First Sunday in Advent
A four-week series reflecting on the meaning of God coming to Earth as a human being to join us in our sufferings and well as in our joy.
The Lesson of the Day: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any god besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways.” - Isaiah 64:1-5a.
Meditation: The Advent Season is first and foremost one of hope, and in this lectionary reading for the first Sunday of Advent, the prophet Isaiah tells us his hope: that Yahweh would “tear open the heavens and come down! This passage was written shortly after the restoration of Judah from Babylonian captivity, but from a position of looking back towards that captivity. Isaiah cries out to Yahweh to “not be too angry” and to remember that they are all Yahweh’s people.
The Book of Isaiah is beloved by many because of its messianic qualities. Many of the oracles of the text foretell of deliverance. To Christians, this deliverance was to occur at least twice: once, at the end of the Babylonian Captivity, and again, when Yahweh came down from heaven and took on the physical form of the creation. Yahweh came down and was both fully divine and fully human. In the first deliverance, Judah was restored to the land and out of bondage from a foreign power, in the second deliverance, Yahweh’s people were restored as part of the full inheritance of Yahweh, and those people were taken out of bondage from foreign spiritual principalities and powers and given to Jesus.
The start of Advent is to look forward to deliverance. In our place in the history of salvation, deliverance is both already here but also not yet. Those of us who are raised from death in Christ can know that we are already delivered, yet, until he returns, that deliverance has not been fully consummated. But, we know that it will be. But while the full consummation will occur at some point still farther in linear time, the consummation of the hope we have in Christ lives on in cyclical time. This first day of Advent is the first day of the Church’s calendar year. As we wait for Jesus to appear in Advent, we have already started a new year, and entering it, we wait for the fulfillment of Jesus’ appearance.
In this between time, however, we must live in the hope of fulfillment before fulfillment has come. With fulfillment so close, it can also feel so very far away. The old wisdom saying that “it is often darkest before the dawn,” applies just as well to the advent of our Lord. As we wait for that deliverance, it can feel as if we are in the cold of night, and that it is in fact so dark that the light may never come because it has been swallowed whole. But while it is so very dark right before the sun comes up, so it will feel right before Jesus appears. - Joshua Ward Jeffery
Liturgical Prayer:
Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock;
you who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
Awaken your might; come and save us.
Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
O Lord God Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.
You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us.
Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.
Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name.
Restore us, O Lord God Almighty;
make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved. - Psalm 80:1-7,17-19
The Collect:
ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen. - from The Book of Common Prayer
Thank you for reading this first in a four week series of Advent Meditations. It is my goal to give those who have an intellectual craving for the faith of the apostles an outlet to Christian spirituality. To that end, this series will engage with art, prayer, theology, poetry, scripture, and liturgy from the ancient Christian traditions in relation to the meaning of the advent of the God-man upon the Earth, through the blessed Theotokos, as Jesus the Messiah. Please pass this meditation on to someone else who you think might appreciate it and might need a break in their day to contemplate the divine.