ADVENT COMMUNION 1

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that 1 will restore to you double. (Zecd. 9:12)

Prisoners of Hope

This is a time of longing. It is a time of expectation. Advent hymns express the mood well:

Come, thou long expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.

Come, come, come.

One Advent hymn has a dialogue going on between the watchman and the traveler:

Watchman, tell us of the night,
What its signs of promise are.
Traveler, o'er yon mountain's height
See that glory-beaming star!
Watchman, does its beauteous ray
Aught of joy or hope foretell?
Traveler, yes; it brings the day,
promised day of Israel.

They were watching and waiting and asking each other what the signs of the times meant. They were hoping against hope that it might be the "promised day of Israel."

Another Advent hymn is a plea that Emmanuel (which in English means "God with us") should come soon:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

... Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight....
... Bid envy, strife and discord cease;
fill the whole world with heaven's peace.

The people of the Old Testament were aching for the coming of the Savior, for Emmanuel, God with us. They wanted things to change. They wanted a new beginning. They were ready for a conversion experience, so that they could go in a different direction. They knew that something was wrong with their world and, in particular, with their lives. They felt as if they were captives, and so they called out to Emmanuel to come and "ransom captive Israel," to come and set them free.

They felt like prisoners. They wanted out, but they could not get out. They wanted a better life, but they could not find a better life. They knew that life was meant to be more than it was for them. Somehow they felt that life was meant to be abundant, but they couldn't seem to find the door to enter into that abundant living. They felt cornered, limited, captured, imprisoned. Zechariah, in our text, picked up on that frustrated feeling of wanting to be more than he was, but he did not know how to change his present existence, and he referred to the Israelites as "prisoners."

North Americans know what it is to be "prisoners." Oh, I don't mean that we have literally been inside a prison, behind barbed wire and high walls, with metal bars on the windows. I mean that we have often, even Christians in the church, found ourselves prisoners of our possessions, captives of our culture, and handcuffed by our habits. We have been "in the world," and "of the world." You doubt this? Play this little mind game with me.

Ask yourself what it is you fear the most. What do you worry about the most often? Around what issues do you lose the most sleep? Are the answers to these questions all related to material possessions? Or are you lying awake at night, worrying about the homeless and starving? Many affluent Christians are prisoners of their abundance. They can't live without it. They can't stop acquiring it. They define themselves as people who have many things, and they can't share them with others, for to share in any significant way means that they would have less with which to define who they are. They are caught; they are captive; they are prisoners of their things. They are compulsive buyers and spenders and acquirers and getters. They are not giving people; they are consumers. Ever shopped at a discount store? "Attention K-Mart shoppers, the blue light special...." That's all they think we are—shoppers who are excited about "blue light specials," prisoners who can't escape. You don't have to be in jail to be a prisoner. All you have to be is controlled by something or someone else. You are not in control of your life. When Zechariah called the religious people of his day "prisoners," they knew, and we know, what he meant.

But it wasn't all bad. They were "prisoners of hope." They were locked into hoping, to yearning, to desiring, to pleading. They were people who daydreamed about a new way of life. They dared to hope.

The theologian Emil Brunner has written in his book Eternal Hope: "Hope is the positive ... mode of awaiting the future.... What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of human life. Take oxygen away and death occurs through suffocation, take hope away and humanity is constricted through lack of breath.... No work of (humankind) ... can be successfully performed without hope."

The psalms remind us of how the Israelites had only hope. They had to wait for a better future, as they yearned for a better life:

Truly the eye of the LORD is on ...
those who hope in his steadfast love,
to deliver their souls from death,
and to keep them alive in famine....
Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you. (Ps. 33:18-19, 22)

All they had was hope, a yearning for a better future.

Again, the psalmist asked:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God. (43:5)

So the bad news/good news is that they were "prisoners," but "prisoners of hope." Well, actually that is only bad news, for that is not enough in this life. To be locked into hope is fine, but it is not enough. To be looking for a better tomorrow is admirable, but that is not enough. When you know that you have been created for greater things, it is not enough to live for lesser things.

