The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
How does one keep a good Advent? Not easily, certainly not in America. One of my old teachers, a Catholic theologian of German extraction, always got a bit cranky at the end of the fall semester: we just didn’t do it right. Too quick to sing the wrong hymns, too busy buying presents, too soon – the horror! – to decorate our Christmas trees. Well. Tempted as you might be to revel early in the joy of Christmas just to stick it to our Teutonic brethren, it’s hard to deny that the church sojourning in this strange land isn’t exactly wired for a spirituality of waiting. Let alone meditating on the vanity of the world, or preparing for the coming judgment.
I’m pretty bad at it myself. In school days, I could always justify my deep-set worldliness by the hard necessity of the academic calendar. Once I’m in the parish … Then you get there, and life is busy as ever. Until this year. At the moment I find myself in between posts, in a season of waiting, forced into an Advent I don’t have to invent. Do you know what I’ve found? The Presence is actually here, the Cloud and the Fire, the Still-Soft Voice. Stillness before the One who is, is peace. Waiting is a grace that wrenches my soul out of itself and out of the world and out of my fear into – God. In his presence there is fulness of joy, and at his right hand – where Mary’s Son sits enthroned until he comes again to judge the world – are pleasures forevermore.
What follows are meditations on the Collects for Advent from the Book of Common Prayer. This is as good a place as any to get started in keeping Advent well. Not because Cranmer & Co. had it all figured out, but because in the end Advent is quite simply a matter of prayer. Of sursum corda in the everyday. Of reorienting our hearts to the Lord.
Sunday 1
Almighty God, give us grace to cast off 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 both 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 forever. Amen.
Advent: a season of reflection and peace carved out amidst the bustle and fury of Christmas, Inc. Or so we imagine. But the Collect dashes our Advent daydreams and summons us battle. That is, it turns St Paul’s summons in Rom 13.12 – “Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” – into a prayer for victory by divine grace. The unholy trinity that rules the evil empire we once belonged to is dead-set on reenlisting us in the works of darkness. The world – not creation, which is good, but fallen humanity en mass, political, economic and cultural “Man” in his proud rebellion against his Maker – either lures us away from singlehearted devotion to our Husband or persecutes us for our fidelity to the Lord. The flesh we inherit from Adam – not the body, which will be raised on the last day, but the self-adoring self, who must perish now by grace or else die the second death – though broken by baptism, indwells us yet, such that the saints find they are unable to do the good they desire and keep on doing the evil they hate. Then there are the demons, led by their prince the dragon (that ancient serpent), who hate holy Church and strive against the saints with all their loud impotent might.
Who can stand fast in this struggle?
Not one of us can. That is why we pray for grace. From whom do we seek this precious gift? From El Shaddai, the Almighty God of the patriarchs. Otherwise we could have no hope of victory. But if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is on our side – if He is for us – then we shall stand, and we shall triumph. The One who promised aged Abram and his barren wife a saving “Seed,” and kept his promise. The One who promised Rebekah that the older would serve the younger – and kept his promise. The One who wrestled with Jacob all through the night, and did not let him go until he was ready to receive his blessing: he will give us the grace we need to win our wrestling matches with self and sin and Satan.
Because this omnipotent Old Testament God – whose name is Father, Son, and Spirit – is with and for us, we wait with confident hope for the grace we need to cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. We do not ask for irresistible grace, not at least that puppet-on-string grace which extricates Calvinist saints from the battle rather than empowering them to fight it. No, we ask for and receive the grace of God the Holy Spirit, who indwells our inmost being, unites us to Christ, and strengthens us to act as priest and kings by faith, hope, and love. Salvation is by grace from first to last; but this great salvation hasn’t left us with nothing to do. It has, instead, given us the ability to do what we could not do before the grace of God overthrew, captured, and freed us. God of all grace, give us grace to: cast off; put on. That is the holy business of the adopted, the redeemed, the justified, this side of the glory. That is how we who have received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through Jesus Christ. With lordly freedom we cast off evil and take hold of the good. With royal courage we kill sin before it kills us, and live into the risen life of Jesus given us freely in the gospel.
