Advent 2019
For me, Advent is the spiritual dimension of Christmas, a way of entering into a contemplative experience of Christ through the holiday season that includes but transcends the genuine delights of wintertime and family and gift-giving and firelight. It is also a beautiful way to frame our communal experience of these weeks together so that you we draw closer to one another as well as closer to Christ.
There are four weeks—specifically the four Sundays preceding Christmas—to the Advent season. And these weeks are generally themed around Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. Wouldn’t it be great if we could bottle those and spread them around. In truth, we can do better: we can incarnate them and spread them around!
For this year’s Advent, which literally means “coming,” I’d like to build out those themes in relation to the four “comings” of Christ. You may have thought only in terms of two comings, so I’d like to expand this perspective based on John chapter 1 as we journey through these weeks together.
Week one: creation
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:1,3).
The apostle John connects the identity of Christ with the “Word” of God, the same Word that God spoke to create the world. This was a remarkable infusion of the divine into the natural world and helps us understand the wonder, the transcendence we experience in a magenta sky as the sun settles behind the Blue Ridge mountainscape. Truly, creation was the first coming of Christ into the world.
Paul extends that revelation this way: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made (Romans 1:20). This was the first stage in a succession of “comings” that progressively bring more of Christ into our lived experience. How I long for that to be true, to actually experience more of Christ in every moment of my life. And creation is a portal to that participation in the divine.
Advent is about waiting for Wonder to be illuminated and imparted to salve the thirst of our human hearts. Even creation itself waits and longs for more of Christ to be revealed (Romans 8:19-25). Do you feel it? What is it that you’re hoping for? This week, embrace the yearning of Hope. Feel the desire…and the confidence of knowing that desire will be met in Christ.
Reflection Questions
How do you experience Christ in creation?
How can you get in touch with your soul’s ache for more of God?
Week two: incarnation
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
A Spirit-filled Baby in a manger. How the imagination soars as we enter into the corporate memory of Christ on the earth in the body: his miraculous birth, his mysterious childhood, his mind-blowing ministry, and his macabre death and mystical resurrection. I deeply wish I could have experienced Jesus on the physical plane of this earth, don’t you? And yet somehow, in ways we can’t fully articulate, we have experienced this human Jesus. And he has experienced us.
If we are ever tempted to distance the material world from the spiritual world, we need only remember the Incarnation where God made all earthly things sacred, where matter itself was united with divinity. This is what Love does: it connects. This began in creation only to be amplified in the Incarnation…an immense foreshadowing of the third coming!
This feels personal to me. I need to experience the love of God, not just spiritually, but physically and emotionally. My body too is sacred, a “temple,” Paul calls it. A dwelling place for divine Love. Even the natural processes of my body are somehow infused with the real presence of Christ. And the limitations of our personal incarnation become a conduit for experiencing the fullness of Christ in us. Wow.
If the natural world is our first glimpse of the heavenly, then it is the Son of Man who is our next profound glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. In Christ we see the character of the Father like never before. In Christ we see our own inestimable value to God. In Christ we see the potential for the divine will lived out in human form. This week, embrace the Love Jesus embodied…and offers you personally.
Reflection Questions
How do you experience Jesus as the prototype for your human journey?
How are you impacted by the experience of being unconditionally loved?
Week three: transformation
Out of his fullness we have all received…grace and truth…through Jesus Christ (John 1:16,17).
Which leads us to the third coming of Christ—His coming into our lives with all its formational struggle and increasing glory. As Paul says, “God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Christ didn’t just come, live, die, and resurrect in the life of Jesus; he comes to make his habitation within us, changing us into the very image or representation of Christ. We become like him. That will make your brain explode!
And this is part of the Advent experience—the waiting and yearning and expectation for Christ to be made manifest in ourselves. For the resurrection—that triumph of life over death and sin—to be ours, not just theologically but incarnationally. For our compulsions and fears and apathy to fall away…for Christ to be revealed in us and as us. When this happens, it is nothing short of “Joy to the world.”
Yet before the Joy comes the travail. Like a mother giving birth, so we too must go through the waiting and struggle of watching the false self be transformed into the true (John 16:21). Paul described these “birth pangs” in Romans 7. We want to be transformed, but that progress takes many cycles of death and resurrection, and in the end Christ is birthed in us. Yes, He has come once again. Glory is revealed.
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
This Advent, look for the face of Christ in those you love. Look for the face of Christ in the stranger. And even look for the face of Christ in the mirror. If you look for it, you will find it. He is Immanuel, God with us…in us.
Reflection Questions
How do you experience the glory of God shining through yourself and others?
How does God want to come to you with Joy right now?
Week four: celebration
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God (John 1:12,13).
In my paradigm, the “second coming” of Christ is really the fourth coming. It is the penultimate coming, the full revealing of Christ in the world with full restoration to God’s original intent. It is the kingdom of God in all its beauty and wholeness. Everything we have dreamed of or imagined could be true about the world. Our heart’s desire, more than we even know.
Everything has pointed us to this coming: the creation of the world that causes our hearts to hunger and hope, the incarnation of Christ as the embodiment of love and healing, the formation of Christ in us as the source of joy, and now the celebration of the world with the Prince of Peace. Truly, this is what we were made for! The healing and renewal of all things.
The message the angels sang at the first coming will be fulfilled in the final coming: Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:13,14). At this point, not only will our transformation in Christ be complete but the reformation of culture and even the planet will be complete (Revelation 21:1). And that calls for some serious celebration. I just can’t imagine.
The waiting will be over! This is the message of Christmas: Immanuel, God with us! Finally, fully, with us.
Reflection Questions
How do you imagine the full redemption of culture and planet?
How are you experiencing Christ as your Peace now?
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