Readings for the Second Sunday in Advent
Psalm 85
Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-15
Mark 1:1-8
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak to the heart of Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her that her warfare has ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from Yahweh’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice calls in the wilderness
Clear a path for Yahweh
make straight a highway for our God.
So begins Isaiah reading for the Second Sunday in Advent. It’s a good Christmas theme, at least the part quoted here. Christmas is a time of comfort, or at least it’s supposed to be. Advent has four themes, one for each Sunday of the season—hope, peace, joy, and love—in that order.1 The theme for the second Sunday, then, is peace. So far so good, as far as the opening sentences of Isaiah 40. The Gospel readings opens with Mark quoting from the Isaiah passage and has John the Baptist as the one who cries in the wilderness, “Clear a path for Yahweh!”
Mark tells us that John “appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” We are still in the realm of peace, perhaps. After all, it does feel rather cathartic to know you’ve wronged someone and for them to forgive you. Before that, though, either with another human or with God, we confront the uneasy and decidedly non-peaceful reality of facing our sin and wrong doing, of facing the reality that we need to change. As we keep backing up, peace begins to fade.
Why does the prophet need to speak comfort to God’s people? Because they are captives in Babylon, because the holy city is destroyed and the sacred Temple is in ruins. Every tangible vestige of God keeping his promise, every evidence of hope was annihilated. They needed to be comforted because they were in exile, and they were in exile because of their sins of idolatry and injustice. They had known war and famine, natural disaster and torture. Their entire world crumbled to into the rubble of Jerusalem’s walls.
Advent is viewed as a time of preparation for Christmas, and it is that, but not necessarily in the way we thought. With our visions of tinsel, presents, and hot chocolate, we forgot that Advent was originally a time of repentance and fasting, a time to meditate, not only on Jesus’ first coming, but on his return at the great day of God’s judgment. Today, we observe this time of preparing for Christ’s return by buying Advent calendars full of beer and chocolate. I’m not necessarily saying we should end the Advent Calendar, but I am saying we should remember what the season is for.
In ancient times, Advent was an eschatological season, a time for the Church to remember the “Four Last Things”—death, judgment, heaven, hell—and trim their lamps. The Advent seasons ends with Christmas (i.e. the Christ Mass, or Feast of the Nativity) as a way of reminding us that Jesus’ second coming, his adventus (Latin for “appearing”),2 is as sure as his first adventus, his first coming to us as the Incarnate Logos, born of the Virgin Mary.
Advent is meant to remind us of Last Things.
And without trying to be a doomsdayer or and end-times predictor, these do feel like the days of Last Things. Israel is relentless in its attacks on Palestinian people. The climate crisis is at a no-turning back stage as we continue to ravage the planet, and mother earth is fighting back. Systems of power are exploiting people at rates never before seen with no sign of slowing down and so few willing to stand against them. The exposure of sexual scandals in all church bodies across the globe threaten trustworthiness of our message. And everywhere we turn there seems to be an undercurrent of anxiety and little expectation for the future. Perhaps more than ever, or at least for the first time in a long time, Advent meets us here and gives us a way forward. Again, Fleming Rutledge:
Advent encroaches upon us in an uncomfortable way, making us feel somewhat out of sorts with its stubborn resistance to anything remotely resembling the season of shopping and decorating and wrapping and partying…I have not found…and Advent calendar with a window that opens to show a picture of John the Baptist—preferably saying, “Repent, ye!”3
In these times of trial, suffering, and scandal, the gospel meets us in the mouth of the untamable mouth of the camelhair wearing wilderness prophet, “Repent, ye!” As has been said many times, to repent is not merely to feel sorry for the sinful things we’ve done, but to change our way of life. This is part of what it means to prepare the way of the Lord, to make a highway straight for our God. It is, in Rutledge’s above Tweet, to “face the magnitude of the Powers arrayed against the Lord,” not only in society, but right here in this heart, where the same impulses that create unjust empires (economic, political, or otherwise) dwell.
Advent can be a time when, in the middle of the turmoil, we can reflect on Jesus’ promise to return to his people, to return to his earth, to break down all unjust powers that seek to oppress, exploit, and destroy. It is a time for us to examine our hearts and see the places that rage against the Lord and his Anointed and submit them to his Lordship. Observing Advent is to align our wills and our actions with the sacred way of Jesus.
The whiskey Advent calendars, the wine and beer Advent calendars, the chocolate and hot sauce Advent calendars are only the fruit of a deeper issue, namely the drowning of anxiety through small and forgetful, consumerist pleasures. After the window it opened and the treat consumed, the anxieties and uncertainties remain. If we are going to find peace and hope, if we are going to find comfort, it must be in something that promises to give us something better than these fleeting distractions. We lift our eyes above the small pleasures and place them on the Lord Jesus, who promises to return to take the nations under his rule. His rod is a shepherd’s rod, but it is a rod of iron. The powers that exist now that take pleasure in hoarding wealth and the exploitation of human beings are unwilling to bend to the rule of Jesus, who calls for fairness, justice, and holiness. Yet, as we know, at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord (Phil. 2:10-11).
Jesus’ rule feels like violence to those who will not bend toward justice, humility, and holiness, much like the fire of God’s love and presence feels like hell to those who hate him.
The invitation of Advent is to walk with the judgment of God in our heart, not as a condemning force meant to paralyze us with guilt, but as a consuming fire that purifies our affections, that transforms our own love of wealth into generosity, our own methods of oppression into loving and serving the other. In other words, the invitation of Advent is to mediate on the ways we can become more like Christ.
In times of judgment, in times like ours when the world is on fire, we proclaim that there is comfort, hope, and peace for the world, and that it comes through Jesus Christ. We also proclaim that God’s comfort comes to those who have been brought low by sin and brought low by injustice, but to the Nebuchadnezzars, Herods, and Caesars of the world, we proclaim that there in only one Lord, Jesus Christ, the God who delivers his people by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
More or less. Different churches might reorder the themes, replace hope with faith, largely ignore them, or focus instead on the readings and candle names (Prophecy candle, Bethlehem candle, Shepherd’s candle, and Angel’s candle).
Adventus was the Latin word for the Greek parousia, which among other uses, spoke of Jesus’ “coming” or “appearing” when he returned to the earth. (cf. 1 Cor. 15:23 ).
Fleming Rutledge. Advent : The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2018. https://search-ebscohost-com.fuller.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=1920700&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
"The invitation of Advent is to walk with the judgment of God in our heart, not as a condemning force meant to paralyze us with guilt, but as a consuming fire that purifies our affections, that transforms our own love of wealth into generosity, our own methods of oppression into loving and serving the other. In other words, the invitation of Advent is to meditate on the ways we can become more like Christ."
STUNNINGLY SAID.