Advent 2025

 

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. It marks the beginning of a new Christtian year and the start of the period of Advent leading up to Christmas.

Advent comes from the Latin "adventus" which means "coming" or "arrival". It refers to the period of waiting for the coming or arrival of Jesus Christ, both in terms of his first coming as a baby born in Bethlehem and his second coming in glory at the end of the world. A third sense, which we do not often focus on, is the coming of Christ to live in the hearts of believers through the Holy Spirit.

The long run up to Christmas, much longer in the world of modern commerce than in the church calendar, is one of my favourite seasons of the year.

The great advent hymn, "O come, O come, Emmanuel" can be sung with any of the three senses of the coming of Christ in mind.

I was very interested to learn recently that though the words and music of this great hymn are ancient, they were not joined together until the 19th century, when John Mason Neale translated a medieval Latin text into English in 1851 and then got his friend Thomas Helmore, who used a French medieval sacred tune and reharmonised it to work with Neale's words. For many years there was doubt as to whether had actually composed the tune and only claimed to have "discovered" it. However, in 1966 it was established that it was an ancient French tune. The tune is known as VENI EMMANUEL after the Latin text's opening words.

The resulting text and tune combine to make one of the greatest of advent carols. I could not imagine going through advent without singing this great hymn at least once.

 

Waiting for God

The season of advent focuses the Christian church on the need to wait for God. Waiting should be seen as a spiritual discipline. In our modern world, to deliberately stop and wait for something is a very countercultural act. As a culture we prioritise, maybe even idolise, speed and limitation, if not the elimination, of waiting.

During advent, we spend four weeks focusing on the wait. The wait of God's people for centuries for the Messiah to come in his birth at Christmas. We focus too on the wait of God's people for centuries for the Messiah to come again to judge the world and reign over a new heavens and new earth in the eternal Kingdom.

The Bible values waiting. Isaiah 40:31 reads: "They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

In Psalm 130:5-6, we read: "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."

I always find these verses among the most emotional in the Psalms, especially that use of repetition in verse 6. 

Are we waiting for the Lord this advent? Waiting not only for Christmas, which Lord willing, will surely come around again later this month. Waiting not only for the return of Jesus, which will surely come at the appointed time. But are we waiting on the Lord as the Psalmist waited, with hope in his word, and with a longing to be redeemed and see all our nation redeemed, set free to love and serve the living God.

I pray we are waiting with expectation and readiness, and more than watchmen waiting for the morning, more than watchmen waiting for the morning.

The Magnificat (Remix)

The Magnificat is the traditional name for Mary's song of praise in Luke 1:46-55. It's always been a reading associated with the advent season.

This portion of Scripture takes place after the angel Gabriel has visited Mary and told her what God is going to do through her getting pregnant and giving birth to the long-awaited Messiah, and after Mary has gone to stay with her cousin Elizabeth who is expecting a child also, who we later discover is John the Baptist. The two women are well aware that God is about to do great and mighty things through them - and through the babies they will bring into the world.

Reading Mary's song it sounds very like one of the Old Testament psalms. It is one of the great songs of praise found in the Bible.

Consider the power and beauty of the words with me.

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour." (verses 46-47)

Mary praises God, the God she has presumably known and loved her whole life. The God of her fathers, and her father's fathers. The God of the Old Testament. Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel. It is this God that she "magnifies" or "praises" or "glorifies". Not only does he praise him, she rejoices in him. One of the sure signs that our relationship with God is on the right track is when we actually enjoy being in his presence, in reading his Word, in prayer and in worship. The Shorter Catechism famously states "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever" which put simply means it is when we glorify him and enjoy him that we are fulfilling the main purpose of our lives.

"for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name." (verses 48-49)

The song then goes on with a number of reasons why Mary is so moved to praise God and rejoice. Mary realises that God is her Saviour and that he is now acting in the decisive period of redemptive history to bring about salvation through the child Mary is carrying in her womb. We might say in passing that the fact that Mary herself knew she was in need of a Saviour suggests that the Roman Catholic teaching about Mary's sinlessness is somewhat wide of the mark. Only those in trouble need rescuing.

The remainder of the song from verses 50-55 is one statement after another about what God has done, is doing and will do for his people. He shows "mercy" (verse 50), and strength (verse 51). And how we need both of these divine attributes in our Saviour? Without mercy he would not be inclined to save. Without strength he would not be able. But blessed be God for he is both merciful to save and powerful to save.

