"Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us." The word advent means arrival or coming. During this season of Advent we prepare for the three comings, the three arrivals, of Christ.
The first Advent looks to the past, the Advent of Christ's coming at Christmas over two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. Christ arrived as a little baby, born in the lowliest of conditions, born among the animals and the straw and laid in a manger. It was probably not quite as silent as we like to remember, and yet it was very holy. This coming of Christ was met with angels and shepherds and magi. "Joy to the world, the Lord is come!"
The second Advent looks to the future, the Advent of Christ's second coming. This is the Advent we remembered a few weeks ago in our lessons. We heard, "The day is surely coming, says the Lord." Again there are angels, but this time their depiction is a bit more foreboding. This is the Advent of Matthew 25, when Jesus says that we did, or did not, give him food when he was hungry or welcome him when he was a stranger.
The third Advent looks to the present, the coming of Christ into our lives now. This, I believe, is the Advent of our Collect today, "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us." Come among us today, O Christ, in this very moment with all of its joy and all of its sorrow, with all of its wonder and all of its anxieties. Come, O Lord, and be present with us today.
Jesus is with us as we take delight in the receiving of a Christmas card in the mail. Jesus is with us when we worry over a Covid diagnosis. Jesus is with us as we belt out our Christmas carols in the car. And Jesus is with us as we get another treatment for our cancer. Christ is with us. Christ is with you in this very moment. "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us."
These three Advents are not unrelated. The Holy family that could not find a good spot for the birth of their baby, and the stranger being welcomed in Matthew 25 are connected, and both direct us to this present moment, this present Advent, and teach us how to live today. We have to make room in the inn today. We have to welcome Christ and the stranger in our midst today.
This past week I had the great pleasure of meeting four Afghan refugees for coffee, four men that we are helping welcome through our work in the Refugee Resettlement Coalition. For over an hour I talked and listened and learned and laughed and tried not to weep as I got to know these guys and their stories. I welcomed them and in the process I shared a cappuccino with Jesus.
This is what John the Baptist is doing in our Gospel reading. He is taking the future Advent and pulling it into the present moment. That phrase we heard, the wrath to come, is a reference to that future Advent that we have come to understand is the Advent of the Second Coming. But John uses that Advent to direct the people to the present. If that is the future that is coming, what does it mean for our lives today? John's response? If you have an extra coat, give it to someone without. If you have some extra food, give it to someone without. This teaching sends us right back to Matthew 25 and that great vision that Jesus offers us of the future Advent. "I was hungry and you fed me, I was naked and you clothed me." When we do these things, Christ comes among us in the very people we are sharing with. "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us." Christ does, every single time we share and care. Look to that future Advent to pull us into the present one.
It is the same with the Advent of the past, Christmas. Christ was born not only in a manger in Bethlehem, but Christ is born into our hearts and into this world when we reach out in love to our neighbor, when we add some warmth to the world's coldness, or when we shine a light in the world's gloom.
The theologian Howard Thurman wrote a beautiful poem that gets to this idea of this connection between the past and the present Advent, "Christmas is waiting to be born."
Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes
And the heart consumes itself, as if it would live,
Where children age before their time
And life wears down the edges of the mind,
Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,
While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
Where fear companions each day’s life,
And Perfect Love seems long delayed.
Christmas is waiting to be born:
In you, in me, in all mankind.
At the center of all three Advents, the past, the future, and the present, is love. All three collapse into one. The past and the future meet here in the present, and all become the same Advent in love. In this Advent season of preparation, prepare you houses, prepare your gifts, but most importantly, prepare your hearts and your souls to welcome the arrival of Christ. He comes to you, every day. "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us."
AMEN.
