God is with us. Jesus pitched his tent among us. Like Zechariah, our hearts can sing, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; for he hath visited, and has wrought redemption for his people” (Lk 1:68 American Literary Version). God is moving and he is active in our world. And yet, our hearts relate with David as we read in Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning” (ESV)? Still we sing, “Come, thou long expected Jesus.” This is our present. Christians live in between these two emotions, with both the presence of Christ and the realization that we are broken, and the world is broken. The image of God came to earth, in history, and is with us today; we long for the day he comes again. When he returns, he comes, in the words of St. Athanasius, “no longer in humiliation, but in majesty, no longer to suffer but to bestow on us all the fruit of His cross” (On the Incarnation).
We can pray for the ‘not yet’ without denying the ‘already.’
In Advent, we contemplate this present and our waiting in the midst of an unfulfilled promise; this is not the celebration itself. We are not in the moment of resolution and catharsis. Advent reminds us that God is good not only because of what he has done in the past or because of what he will do, but because he is with us now, in the waiting, in the tension of our joy and sadness. God is already here presiding over our ‘not yet’ of pain, hollowness, and doubt. And we struggle. John Donne expressed the human condition in his, “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness.”
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.
We must sit in this mystery a little. Advent reminds us that these two paradoxical emotions remain side by side; our struggle does not negate God’s presence. We can express the brokenness within and the brokenness without, plead for his presence. We can pray for the ‘not yet’ without denying the ‘already.’
Advent is the Christian life. The pathos of this middle kingdom is what the Christian experiences in entering Advent. Advent, from the Latin adventus meaning arrival, is four weeks in which Christians remember the birth and first coming of Christ. In this season, we think about the words of the prophets and faithfulness of Simeon and Anna. We remember the lives of Mary and the shepherds and those who waited amidst times of confusion. Their examples echo in our soul, as indeed, there is still a need to cry for deliverance. Advent is a time set aside to think upon the already, Christ came, and the not yet, he will come again. This tension between “Joy to the World” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” is the tension within which Christians of 2020 live.
One Response
Thanks, Seth. A lot said in few words. This Advent season of 2020 may have given us a gift: the time to “sit in this mystery a little” (maybe more than a little!), contemplate this “already,” and “not yet,” wait, listen and gain a renewed sense of Emmanuel. God with us. Now!