First Monday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Back From the Future
Advent is a season of expectation. We look back to the birth of Jesus and contemplate all that this event means for our lives. However, is it possible to gain a similar perspective from an event that has not yet occurred?
This is what Peter is asking us to do. If you will permit me, let’s take a moment and reflect upon the importance of looking back from the future.
Read the Numbers 17 passage; in it the Jewish people wait in eager expectation for the beginning of their priestly sect. Like most things connected to Yahweh, what the people expected was vastly overshadowed by what God actually did. They looked for a tiny bud, they got an almond-producing plant. They looked for a subtle clue, they received something substantial enough to feed people.
We speak of Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. As the Psalmist wrote about God many years before the birth of Jesus: “Before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
Advent, in some regards, is an Alpha story. This season calls us to look to the birth of Jesus, His public ministry and salvation mission. However, Peter’s letter calls Jesus’ followers to also adopt an Omega perspective.
The Omega perspective calls us to ponder an oft overlooked truth, especially in this season. Advent calls us into a spirit of anticipation for that which has already happened; our New Testament reading calls us into actual anticipation of an event yet to come. For four weeks before Christmas, we celebrate the Advent of the Incarnation; Peter is calling us to live every day of our lives in the Advent of the Eschaton.
When Peter asks his audience the rhetorical question, “what kind of people ought you to be?” he does so from the perspective of finitude. He reminds us all that the world we know is destined to end. He invites us to look back from the end of days and use that vantage point to shape our lives, our actions, our beliefs, and our faith accordingly.
If I can be a touch mercenary at this moment, Peter calls us to invest wisely. He challenges us to become the kind of people who seek after that which is to come with even more fervour than those who seek after that which currently is. He shows us that our material goals are merely the relentless pursuit of, at best, shiny dust. He challenges us to “to live holy and godly lives” so that we can be reshaped into the kind of people who eagerly look forward to “a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”
Our time is limited — we all know that — but Peter calls us to see such knowledge as a spiritual blessing. He challenges us to examine our choices in light of the coming “day of the Lord” because the salvation story does come to completion.
True, we are over 2000 years removed from the Incarnation’s origins but that doesn’t mean the Author of our salvation has lost the plot. We serve a God to Whom “a thousand years are like a day” and Peter’s letter reminds us that our understanding of time is too limited to be reliable.
His powerful message is that we are impatient because we simply don’t see deep or far enough. He reminds us that the multiple millennia of days between that day and this is not Divine neglect but is actually Divine patience. Each day that passes is not a sign of abandonment, but is rather the ongoing evidence of God’s mercy and desire that all be counted among the saved.
The end of days remains a point of theological uncertainty that can breed anxiety or avoidance. Advent hardly seems like the time to talk about such things. But Peter shows us that is exactly what we should do. We may pay lip service to the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord but remain fearful of what is to come. For those of us who struggle, I remind you of the tale in Numbers.
I sometimes fear asking God for what I truly desire and end up limiting my hopes — and my prayers — to small bud-size requests. I label such attitudes as humility but I don’t think that is what I’m actually doing. Our Holy Bible teaches us time and again that we follow a God who takes our “small bud” expectations and rewards us with an almond reality. Can we not have faith that the end will be even more glorious than the beginning?
We are called to follow the Alpha and the Omega, and as we reflect with joy upon the beginning Incarnation, let us anticipate with even greater joy the coming Eschaton. As Peter effortlessly and simply writes: “dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”
In this season of looking forward from the past Incarnation, I encourage you to also look backwards from the future Eschaton.
With such fully-orbed perspectives to guide us, we can “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” the Jesus who is both the Author and Finisher of our faith, our Alpha and Omega, our past and future hope, “our dwelling place throughout all generations.”
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