The Fuller Meaning of Advent

        Christ has died!
        Christ is risen!
        Christ will come again!

That little ritual reveals the fuller meaning of Advent, and shows us how much you and I have in common with the first readers and hearers of Luke’s Gospel. We believe that Jesus, who was crucified dead and buried, is risen and alive. We believe that the news of his life, death, and resurrection is good news for the whole world, not just for the children of Abraham. We believe that, in a way both mystical and frustratingly concrete, the church is the body of Christ in the world. Somehow the risen Christ is among us as the head – and we might also say, the heart – of the church.

We modern Christians might quibble over what all this means, but we are more or less agreed on these essential matters: Christ has died and Christ is risen!

But as we sing that third affirmation, I sense a crossing of the fingers or perhaps a slight reduction of enthusiasm. It’s asking a lot to expect modern, thinking, fairly sophisticated Christians to sing with a straight face, Christ will come again!

No doubt the early Christians believed this – believed it urgently and passionately, believed it so deeply that they were willing to suffer persecution and even death to bear witness to it. The first Christians lived in imminent expectation that the risen and ascended Christ would shortly return to earth, bringing with him a host of heavenly enforcers who would establish God’s kingdom of justice and righteousness upon the whole earth. In fulfillment of the prophet’s longing, God would "rend the heavens and come down," and with the returning Messiah bring God’s terrible justice and even more terrible mercy.

The first Christians lived for that day. Some of them even quit their jobs and became so fixed on heavenly things that they were no earthy use to anyone. Others found that confidence in Christ’s imminent return gave them the courage to turn the whole world upside down. They preached. They baptized. They ignored barriers that used to separate Jew from Gentile, rich from poor, slave from owner, male from female. They pooled their money and shared all things in common.

Like people who have just listed their home with a realtor, hoping for a quick sale, those first Christians lived from day to day with their spiritual house in order. No socks on the floor. No dishes in the sink. No cat litter boxes in need of emptying. Everything was ready in case the doorbell should ring.

But Christ didn’t come when they expected. He has yet to return "with power and great glory," as Luke puts it, and that’s a problem, isn’t it? You and I must face that problem head on, but before we do, I want to say quite clearly that the hope of Christ’s return, and with it the fullness of God’s reign, is as important for our generation as it was for that first generation of Christians.

Theologians have a name for this future longing: "eschatological expectation." "Eschaton" means "the end time," and "eschatology" is "the doctrine of end things." In other words, "eschatology" is the doctrine of God’s future.

Eschatology is vitally important because how we view God’s future has everything to do with how we live in the present. Duke Ellington one said, "There are two types of music, good and bad, and you can tell them apart by listening." By listening to a couple of bad versions of eschatology, we might discover a good one.

One bad but popular strain of eschatology is best known from the Left Behind series of novels written by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. (Tim LaHaye didn’t invent this strain of expectation. He merely took it to the bank.)

The formula is now familiar: first you have the Rapture, during which true believers are taken up into heaven. Then you have the Tribulation, which gives those left behind seven years to become believers. Then you have the Second Coming, which inaugurates the Millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. Next comes the End.

This neat formula for God’s future works for selling badly-written novels, but requires a combination of biblical literalism and textual slight of hand that drives Presbyterians crazy. It squeezes square pegs into round holes and converts elegant metaphors into Excel spreadsheets. It conflates poetry with prognosis and turns hope into fear.

This kind of eschatology is dangerous because it fuels the flames of war in the Middle East and ignores the prophetic call for justice and environmental stewardship. Why work for social justice if, at any moment, you’ll be stepping on the eschatological elevator and pushing the "up" button? Why work for peace in the Middle East if peace postpones the Second Coming of Christ? For all its Biblical allusions, this kind of eschatology is ultimately unfair to the Bible and distorts the Gospel of grace.

At the other end of the theological spectrum is another bad version of eschatology. According to this view, the eschaton has already arrived, or pretty close to it, and the world is making steady progress toward perfection. It emphasizes the power of positive thinking, self-improvement, technological advance, and social progress. Every day we’re getting better and better.

How anybody can hold to that view of history in the wake of two world wars, the AIDS pandemic, 9/11, and global climate change is completely beyond me. Left to our own devices, we human beings are not making the world better and better. We’re making it warmer, dirtier, more crowded, and more dangerous. I’d rather be a character in a Left Behind novel than a practitioner of this mushy, sentimental, rose-tinted nonsense.

Between these two extremes lies a third way of looking at God’s future. It takes the Bible’s witness seriously without reading all its texts literally. It places our confidence in the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and thereby changed both the present and the future.

The future is already settled: Christ is risen and, as the old Creed says, "sitteth on the right hand of God." God has already redeemed the world. From God’s perspective, God’s work is done, and our future is secure. We won’t save the world. God has already saved the world.

Those passages from the Book of Revelation that Tim LaHaye squeezes into his interpretive mold are not items in a timetable; they’re visions that beckon us into God’s future. God’s "new heaven and a new earth" are guaranteed because Christ is risen. "Dry your tears," the seer of Patmos writes to the seven churches. "Don’t be afraid of the present. Here, have a peek at God’s future. Feel how that future is drawing you forward."

A truly Biblical eschatology invites us to glimpse the finished work of God in Christ, and to bring that work to bear on this yet unfinished world. It invites us to take part in a coming future that is not of our making, but welcomes our participation. Left to our own efforts, we are condemned to failure and despair, but the Christ of the gospel goes ahead of us, beckoning us into the future he himself guarantees. "I know the way forward," he tells us. "I’ve been this way ahead of you."

God’s future is, even now, breaking in upon the present. The kingdom is both now and not yet. As strange as that sounds, we all know it’s true.

Why do we build Habitat for Humanity houses? It’s because we know that in God’s kingdom there will be no shacks, no run-down tenements, no trailers with rotting floors. When we put the finishing touches on a house and hand the keys over to the new owner, we’re saying to the world, "Here’s a window into God’s future. Take a peek and grab a hammer." When heaven comes to earth, when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, the journey will be just this tiny bit shorter.

We don’t believe that human beings will bring in God’s kingdom by ourselves. That’s bad eschatology. Nor do we hanker for the Rapture to snatch us away from neighbors in need. That’s even worse eschatology. Instead we live and work in faith, trusting that Christ will come again, to draw all people to himself, perfecting and completing our imperfect efforts.

        Christ has died!
        Christ is risen!
        Christ will come again!

        Not only do we sing this; we live it. And this, beloved, is the fuller meaning of Advent.