Third Sunday of Advent: From Fragmentation to Holy Wholeness

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” -Hebrews 13:8

Advent points us to the past, present and future.

First, the four weeks leading up to the Nativity focus our attention on the event of the Incarnation some 2000 years ago. The Son of God, the Logos, came to earth and took on flesh—as a fetus in Mary’s womb, developing and growing until Mary was “great with child” as she rode the donkey en route to Bethlehem with her finance Joseph.

Advent likewise points us to the future. Christ not only came to earth as a baby those two millennia ago, he will return at the end of the age as King of kings and Lord of lords. The time-space world in which we live has a telos—a goal, fulfillment, completion—toward which the centuries run. God will roll up the heavens and earth “like a robe; like a garment they will be changed” (Hebrews 1:12). We will receive a new heavens and earth, beyond our earthly language to describe. We will join the wedding feast of the Son and be joined forever with Christ, our Bridegroom.

Between these two advents of Christ, we exist today. Just as Jesus broke into the past and will come again with surprise in the future, he wants to break into our everyday lives. He is Emmanuel—God with us—in our human existence. We must live in light of Christ’s present-day presence, else we will be consumed by the materialism of the world and cave in on ourselves in self-focused preoccupation. The secular shopping season contributes all the more to the material fixation that steals our attention from active and living presence among us.

We must resist the temptation of materialism, however, in order to find our meaning by discovering our place in the larger Story. The past anchors us in the concrete events of God’s redemptive act of salvation as we celebrate the Incarnation. The future offers us hope as we wait for the consummation of this age and the consummation of the wedding feast of Christ as we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

The present, then, is a time of both remembering and waiting. Such is the message of Advent. He is here with us, as he promised, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). The season of Advent tutors us in how to live during this time. It attunes us to God’s divine action and his desire to come into the ups and downs of our earthly existence. We embrace the here and now, discovering the divine in the midst of daily life.

This Advent season we can ask ourselves: How is Jesus breaking into our day? Where is his glory filling the earth? How is he Emmanuel right here and right now?

Such a three-fold focus is difficult to maintain; it can even be unsettling. However, we must not neglect any of the three: past, present or future. Advent instructs us as it helps us to integrate all three into a meaningful whole—not only the overview of the ages but also a personal reality for each of us existentially. By juxtaposing past and future, Advent calls us to wait in present. Advent causes us to see Salvation History as a whole, and, doing so, helps to make our lives more whole as it invites us to see how our lives fit in.

© 2017 Glenn E. Myers