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Awake!
Now
it is high time to awake out of sleep.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness
and put on the armour of light.
Romans 13:11.12
The Christian
church came into being as the result of the belief that the
Messiah king who had been foretold in Jewish scripture had now
appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In the past this
distinguishing mark of Christianity has been thought to mean
that the church took the privileged place once occupied by the
people of Israel. Today we see that this distinction actually
puts us at a certain disadvantage, in comparison with the parent
faith. For while orthodox Judaism maintains a fervent hope in
a Messiah who is still to come, our Messiah is a figure in past
history, who moves further away from us with each passing year.
As we begin
the Advent season, we feel this problem with special force.
For Advent, as Paul’s stirring words make clear, is oriented
to the future, to the dawning of a new day. How can we experience
the Advent hope if our salvation lies in the past as a fait
accompli? For Paul this was not so great a problem, since
he was convinced that the Christ in whom he believed was about
to come again in glory, during Paul’s own lifetime. Writing
to the Thessalonians, he declared:
We
who are alive and remain
shall be caught up together
with the resurrected dead in the clouds,
to meet the Lord in the air.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
For us,
however, who have already embarked on the third millennium,
this hope has dimmed. The coming of the Lord is now associated
with death, where Christian hope must coexist with fear and
anxiety.
Our gospel
speaks of another coming of the Lord, which fulfilled the prophecy
of Zechariah: "Behold, thy King cometh unto thee"
(Matthew 21:5 = Zechariah 9:9). These words refer to Jesus’
coming into the city of Jerusalem, sitting upon an ass. But
these same words, which Handel set to such sublime music in
the oratorio "Messiah," are also today’s gospel,
and this, I think, suggests the answer to the problem with which
I began.
For it is
the function of liturgy to make present those saving events
from the past which we rehearse in the creed, so that they are
no longer simly past but now effectively present. This is clearly
what happens in the communion rite itself, which is no bare
commemoration of a past event, but rather makes present to us
what our Lord did on the night that he was betrayed, as, in
obedience to his command to "do this" (1 Corinthians
11:24.25), we break the bread and drink the cup.
But it is
not only the Last Supper which the liturgy makes present to
us. Throughout the church year we are enabled to experience
here and now all the great events of salvation history. And
so it is that our Advent liturgy unites us with those who long
ago prayed for the coming of Emmanuel, and it also enables us
to share with our Jewish brothers and sisters in their hope
for a Messiah who is still to come.
December
1, 2002
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