Advent II

Advent Season

Part II: In His Presence until He comes

By Dan McDonald

 

            Advent is a season when we remember that we are living in the yet and not yet time of the Gospel’s fulfillment. We do well to realize that we are waiting for a more perfect Gospel kingdom yet to come, but to remember also that we rejoice in many blessings already having been introduced into our lives through Christ’s entrance into humanity and his promise to be with us even to the end of the Age.

            Christ promised his disciples at the Last Supper that it would be to their advantage for him to disappear from their lives and send the Holy Spirit. Christ remains with us through the Holy Spirit. Every way in which Christ is shown to be with us to the end of the age, is connected to the Holy Spirit being sent as our comforter, teacher, and helper. He points with divine power to Christ, and explains the ramifications of Christ’s life and ministry.

            The first great work the Holy Spirit does in bringing us into the presence of Christ was to enable the Apostles to proclaim the Word of Christ that we might be convicted of sin, of Christ’s righteousness, and of all things pertaining to the Gospel. The Apostles waited in Jerusalem for the gift of the Holy Spirit before they began proclaiming Christ to the World. The Spirit through the preaching of Christ did two things simultaneously. He began calling us to follow Christ within the context of a living Church. He began to oversee the collection of the teachings of the Apostles that we have in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The New Testament is almost completely the Apostles teaching Christians in the Church. We especially learn of Christ through the Spirit’s guidance of us within the context of the Church by the teaching of the Holy Scriptures given by the Spirit through the Apostles. As men and women yearning to know Christ, life in the Church and in the Scriptures is one of the best preparations for our finding ourselves in the presence of Christ. Certainly the news reminds us that churches are imperfect, sometimes horribly so. But of first importance is to find a church humbly following Christ in living church communities where the Scriptures are sought to be understood. We remember how in John’s Revelation the Spirit spoke to the churches of the seven candlesticks.

            The sacraments are also shown to proclaim Christ’s presence. In the preaching of John the Baptist, or as he is also known “John the Forerunner” the message of the Kingdom is proclaimed with the command to repent and be baptized. In the Great Commission Jesus speaks to his disciples of how they were to proclaim Christ to the nations, make disciples of the nations, and baptize them in Christ teaching all the things he taught them. The Church, through her ministries, presents to us the ongoing life and memory of Christ. Christ is with us in the faithfulness of Apostolic teaching to the time he comes again. There is mystery in the workings of Christian baptism. There is mystery in hearing the Gospel and being opened to the life set forth in the preaching of the word and expressed in our baptisms into Christ. We understand that the Spirit opens the ears of the deaf that we might hear the Gospel. We understand that through the Word comes life, and that by water and the word we are given life in Christ. We cannot fully explain the mystery though the varied teachers in the Church have sought to explain the mystery whether through Catholic and Eastern Orthodox perspectives, or the myriad Protestant interpretations including Calvinism, Wesleyan, and many other perspectives. We recognize that in hearing the Word with repentance and in baptism within Christ we confess a mystery involving our hearing the Word by pure mercy combined with a living faith that is truly an essential human response to the heard word. In both repentance and baptism we understand a call that has first priority in our lives, and yet we recognize that this beautiful work of obedience to the Gospel comes to us as Christ comes to us in the lost-ness of our sins and comes to set us free when he says, “Come and follow me.” This declared Peter is for you and your children. Thus is the Gospel to be proclaimed until the end of the age.

            At the Last Supper, Christ showed us the importance of the Eucharist. He gave bread and wine to his disciples, and described the bread and wine as his body and blood. Often the Church has sought to better understand how exactly the bread and wine are or become the body and blood of Christ. But for now, let us agree that in giving His disciples the bread and wine as his body and blood, He has made the gifts given to us in communion the certainty that we are being given Him, in accord with his death for our sins to be our life eternal. Every communion supper can be appreciated as the remembrance of Christ’s gifts in the presence of his disciples, and also the gift of the foretaste we are even now given of the banquet supper in the promised days of eternity.

            I would like to include in this writing one other way Christ and the Spirit speaks to us. Jesus tells us that He will be with the poor and needy, especially those dependent upon Christ for living mercies. We are especially to take notice of those whom we know in the household of the faith, who are needy, but Jesus is surely reaching out to a world in need. The needs are many. Christ is often coming to us in the needy, whatever the need whether it is poverty, need of friendship, need of being seen in the midst of an impersonal world. Those suffering are often represented by Christ. In fact, in Philippians we are reminded that part of our calling might well be to fill out the sufferings of Christ. The life of Christ instead of always being a life of abundance is often a life of suffering in which the sufferings of Christ are set forth through the symbolic but real suffering of Christians. Our suffering points to Christ’s sufferings and brings us closer to the sufferings of our neighbors that Christ might be seen as all in all.

            If Christ is indeed with us in our needs and sufferings, He must surely also be with us in the gifts he gives to the Churches that we might be able us to encourage, strengthen, and support one another. Christ is wonderfully with us in the one who suffers, but also he is with us in the one who has been given a gift to speak faithfully to another, to encourage, or to persuade someone of the beauties of God’s kingdom, to express the word of salvation to another. In all these things Christ through the Spirit, in his Church, by the Word, comes to us in both our weakness and strength that Christ might be formed in us. He is with us to the end of the Age. In that great day, we shall see him and shall be like him, because he is with us to the end of the age.