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.
