Advent: “Already” and “Not Yet”

Advent marks the beginning of a new Christian Year. Whereas our civil calendar in this month of December is coming to a close, yet in our church calendar, we have already begun a year that is new. The Church appoints that from the very beginning of our Sundays in the church year, we inhabit a spirit of longing and of waiting, a season of expectation of Christ’s return. With the passing of another year, we realize that we are one step closer to the Lord’s return, and yet we realize that there is much yet to be accomplished in this world. The holidays can be a difficult time for many; and the Church doesn’t sugar-coat this, but instead causes us to sit, for the first four weeks of the new Christian Year, with the fact that all is not yet as it should be.

I say “not yet,” because this season impresses upon us the fact also that one day, things will be made right. Christ will return and complete his victory over sin and mortality and usher in the consummation of his kingdom. This Advent, we inhabit this place of “already, but not yet,” being real with our longings for things to be as they were designed to be, when captive Israel is ransomed, as we sing in O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. When we refer to captive Israel, mourning in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear, we are referring to ourselves, held captive by our sins and the death which is their effect. We are crying out to God, in the spirit of Old Testament Israel, that he would return to save us. This is one of the great hymns of Advent, which we will be singing, in bits and pieces, each week.

Another great Advent hymn is the Rorare Caeli, the “Advent Prose,” which we are using as our processional hymn. This is a collection of verses from the Prophet Isaiah (and many of these verses will be appearing in our Old Testament Lesson these first two Sundays of Advent). This hymn has as its refrain, “Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness.” This is the request that heaven would come down to earth (as we pray, “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”). This is a request that Christ, the righteousness of the Father, would return from heaven, being poured down like rain.

The first verse begins with the heaviness of our current situation, in our sins, comparing our experience to that of a holy city and a beautiful house which has become a wilderness. In the second verse, we acknowledge that we have sinned, are unclean, and fade like a leaf. We are real with the fact that we are responsible for much of our sufferings. But the hymn takes a sharp turn in verse three, when we begin to hear the voice of God through the Prophet. Whereas we considered ourselves to be sinners, God considers us to be his witnesses and his chosen servants, to know and believe in him. He calls himself our Savior and says that no one can snatch us out of his hand. Therefore, in the fourth verse, he exhorts us to comfort. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, my salvation shall not tarry: I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions: Fear not, for I will save thee: For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.”

So this hymn takes us on this beautiful Advent journey, from sinfulness to redemption, from exile to deliverance. During this month, we sit in the midst of this tension, between “already” and “not yet.” So we deck the altar in purple, the color of fasting and penitence, and our liturgy is reordered such that we begin with confession, in what the Prayer Book refers to as the “Penitential Order.” But on the Third Sunday, the color switches to a softer rose, the reminder that we have glimmers of hope, even in our sufferings, the promise of Christ’s return, even in the midst of our exile. Friends, this is a beautiful season, one in which we can be real with where we’re at, while yet comforting each other with a message of hope, for the Lord has promised us, “My salvation shall not tarry.”