In our baptism, the filthy rags of the old Adam were stripped off us, and Christ clothed us with garments of salvation, robes of righteousness, and armor of light. And what else is a Christian life but a baptism begun once and continued forever? Please God, do not let this life and death struggle remain at the level of generalities. The pride, pornography, status-lust, greed, and despair of Adam: we put it off. The love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-possession of the Son of Man: we put it on. And having put it on – filled with the Spirit, clothed with Christ, beloved of the Father – we go into battle. To fight the good fight of the Faith. To walk in love as Christ loved us. To go on hoping without losing heart. Not only to defend ourselves, but to serve others as freedom fighters in Messiah. To be used of the Lord Jesus – who bound the strongman and plundered his house – on the same mission he gave to St Paul: to bring the nations from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.
Now if you follow good Protestant order, you never start a prayer like that. You start with Christ and the wonder of his grace, get your bearings on who you are in him – forgiven, righteous, adopted, free – and only then (if ever) get on with the business of sanctification. On good days, when the law is where it ought to be and grace shines like the sun, I am such a Protestant myself. But is there something in the order of this Collect that Reformation Christians above all need to hear? Thanks be to our merciful God: grace means Christ crucified, and Christ crucified means righteousness as a gift. Christus pro nobis. Otherwise, he died for nothing. But in the fulness of the new covenant, grace also means Christus in nobis, Christ in us by his Spirit, lovingly conquering – like the true Joshua he is – the Canaanite territory still left in our souls. Come, gracious Lord, conquering and to conquer. “Take me to you, imprison me, for I,/ Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,/ Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” (John Donne).
Who is this indwelling conquering Lord? The One who came in great humility. That is the truth at the center of this liturgical season, and indeed of the Christian Faith. Man became proud and exalted himself. God is humble, and abased himself. He who was in the form of God, and did not count equality with God something to grasp, took the form of a slave. The baby in the feeding trough is the Maker of the stars. The infant at his mother’s breast is the eternal Son of God. The crying speechless newborn is the Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing. Has God humbled himself so? Has the Almighty become weak? Has the Immortal visited us in our mortality? Then my richest gain I count as loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.
The day is coming when the Lord who laid aside his outer garments and wrapped a towel around his waist to wash our feet in water and our sins in blood will appear in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead. On that day, the things that are exalted among men will be exposed for the empty nothings they are. The Devil will be thrown into the lake of fire, along with everyone whose name is not found written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. But the poor in spirit will inherit the Kingdom. The hungry and thirsty will feast and make merry. The lame will leap and dance for joy. And the dead who in the time of this mortal life heard the voice of the Son of God by faith and lived, will rise to the life immortal.
Sunday 2
Blessed Lord, who has caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and the comfort of your holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
“For our learning”: after a week battling world, flesh and devil, how primed we are for a little – learning. That is how to keep a good Advent, surely. Pick up Fleming Rutledge’s book of sermons on the season and meet for coffee to talk about it.
But the book in question is the Bible, and the “learning” that our blessed Lord had in mind when he caused it to be written is no leisurely affair.
The Collect takes its theme from Rom 15.4: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” This isn’t academic instruction, but moral and spiritual catechesis. Paul had just cited Ps 69 to put a finishing touch on his argument for forbearing love in Rom 14-15: “For Christ did not please himself …” The grace and virtue described in v. 4 and picked up in the Collect fit the Advent season to a “t”: endurance as we suffer now in the time of this mortal life; the encouragement, the into-my-heart-courage-putting, that we need to persevere in our pilgrimage; the hope that sustains weary souls through thick and thin. By reading Scripture in the Spirit, our lust for instant gratification gives way bit by bit to the endurance of a marathon runner. Our worldly longings begin to die. A holy heartache for the Kingdom of heaven begins to arise in our souls. We grow weary of life in this age, and hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life in God. For all this, the Bible is our formational handbook.
How does this work? Like Ezekiel, Jeremiah, or St John, you have to eat the book, not just read it. Hear, read, mark, learn, inwardly digest. True theologians are like cows: chewing, swallowing, regurgitating, chewing, swallowing again. Take your time. Slow down. Throw caution and criticism to the wind. Read yourself and your circumstances into the story. Then let the story read you. Stand in Adam to submit to your sentence, and in Eve to hear the promise of the Serpent-Crusher. Condemn the world, climb into Noah’s ark, and inherit the righteousness of faith. Leave Ur with Abram and trek through Canaan with Sarai and offer up your ___, your only ___, whom/which you love to God in the sacrifice of absolute faith.
