As mentioned in the sermon yesterday, throughout church history the Advent season has served a dual purpose. It not only leads us to reflect on Christ’s first coming, but it also cultivates our longing for Christ’s second coming.
Let’s be honest. Any speech about Christ coming again sounds insane to our culture. We find it impossible because of our naturalistic presuppositions. But this blanket dismissal of God’s ability to start, interrupt, augment, and end how our world functions is by no means modern in its origin. It’s always existed and the Bible anticipates it would only get worse:
“Scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning…’” (2 Peter 3:3-4).
Notice the motivation Peter mentions: “following their own sinful desires.” That’s why they scoff. A theistic epistemology is not at all less rational than a naturalistic one, but certainly the desire to be free from accountability to God could blind one to that fact, and cause scoffing at any assertion that something supernatural could insert itself into the machinery of this material world.
Peter goes on to say it’s always been like this: “For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with alter and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now existed are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” Just as those in Noah’s day were caught unaware, so also will Christ’s return arrive “as a thief in the night,” not in the sense that it could somehow be unobserved, but in the sense that most won’t be looking for it.
For Christ’s people, this return is our greatest hope. Not because we are bent on escaping this world – we are actually deeply invested here for eternal purposes! But we recognize that this cursed and broken world is simultaneously a garden of beauty and a house of horrors. We take hope not only in that God can and will bring this corrupted world history to a close, but also that He can and does interrupt it (or should we say ‘act upon it’?) at will. In many ways the entire Bible is a record of some of the most notable such “interruptions”, with the Christ event at the very center.
There’s a really interesting Spiritual song that originated with American slaves (who knew their Bibles!) called “O Mary, Don’t You Weep.” [Here’s a link to Bruce Springsteen and an eclectic band performing it – singing of truths far deeper than they likely realize! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBf_mpO9Yw]. In the song, hope is derived for temporal deliverance from slavery and for ultimate deliverance from evil through recounting a chain of God’s interruptions of history, including the Flood, the Red Sea, Christ’s first coming, Lazarus’ revivification, and Christ’s second coming. The one in bondage is “Mary”. Some of the traditional lyrics show this is referencing Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. If you recall, in John 11, Jesus through Lazarus displays his power over creation in a final sign before his own death and resurrection. Similarly to the weeping Mary and Martha, we – in whatever ways sin’s tyranny touches our lives – are prone to feel trapped in a system caged by suffering and death. But our hope lies in Scripture’s united testimony of a God who interrupts and ends the demonic world order:
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign/
No more water, but fire next time/
Pharoah’s army got drown’d-ed/
Oh Mary, don’t you weep!”
And so we dare, at Christmas, to assert in the midst of this cynical world, “Christ has come. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again!” The apostle Peter went on to write, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance…. According to His promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” May you wait for your true homeland more consciously and eagerly this Christmas, and may you plead all the more fervently with those who have not yet reached repentance; because the world keeps on going on just as it always has…until one day it won’t. May even the smallest taste of the wonder of that Day be yours this Advent season!