At the beginning of November, I was cleaning up the basement after putting away our Halloween decorations. To get to the box I needed for the Halloween decorations I needed to move the boxes containing our Christmas decorations.

“Hey, Allison,” I shouted from the basement. “Let’s put the Christmas decorations up this weekend.

And that is when it started.

The season of Advent is upon us. Whether we are ready or not we are quickly moving closer and closer to Christmas. For the world, Advent is more often a season of the countdown towards Christmas as shopping days become fewer and fewer along with your window for free-expedited shipping. For the church, Advent is a season of foreshadowing as we recall the promise of the Second Advent, the promise that Christ will return, as our attention is fixed on the manger.

During Advent, we are going to explore how the promised coming of Christ, the Light of the world, has transformed all of creation and at the same time promises further transformation. Rev. Fleming Rutledge notes that Advent is oriented "toward a promised future. The other seasons in the church calendar follow the events in the historical life of Christ – his incarnation (Christmas), the manifestation to the Gentiles (Epiphany), his ministry and preaching (the season after Epiphany), his path to crucifixion (Lent), his passion and death (Holy Week), the resurrection (Easter), the return to the Father’s right hand (Ascension), and the descent of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost) – with Trinity Sunday to round it off doctrinally. Advent, however, differs from the other seasons in that it looks beyond history altogether and awaits Jesus Christ's coming again."[1]

The words spoken by Jesus to his disciples were “apocalyptic, threatening, and scary.”[2] “Suffering,” “darkness,” and “stars falling from Heaven,” do not conjure up a Norman Rockwell image in my mind for the season. In describing His return, Jesus painted imagery fit for a doomsday Hollywood production, rather than a children’s Christmas pageant.

The apocalyptic imagery used by Mark underscores the crisis that impends the Son of Man’s return. The darkness underscored by Mark grabs our attention, making us able to hear the rest of Jesus’ words.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come… And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”[3]

Keep awake.

Stay alert.

Wait.

After I shouted from the basement, "Let's put up the Christmas lights" at the beginning of November I waited. Then, I waited some more. I knew Allison heard me. As I waited in the basement, I heard a deep sigh. The sigh sounded like a mash-up of "oh bless his heart," and "he can't be serious." Finally, after waiting what seemed like an eternity I heard, "Let's wait a few more weeks. 

“Sounds good,” I yelled as a dagger sank deep into my heart.

Wait a few more weeks? Wait?

Two weeks?

Three weeks?

Four weeks? 

I do not like to wait. While may not always display this behavior, I live for a prompt response to an email or text message. The silence that fills the void while I am waiting is worse and an ill-prepared percussionist beating on an unsuspecting cowbell.

An entire industry has been established because, like me, most people despise waiting. Tracking numbers, apps, and real-time GPS positioning can tell us exactly when a package, meal, or person we have been expecting will be delivered to our doorstep. Tracking numbers are now the default for items shipped with the US Postal Service. There is no upcharge.

When Allison suggested that we wait to unleash the Christmas spirit on our home and neighbors I did not know what to do.  We are slowly (or not so slowly depending on your perspective) being conditioned to despise waiting.

We have defaulted to reducing wait times as much as humanly possible. Overnight, next-day and same-day shipping are available from big-box and local retailers alike. While this comes as a great convenience, perhaps improving our material quality of life, this has done little to help us learn to wait. And yet, waiting is precisely what Jesus has instructed His Church to do.

“Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.”[4]

This first week of Advent we begin to look for the babe lying in the manger while at the same time looking up to the cosmos wondering and waiting for the return of Christ. Today we find ourselves alongside those who longed and waited for the first Advent, not knowing when or where the Messiah would appear. We wait in the same way they did, needing the same exhortation from the prophets to keep watch and awake.

We do not know what guise Jesus will appear in, and so we find ourselves between two Advents – knowing Christ as come and that Christ promises to come again.[5]

This knowledge does not make the waiting any easier, any less unbearable. The Apostle Peter wrote that we are to wait and at the same time hasten “the coming of the day of God.”[6] We know how to hasten. Even in a time of recommendations and orders to stay at home, we know how to be quick and move in a hurry. We have never been more efficient at moving through the grocery store or Target, and while we may be at home, we are still on the move thanks to Zoom. But to hasten and wait almost seems impossible – oxymoronic of the Apostle to suggest. But the ability to maintain the tension – the tension between waiting and moving, waiting and doing – is at the center of the Christian life.

Because we do not know the time and place of Christ’s return we cannot passively wait. The church is not a passive body. We are attentive to what is happening around us. We are not withdrawn from the world, rather we find ourselves immersed in the life of the community even in times when the community least realizes or expects us.  

We live as though Jesus’ return is just around the corner because Jesus tells us he doesn’t know when the return will be, “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”[7]

We live as though Jesus’ return is just around the corner because we do not know how else to live.

We know that Christ came at Christmas amid the powerful forces of this world: an empire, armies and marching orders, and all the violence that's woven into our lives. But, what are we waiting for now? We wait for what songwriter Thomas Troeger wrote in The Dream Isaiah Saw: 

“Nature reordered to match God’s intent,
Nations obeying the call to repent,
All of creation completely restored,
Filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord.”

Waiting can leave us in a space where silence can be deafening. We worry. We become anxious. We read things into the actions and words of others that are a stretch of the imagination or downright false. We do not need to worry. Jesus has already instructed us; he has already told us everything we need to know. And in this space of waiting, we are sustained in Word and Sacrament, sustained by the power of God's own Spirit.  

We find ourselves in a time of already and not yet. The Kingdom of God is here, inaugurated in the Christmas manger we look toward, and not yet fully realized as we await Christ's return. As Advent people, we are doorkeepers and people of the watch.

Waiting seems more intense this year, as we wait in the pandemic, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for the day when masks a necessary accessory, waiting for life to get back to normal. The Advent waiting is of a different sort. We are stuck in a time when we can either wait for the promised redemptive work of God in Christ or a miraculous, self-achieving salvation through our own actions.

2020 has reminded us of what many in the rest of the world already knew and lived with every day... that the world is not as God would have it, that just as often God seems absent as present, that “Why do bad things happen…?” are still questions with no answers. We’re all like those in Mark’s parable. We are waiting based solely on the knowledge of the Master’s past actions not knowing if or when he will return. Until we have sat with the ambiguity and darkness of the world fully, we have not seriously considered the cost or scope of our redemption.

We wait for the return of Christ. We wait for the knock on the door, the hand reaching out, and the movement of the cosmos. In the season of Advent, we find ourselves in a position of being right where we hope to be but not yet entirely there as we await the promised return of Christ. The coming of Emmanuel.

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[1] Rutledge, Fleming. Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. Pages 5-6.

[2] Winner, Lauren. “B01: The First Sunday of Advent, Year B.” A Sermon for Every Sunday, 22 Aug. 2019, asermonforeverysunday.com/sermons/b01-the-first-sunday-of-advent-year-b/.

[3] Mark 13:32-33, 36 (NRSV)

[4] Mark 13:35-36, NRSV

[5] Nicene Creed

[6] 2 Peter 3:12, NRSV

[7] Mark 13:32, NRSV