season of the church year, is immediately relevant to our concrete lives as individuals, to the concrete life of the church under stress, and to the concrete headlines in the newspaper.”

“resolve is not incompatible with Christian humility.”

“Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness.”

“the epistle to the Hebrews, in the New Testament, warns us about worshiping angels. An angel is only an angel if he reveals something of the presence and power of Jesus Christ.”

“To this day, the facts on the ground continue to present probing moral and theological thinkers with a dilemma: How do we account for the fact that evil has not been conquered by the Enlightenment?”

“What we do know is that followers of Jesus Christ will always want to remember that the true and righteous judgments of the Lord are applicable to every side of every conflict.”

“Advent begins with the recognition that human progress is a deception. The preacher doesn’t have to spend more than five minutes gathering examples. It’s all right there, in this morning’s paper.”

“But at the same time, even as the season outside gets more exuberantly festive, those who observe Advent within the Christian community are convicted more and more each year by the truth of what is going on inside—inside the church as she refuses cheap comfort and sentimental good cheer. Advent begins in the dark.”

“Paul calls these Powers by the names of Sin and Death. These Powers cannot be accounted for simply as the product of individual guilt.”

“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.”

“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).”

“There is no one in this room—including the speaker—who is not guilty of failing to see, failing to listen, failing to act.”

“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.”

“May Almighty God, by whose Providence our Savior Christ came among us in great humility, sanctify you with the light of his blessing and set you free from all sin. Amen. May he whose second coming in power and great glory we await, make you steadfast in faith, joyful in hope, and constant in love. Amen. May you who rejoice in the first advent of our Redeemer, at his second advent be rewarded with eternal life. Amen. And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you for ever. Amen.”

“What child is this? “The Infinite has become a finite fact.” Everything depends on this, or the nativity story is just a child’s fable that no thinking adult can believe.”

“one foundational truth that I have learned from apocalyptic theology, it is this: God is the subject of the verb. God doesn’t need us to help him make his “dream” come true; God is on the march far ahead of us, bringing his purposes to pass,”

“Life’s darker side: that’s Advent.”

“Marilynne Robinson has written that “fear is not a Christian habit of mind.”