The Light of Advent
Dr. Chris Cadenhead
As I write these words there is still one month to go in this year, and yet already it feels like 2020 has drug on for a decade or longer! This year has brought more trouble and disruption than we could have imagined – a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands, a historic recession that has wiped out tens of thousands of jobs, massive wildfires out west, multiple hurricanes along the Gulf coast, postponements and cancellations of important events, like weddings and graduations, disruption of church life, and a bitter election that seems to have worsened the hostile climate of our public life. Most would agree the end of this year can’t get here fast enough. The trouble, of course, is the mere turning of a page on the calendar isn’t likely to bring much change. In all honesty, some of these hardships will be with us for a while yet, so we have to learn how to carry on with life in their presence. Recognizing this truth could prepare us to receive the meaning of Advent in a unique way.
By the time Jesus got himself born into a manger, the people of Israel had been waiting for a long time for God to show up and do something about their desperate situation. For hundreds of years, they had languished under the control of one foreign power after another. They were humiliated, poor, and mostly at the mercy of forces bigger than they. Dating as far back as the ministry of the prophet Isaiah almost 800 years earlier, the prophets had foretold of a Messiah who would come to redeem Israel. People may not have known exactly what that meant, but they knew they wanted and needed it. So, they waited, and waited, and waited. For most of us there is a single blank page that separates our Old and New Testaments, but that single page represents almost 400 years of divine silence. That’s how much time passed between the last prophetic word of Malachi and the coming of Jesus.
At Christmas we celebrate the breaking of that silence. When the newborn Jesus cried out into the damp Bethlehem air, God was speaking and acting in a decisive way to redeem his people. However, we have the benefit of 2000 years of hindsight and Biblical proclamation by which to know this great truth. At the actual moment of Jesus’ birth, almost no one knew it, with the exception of a young virgin and her husband and some scraggly shepherds from a nearby field. To the normal human eye, nothing about this birth spoke of divine rescue. For one thing, a poor child born to peasant parents is hardly a match to mighty Caesar. Just as important, his birth did not appear to change anything. Rome was still in control, the people were still being forced pay taxes to a foreign emperor, and there didn’t appear to be any obvious signs of any immediate deliverance. In fact, if we roll the clock forward approximately 33 years, people could still have said the same thing even after Jesus was crucified and resurrected. The incarnation of our Lord did not bring an immediate change to the circumstances of His peoples’ lives.
“Jesus is God in the flesh, who comes not to rescue us from the load we carry, but to get under the load and carry it with us. Even more, he carries it for us when we can no longer strain under its weight. ”
And yet at the same time, Jesus’ coming changed everything. One of the Hebrew names for the coming Messiah was Emmanuel, which translates into English as “God with us.” Jesus is God in the flesh, who comes not to rescue us from the load we carry, but to get under the load and carry it with us. Even more, he carries it for us when we can no longer strain under its weight. With Jesus loose among us, God is not some distant Being who watches from the safe reaches of heaven. He is as close as our own skin. Literally. He suffers with us. He rejoices with us. He shares his strengthening presence with us. And ultimately, on the cross, He imparts His righteousness to us so we can be restored to eternal fellowship with our Heavenly Father. And all of this happens even as we continue our journey in this broken and fallen world.
There is nothing wrong with hoping 2021 will bring brighter days. Maybe there will be a vaccine. Maybe the job market will bounce back. Maybe the angry rhetoric will die down. Maybe the chemotherapy will work. We can pray earnestly for such things. In the end, however, our hope lies in the One who is God With Us, even when the circumstances aren’t in our favor. Even when it looks like nothing is changing, even then the One who is the Word Made Flesh is speaking God’s life into us. This Advent, then, we would be wise to learn more deeply what it means to wait in hope. As the December days grow darker and colder, the light of the Advent wreath points us forward to the One who has come and who is coming to make all things new. Even us.