This is how you keep a good Advent: enter into the stories of the Bible and make them your own. Assure your heart: the promises are mine; the God of the promise, who covenanted with fathers, has covenanted with me; everything is real and true and trustworthy; I will feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of God; I will live forever and never die. Eat the Book. Smell, thumber over, even taste books written by mortal men doomed to die. But devour the Bible, the living Word of the living God, and your death will be swallowed up by his life.
Blessed Lord, in your kindness, will you bring your Church back to the Bible again? We have grown too old for stories, too sophisticated for ancient tales. You speak of life everlasting, but we want our best life now. Lord have mercy, have mercy upon us. Send out your Word and Spirit, to make your Church in America the pilgrim people we have forgotten we are. And when (as is inevitable) we meet with danger in the way, give us the patient courage we need to persevere with joy.
Sunday 3
O Lord Jesus Christ, you sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries may likewise make ready your way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient toward the wisdom of the just, that at your second coming to judge the world, we may be found a people acceptable in your sight; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen.
If you’re habituated to the rhythms of the Prayer Book, what strikes you from the start is that this Collect is addressed to Jesus instead of the Father. This has the effect of binding the Old Testament prophets – plus John the Baptist, alluded to via Mal 4.6/Luke 1.17 – directly to Christ. Moses, Isaiah and the rest were His messengers, sent to prepare Israel to behold their God clothed in David’s flesh. Christos Kyrios, as the angel told the shepherds.
They served Him, of course, not just by way of anticipation, but in person. “Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad … Before Abraham was, I am.” Abraham laid down his knife, and rejoiced to see the day of the Lamb. Jacob watched angels go up and down the Ladder his Lord would later become. Moses met him in the bush that blazed with fire but wasn’t consumed, and in the slaughtered lamb of Passover, and in the hind-parts of God on the holy mountain. David heard the Lord say to his Lord, “Sit at my right hand.” Isaiah saw his glory and spoke of him.
Why did Jesus send his messengers the prophets? For the same reason he sends every servant of his Word. To preach repentance and prepare the way of salvation. To preach law and gospel, that is. Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts. Do justice to the widow, the orphan, the immigrant. Cleave to Yahweh with all your heart and all your soul. This is the ministry of the law. To it is added, in the Old Testament as well as the New, the promise of grace in Messiah. The Seed of the Woman will crush the Serpent’s head. The nations will be blessed in the Seed of Abraham. God will cast our sins into the depths of the sea, and betroth us to himself in faithfulness, and write his law upon our hearts, and rejoice over us with loud singing. Yes: the day is coming when Death itself will die, when God and Man will dwell together in peace. From the first promise in Eden to the cryptic prophecies that complete the OT – the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, and the Sun of Righteousness rise with healing in his wings – the prophets prepared the way for our salvation by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Which brings us back to John the Baptist. Tax-collectors, soldiers, and Pharisees agree that he preached the law like a boss: “You brood of vipers!” But as Grünewald knew, his special distinction was to point to Messiah with that scraggly finger of his and preach the gospel of the present Christ: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” No prophet of Jesus has ever been honored as St John, before or since. Perhaps that is why, from the Jordan on, the rest of his career exemplifies the downward mobility that is the distinguishing mark of one dear to the Lamb. He decreased, that Christ might increase. He languished in prison, unliberated by a strange Messiah, wondering whether he’d got it right after all. He kept on preaching repentance, calling kings to keep the law – and was rewarded with beheading for his pains. In all this, John is the model of the faithful preacher, who by law and gospel goes before the Lord to prepare his way, who fears nothing, who sacrifices all.
How often have I glided through this collect without realizing what I was asking for? Lord Jesus Christ, in your goodness be pleased to make the servants of your Word and sacraments … like Jeremiah in the stocks? like Isaiah sawn in two? like holy wild-eyed wrath-preaching Lamb-loving John, with his corpse in the dungeon and his head on a platter?
Or am I reading too much into it? We aren’t asking to become prophets, let alone martyrs; only for help preaching law and gospel, to prepare the Lord’s people for his second coming. Yes, but what does that little “likewise” in the collect involve? What does it mean to minister law and gospel “likewise” to the prophets of old?