I suppose it was enough then, for it was all they had before the first Christmas. But Paul, when he wrote to the church in Corinth, caught the biblical vision, for he said that if we have only hope, we are "of all people most to be pitied" (I Cor.15:19). Hope is fine, but it is not enough after Jesus Christ has come, for our hope has now become a reality.

This is why we have arrived at his holy table as we begin the Advent season. He fulfills our most ambitious hopes. He sets the prisoners free. Jesus Christ exemplifies our most optimistic religious dreams. He is the hope of the world. God sets the prisoners free by visiting our earth in Jesus Christ, and through his death and resurrection he fulfills our deepest hopes.

ADVENT COMMUNION 2

But when the right time finally came, God sent his own SOn. (Gal. 4:4 GNB)

Plenty of Time

I keep thinking that I should be finished with my Christmas shopping by now. After all, it was six weeks ago that I saw my first Christmas decorations at the mall. Certainly Christmas must be just around the corner. I had better get going. I had better hurry. I had better hustle. Time is fleeting. Pretty soon it will be too late. Hurry, hurry, hurry!

But wait a minute. Today is only the first Sunday of Advent. Christmas Sunday is four weeks from today. I have plenty of time to prepare. That's why the church has an Advent season. The word advent is a conjunction of two Latin words that together mean "to come toward." The next four weeks are a time to prepare for the celebration of God's visit to our small planet in the form of a baby in Bethlehem.

I'm not really concerned about your Christmas gift or Christmas cards or house decorating or plane tickets or all of the other aspects of the secular celebration. The secular celebration of Christmas is a lot of fun, but it has very little to do with Christ's birth. You may not have enough time to prepare for Christmas if your celebration is simply secular. But for your spiritual celebration of Christmas, you have plenty of time. Take a deep breath. Relax!

Michel Quoist is a French priest who has written a contemporary prayer on the use of time. Listen to a portion of it, for it prepares us to use our time for spiritual purposes:

Lord, I have time. I have plenty of time. All the time that you give me. The years of my life, the days of my years, the hours of my days, they are all mine. Mine to fill, quietly, calmly, but to fill completely, up to the brim, to offer them to you....

I am not asking you ... Lord, for time to do this and then that, but your grace to do conscientiously, in that time that you give me, what you want me to do. (Michel Quoist, Prayers [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963])

The Gospel of Mark gives us a good hint of the kind of mood that we ought to have as people of faith during this holy season. Jesus said, "Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake" (Mark 13:35-37).

Other versions of this passage have Jesus telling us to "keep on the alert," to "stay awake," and to "watch for [his] return." While it is true that some Christians are so concerned about Jesus' second coming that they forget to celebrate his first coming at Bethlehem, others are so zeroed in on his first coming that they forget he has promised to return. Therefore, we ought to be alert, during Advent and after Advent. We ought to "keep awake," remembering that the Father can return home when the Father wants to return home. Keep on the alert!

To young and old the gospel gladness bear;
Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The night draws nigh.

In the Bible, two words are used to distiguish two different kinds of time. Chronos is the time that is running out, the time we often feel that we do not have enough of. It is a measured quantity. Kairos is a time of opportunity. It is God's time. Chronos is time measured by humankind, a human clock, a human way of bringing order. Kairos is God's time, God's way of intervening in our existence and seizing the time, the opportunity. "The hours too swiftly fly" is chronos time. On the other hand, our text, "When the right time Finally came, God sent his own Son," is kairos time. God's intervention is special and can happen at any time. God is hovering over our world, and God picks auspicious times to intervene, which was Arthur Ainger's point when he wrote this poem:

God is working his purpose out
as year succeeds to year: ...
God is working his purpose out
and the time is drawing near;

Nearer and nearer draws the time,
the time that shall surely be,
when the earth shall be filled
with the glory of God as the
waters cover the sea.

