In Advent the Church of Jesus revisits the story of God in human history. We begin at the end of history and work our way back to the incarnational activity of God in Jewish history, all the way up into the life of God’s Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and into the birth of the Church in the manifested gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, Counselor, and Helper of whom Jesus spoke so highly.
The Church doesn’t celebrate Christmas except that it marks the birthday of the King. Christmas is a one day event, a birthday. The Church, however, journeys through a season comprised of the four Sundays, and the days around them, leading up to Christmas. The Eastern Church journeys all the way up to January 6, Epiphany , making room in the Advent story for the presence of the Wisemen who followed a star from the East to Bethlehem.
The journey to Christmas, however, isn’t even the story. The story is the audacious claim that God has come into history, and is present in the most profound mission of redemption imaginable. God comes into His very own creation and lives as one of us. Why? Why in the world would God do this? “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). This is the only explanation.
Our Advent journey to Christmas and Epiphany, is saturated in the love of God for His creation, all of His creation. God loves you and me. God loves us so much that He came to us in Jesus to live out just how much He loves us. One of His first followers wrote, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God … This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (I John. 3:1, 16).
As we journey forward in Jesus, learning to embrace the fact that “God’s will is … good, pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2), my prayer is that each one of us would be overwhelmed by the Father’s love for us. As the old song says, written long before word processors and the easy availability of writing tools,
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky
- Frederick M. Lehman 1917
Let’s go out and make God look good.
