Advent

One of the things that I love most about remembering Christ's coming during the advent season is the way this remembering gestures toward the future, toward the second coming of Christ, the one in which he will wipe away every tear from every eye, in which he will take all of the brokenness and frailty and decay of this world and make it all new, in which people from every tribe, tongue, language, and race will come before him and cast their crowns at his feet. Ah, for that day.

I was playing with my son the other day. We were both pterodactyls; his pterodactyl name is Quackie (did you know that pterodactyls quack like a duck?) and mine is Daddy Pterodactyl. We were flying around doing pterodactyl stuff like pterodactyls do, when Quackie decided that we should play with some bear cubs and lion cubs. Daddy Pterodactyl thought that sounded like a terrific idea but had one concern: won't the lion and bear cubs (who are all named Owen, by the way) try to eat pterodactyls if we come into their cave? No, Quackie assured. I don't know, Quackie, I think they will try to eat us. No, they won't, he affirmed. He then sealed his argument with the clincher: Jesus came back and made them good and now we can be friends with them.

My son is going to have random memories of me grabbing him up into a huge hug and kissing his face off when he says what to him are probably random things, a habit I promise to stop by the time he is 14. What a beautiful idea he has and how true to Scripture's promise. This is the promise. Christ will come back. He will make enemies friends. Pterodactyls will play with lion cubs. I will fulfill my lifelong desire to wrestle with a bear.

Advent points us both backward and forward. Backward to the miracle of the incarnation, the mystery of God-made-man, the miracle of Emmanuel, God with us, "pleased as Man with men to dwell"; backward to the physicality of our faith, the real blood that coursed through real veins, the real cries fueled by real pain and real lungs that broke the silence of that night, the utterly non-metaphorical presence of God in the here and now.

And forward to that promised day when King Jesus comes back again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The future promise of Christ's reign is one of the things that resonates so deeply in Milton's "Nativity Ode." Here he pictures the eventual triumph of Christ:

The aged earth aghast,
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake,
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th' old Dragon underground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swings the scaly Horror of his folded tail. (160-172)

The caveat, of course, in the triumph is the already-not-yet paradox of Christianity. The triumph has begun as he says so beautifully in that line: we are living in the midst of a partially restored cosmos, though one that still longs for its full redemption. Advent reminds us of our suspension, cautioning us to beware lest we fall into either side of the ditch. For the world is neither abandoned by God nor are his promises all fulfilled. There will be a day when he comes again, the "dreadful Judge" arrayed in splendor, and because of the first incarnation we can look forward to his return.

Advent is about waiting, too. Israel waiting, mourning in lonely exile until the Son of God appears. We Christians now waiting for the trumpet sound and to meet the Son of God in the air and welcome him back to his kingdom. Help us as we wait, O Lord. Help us to wait well.