Amos, how do we preach repentance today? Tell business owners to stop selling the needy for a pair of sandals; they have to pay their workers a living wage. Tell the cows of Bashan to spend more time at the food pantry, less at the mall. Tell America there are no disposable or deplorable people: not unborn people, not poor people, not black people, not white-trash people. And woe to those who are at ease in Zion!
Hm. Not sure about that messaging. Let’s try the gospel. Isaiah, how do we preach salvation today? Behold: My Servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. Off to a good start. Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Not so positive and encouraging, but I’m still listening. He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not …
Maybe St John, for all his wild-eyed-ness, can be of more help? After all, he is in the New Testament, not the Old. He dresses quirky, but so did Rob Bell, and he built a megachurch. What do you say, JB? This Rabbi has come to me for baptism because He refuses to be separated from prostitutes, tax-collectors, and sinners. He’s the Lamb Isaiah wrote about. Yahweh is about to heap on him the sins of the whole world. Salvation will come through his slaughter. Put your trust in his Blood and you will be delivered from the coming wrath of God …
The Lord Jesus Christ sent his messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation. To summon and promise, convict and forgive, afflict and comfort, bind and loose, kill and raise to life. To preach the law and the gospel. Has he sent us “likewise”? Of course he has. But do we want to be likewise sent? Are we willing to foot the bill of trying to turn disobedient hearts to the wisdom of the just? Are we peddlers of a cheap grace that justifies the world, or preachers of that costly grace which raises the dead and sets sinners free?
Or are we less interested in preparing people to be acceptable in Jesus’ sight than in ensuring we are acceptable in theirs?
Sunday 4
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and as we are sorely hindered by our sins from running the race that is set before us, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.
On the last Sunday in Advent we turn the corner toward the glad feast of Christmas, and the Collect leads the way from waiting to Presence, from struggle to joy. Not that we’re in the clear quite yet. The sin that clings so closely hinders our pursuit of holiness – sorely. We limp and ache and grimace as we run this race. We’re still waiting on God to stir up his power. He hasn’t yet come with great might to deliver us. But of this much we are certain: He will. It’s only a matter of time. And if it’s his good pleasure to arrange a dramatic escape, who am I to argue with such a God as this, who gives life to the dead and conquers by crosses and tells the barren to sing for joy? Our Collect’s tone is therefore one of confidence, expectation, triumph. It epitomizes the substance and spirit of Romans 8. If God is for us – and the gospel assures us he is – what does it matter if sin sorely hinders us? All we do is win, win, win, no matter what, even when we lose. We are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. Come hell, highwater, torture, betrayal, accusation, Death, whatever, nothing – absolutely nothing – can separate us from the covenant love of our faithful and omnipotent God.
That’s how we pray on Advent 4. Fact of the matter is, that’s how we’re free to pray in the deepest Lent or the darkest Good Friday. Such is the holy defiant hope of those lost causes who know they belong to the God who became flesh of Mary and the Man who conquered Death.
One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is looking more at our sin than at the grace and power of our Savior. Of getting stuck in Rom 7, and forgetting all about Rom 8. Of living as if the White Witch were still in charge, and Aslan had not already defeated her, and it’s still always winter but never Christmas. When, as a matter of evangelical fact, you have already been enthroned in Cair Paravel as a king or queen in Narnia. The devil is especially pleased with saints who obsess over their wretchedness. But venture a single glance up out of the abyss of your self into the bright countenance of God your Redeemer, and you slip right out of the snare. Am I weaker than weakness itself? So be it; the God who parted the Sea is at my side. Am I a sinner, worthy of death and hell? Answer with Luther: “I admit that I deserve death and hell: what of it? There is Another who suffered and made satisfaction in my place. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God. Where He is, there I shall be also.”
God’s might is great, his grace is bountiful, and his mercy always arrives right on time. So, my soul, stop moping around. Stop acting as if the royal Son had never come and suffered and triumphed. Lift up your heart, and rejoice. Yes, and again I say, Rejoice. For our friends the angels bring good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto us is born in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And in just a little while, the Coming One will come and will not delay. And you will say on that day: “Behold, this is our God: we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him: let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
Our King and Savior now draws near: O come, let us adore him.
Phil Anderas is an Anglican priest and missionary theologian with operations based in Milwaukee. He holds a PhD in Historical Theology from Marquette University. He is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
