By Rev. Canon David B. Tabo-oy
Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning—
And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” – Read: Mark 13:24-37
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The Christian faith has grown immensely through the centuries since it was established by Jesus the Christ. According to one website on religion, in the last 100 years, the number of Christians in the world has quadrupled from about 600 million in 1910 to well past 2 billion presently. Today, Christianity remains the world’s largest religious group. Along with its growth came numerous groups with different practices, beliefs and structures based on varied reasons. Despite of the differences of these Christian groups there is one thing that unites them: awaiting the second coming of Jesus Christ. Christians are all in a sense Adventists. “Adventist” refers to a group of people who believe in the literal arrival of Christ to earth. Seventh-day Adventists adopted the name because it points to their roots as a movement and encapsulates their ultimate hope in this life—being reunited with Jesus Christ when He returns to take us to heaven. The term “Adventist” comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “arrival” or “appearance.” It’s where we get the word advent, referring to the arrival of someone or something important. An Adventist is someone waiting for the arrival of Christ for the second time.
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The Season of Advent begins this Sunday and so the new church calendar year starts. Someone once said that if Advent can be a season, it has to be a mood…a way we feel, a way we look at life and view our world. The pre-Christmas weeks are a crammed version of our lifestyle, so the Advent mood describes how a Christian might react to life. These unsettling years of our life seek to be filled with a spirit of hope – hope that our God is the One who breaks down the walls of separation and fear. Advent is our hope and our fear of God’s glory made human and possible for us. Amidst the excitement of preparing for the Christmas festivities, the season of Advent reminds us that we must make preparations for the deeper meaning that Christmas is all about God’s presence among His people in the person of Jesus Christ. His coming on Christmas Day fills us with hope and gives us encouragement that amidst all life’s troubles our future is secure because it is in God’s hands.
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The Gospel lesson appointed this Sunday is a call to watchfulness that begins with a warning that no person knows the time of the coming of the Lord. This sets us to a mode of waiting and anticipation. Waiting for the second advent of Christ can be a long, tiresome, and trying moment. What normally passes like a breeze becomes an eternity when we are counting the moments and waiting for something to happen. Waiting in Advent is underscored with anticipation. Anticipation is defined as an emotion involving pleasure or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Anticipatory emotions include fear, anxiety, hope and trust. Our waiting for the Second Coming is not passive but full of excitement. We are not alone in our waiting because aside from our fellow ‘Adventists’ we are assured in the Scriptures that God is with us always, ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20).
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We live in the shadow of the apocalypse – the dark reality of the end of our time and the end of the world’s time. Numerous are the uncertainties while we wait in anticipation. But there is also good news.
Advent promises us that in the darkness, in the shadows, in the unpredictable anxiety of our unfinished lives, God is present, and He is in control and will surely come again. Wherever there is darkness and dread in the world around us, God is present to help us endure. God is in charge, and hope is alive. And as long and as interminable as the night seems, morning will come – in God’s good time and God’s good way. As I have written before about Advent, waiting should be in active mode not on a passive or standby mode. The question is not, “Is Christ coming again?” For surely he will come again. The proper question should be “Are you ready, am I ready when he shall come again?”
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v24″In the days after that time of trouble the sun will grow dark, the moon will no longer shine, v25the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers in space will be driven from their courses. (Mark 13:24-25).
Jesus tells his disciples, “There will be signs in sun and moon and stars and upon the earth…” There will be signs and circumstances reverberating through the entire universe. Signs, things which will cause us to fear. Some fears are healthy. We’re all a little jumpy. Being human means being insecure. As I have written before in this space, I write again to underscore the call of Advent Season. When nothing is left, God is left. God’s love will not be defeated. Nothing in this world can separate us from God’s love. Paul writing to the Christians in Rome makes the affirmation: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8: 39).
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God never promised a life free from trial. What God promised was to be with us always, and through the grace of Jesus Christ, to give us the victory. Therein is our hope. In the Book of Genesis we find the story of Noah. There had been endless days on the ark… days of waiting and hoping. In every direction Noah could see only water. One day, in faith, he released a dove to search for land. The Bible says the dove “found no place to set her foot” and returned. Noah was put on hold. He had to wait. He waited with faith and in hope. He sent out a dove a second time. It returned with a spring of freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak. Noah could not see the land, but he knew it was there. It began to appear out of the watery waste. The worst was over. As sure as God made little green apples, a new, green world would emerge out of the wreckage of the old.
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In Christ we find a freshly plucked olive leaf pointing toward a day when all tragedy shall be overcome and all pain destroyed. A new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. A new kingdom will emerge. This is our faith. This is the mode of Advent.
Time began anew with the birth of Jesus Christ. The Incarnation establishes a new situation for humanity in the cosmos. God’s action at Christmas was to be decisive, ultimate, and final. With the birth, death and resurrection of Christ a whole new world has been created. When anyone is united with Christ, there is a new world. It is a world where Christ rules as Lord, where the Holy Spirit functions to keep life human, where love is the rule. Our Lord said, “Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
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Throughout the scripture readings is the warning, “Be on your guard, stay awake because you never know when the time will come.” It is a grim reminder that a day of reckoning lies ahead. To be found wanting and unworthy of the kingdom on that occasion will be painfully unending. The choice is Christ or damnation. The real challenge of Advent is to prepare ourselves in body and soul for that great moment, by letting God’s presence and power get to work in our lives. Life is incomplete without God, and we are useless and inadequate without his presence. He alone can satisfy our deepest longings and fill us with inner peace. Advent makes us aware of our need to turn to God in hope and humble prayer, begging him to save us. It is a time for soul-searching and renewal, for becoming more conscious of our sins and asking for pardon and forgiveness. If we have abandoned God, neglected prayer or broken the commandments, now is the time to make a fresh start at building a closer relationship with him. There is not much point in Christ coming into our world if he is not at home and alive in our hearts. God values our response to his love. Above all Advent is a season when as Christians we reach out to the disadvantaged and bring them the joys of Christ.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on 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 the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Collect, First Sunday of Advent, BCP)**