There is plenty of time for God's intervention in our world and our lives. One of President John F. Kennedy's most famous speeches was delivered in West Berlin a few months before his assassination. The climax of that speech came when he said simply and movingly, "I am a Berliner." On the night following his assassination, Germans crowded the streets of West Berlin, and Berliners responded by putting thousands of lights in their windows. Why this dramatic display of affection and grief? Because President Kennedy had identified with them! They had not forgotten that he had claimed to be one of them. He intervened in their difficult history and identified closely with their plight.

Advent begins the season of intervention, of kairos, of the time when God changed the direction of humankind for all time by being born into our world. We come humbly and gratefully to his table where he again identified with us in his death. From that cradle and from that cross, Jesus Christ said, "I am one of you."

Keep on the alert, for God can intervene at any time in your life.

ADVENT COMMUNION 3

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son. (Gal. 4:4)

Preparation

We all have stories about how many "close" friends we have. People love to drop in on us spend a few days once it begins to get cold. It isn't just during the Christmas season that this happens. It happens almost any time during the winter. Isn't it funny that nobody ever drops in to see us during the summer, when you could fry an egg on the sidewalk? Where are all those people then?

We are a nation of transients. People who have not moved within the last eight years have certainly traveled within the last five years. Those who cannot afford vacations for themselves love to see slides of other people's vacations, so they can at least see the world vicariously. Whether we are guests or hosts, being entertained or entertaining, the fact is that most of us enjoy being "on the road again."

Before any trip, large or small, and before the arrival of any visitor, we all must make preparation. I remember one day when my in-laws visited us from Minnesota. We prepared for their arrival by wallpapering the bedroom in which they would be staying. We were going to get around to it some day, but with their approaching arrival, we made that part of our preparation. I had the lawn mowed, we washed the windows, and I cut the hedge.

When they arrived, we were ready for them. My wife had baked for days, so she would not have to do that when they came, and she had the menus pretty well prepared. We had discussed where we might take them. We had prepared well for their arrival.

Our text from Paul's letter to the church at Galatia reminds us that God was also preparing the world well for the coming of his Son, Jesus: "When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son" (Gal. 4:4). God didn't just wake up one morning and say, "Well, I think I'll send my Son to the earth today. It's as good a time as any." No, God prepared the world in a unique way for the coming of the Savior.

Scholars have pointed out how the world was prepared by Caesar's great achievement of unification. Then the known world was one empire. There were no known barriers, for the Roman flag flew everywhere on earth.

Because of this there was peace everywhere. If Christ had come a century earlier, the gospel would have been blocked by jealous, national frontiers and with people fighting. If Jesus had come a century later, civilization would have been occupied with the terrible battle against barbarian hordes from the north. But God had prepared the world in such a way that there was for a time world peace, and people would not be distracted by war, but would be able to listen to the gospel.

God also prepared the world by sending Jesus at a time when Rome's great roads were finished. From one end of the empire to the other you could travel on good roads, swiftly and safely. Those who would be spreading the gospel around the world used this means of transportation. Built to carry Caesar's legions, these roads carried God's messengers, and the world was evangelized.

The world was also prepared by the fact that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem there was one common language in the world. Today there are over four thousand languages. When Jesus was born there was one universal language. While each province had its own tongue, everybody everywhere knew Greek, hence the missionaries, as they fanned out along the Roman roads, could evangelize in one language.

Socially, also, the people were ready for a Savior. Two out of every three people in Rome were slaves. One scholar has written that "the disastrous aftermath of war, the wild, colossal extravagance of Herod the Great, the burden of taxation ... the growing overpopulation which made it impossible for the land to provide food enough for its own inhabitants—these things had precipitated a period of unexampled depression among the great bulk of people" (James S. Stewart, The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978], pp. 18-19). People were ready for a change. They longed for someone to save them from the future. They yearned for what the prophets had promised would come out of Bethlehem from the lineage of David. The time had fully come. The way of the Lord had been prepared.