In his saving action he turns the world upside down. He scatters the proud, he brings the mighty down to earth, while he raises up the poor and the humble. He feeds his servants, but sends other away empty-handed. This is a true assessment of the very different King and kingdom that this represents compared to the puppet king Herod and the Roman overlords who then ruled the world. In God's decisive action in sending the Messiah to be Israel's true king and the Saviour and Lord of the world, Mary knew nothing would ever be the same again. We do well to remember the political edge to the gospel in our day. Mary's song was a challenge to the powers and authorities in the real world, both then and now.

As we come to the climax of the advent season, maybe we will catch a fresh glimpse of God's glory, God's saving plan, and God's love for his people, and make Mary's words our own (as Timothy Dudley-Smith paraphrased them): "Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord; in God my Saviour shall my heart rejoice!"

The Season of Waiting

We spend a lot of our lives waiting. We wait in train stations, airports, at bus stops, and in traffic jams. We wait to be seen at the doctor or the dentist. We wait for visitors to arrive and sometimes for visitors to go. We wait for things to arrive in the post or in our computer's inbox.

We spend so much time waiting that the word is an adjective we use to describe various nouns. So we have waiting rooms and waiting areas. We have waiting lists and waiting times.

For me waiting is often a frustration. I see it too often as synonymous with just wasting time.

But waiting is not always a bad thing. It depends how we use the waiting time. Much of the joy in life comes from the pleasure that comes after a period of waiting for something good to happen. I'm thinking of some of life's key moments, like waiting during your engagement for the wedding day and waiting during pregnancy for the child's birth.

For many people, advent is just the boring wait until Christmas, like waiting in a queue before you get in to see an exciting film or show. Necessary but dull.

This advent I'm trying to use the waiting time positively, to consider the state of the world and the state of my own life, and recognise afresh the need for the Saviour, just as much in 21st century Britain as in 1st century Palestine.

God's idea to put the world to rights when all else had failed, by coming to the world himself as a baby to save it, must be the most beautiful, loving and audacious thought ever to have entered the divine mind.

As one Christmas carol puts it:

Sacred Infant, all divine, 
What a tender love was Thine, 
Thus to come from highest bliss,
Down to such a world as this.

Tender love indeed because he comes not to get anything from us, but to give us everything he has. He loves us and wants us to love him too. That's it. It's all he wants and it's the only thing we could possibly give him. As another carol says:

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

...Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

And waiting to celebrate his birth once again is no waste of time. It is an act of love and an honour.

Advent

Today is Advent Sunday. The beginning of a new Christian year and the period when many Christians focus their thoughts on the future "coming" of the Lord ("coming" is what "advent" means).

This takes place in a twofold sense. First, of waiting and looking forward to Christmas and perhaps placing our selves in the position of the nation of Israel waiting for the Messiah to come and then celebrating that coming at Christmas. But secondly, of waiting and looking forward to Jesus the Messiah coming again at the end of time, to judge the world, save his people, and usher in the new heavens and the new earth that is the Christian hope - not so much "life after death", but life after life after death as Tom Wright memorably puts it.

It is this hope and expectation that Paul says the whole of creation, not just God's people, is longing for (see Romans 8:18-30).

This advent, I look forward to singing the great advent hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel" looking back to the preparation for Christmas and waiting for the Messiah's birth, but the words also help us look forward to Christ's second coming in triumph and glory, when he will make all things new and finally "close the path to misery" as the hymn puts it, once and for all.

The Beginning of Advent

We are now in the season of Advent, the beginning of the Christian Year. Once again we mark enter this season of looking forward to the coming of Christ in two senses. We prepare to celebrate his incarnation at Christmas when he was born as a tiny baby and we anticipate his second coming in glory to reign forever.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece on the Christian year. I decided back then that when this new year began I was going to consciously try to follow the Christian year in my own devotional life. I'm going to be using the lectionary readings as my guide as well as a couple of books: Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross and Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality Through the Christian Year by Robert Webber.

This advent my thoughts are going to focused on God's plan to bless the world through Abraham's descendants, in calling Israel to be the light of the world and the nation's failure to meet that calling, in the prophetic witness that God himself would act decisively to restore his broken creation and finally in God's sending his own Son to be the one faithful Israelite, the Messiah, who would fulfil the plan that Israel failed to fulfil, to be the prophet, priest and king that would redeem, rescue, rule and recreate the world.

I'm looking forward to the exciting spiritual journey ahead.

Go Overboard Celebrating Christmas

I agree with Douglas Wilson's article "Go Overboard Celebrating Christmas" in Christianity Today. You can read it here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/december-web-only/go-overboard-celebrating-christmas.html?paging=off

I think he makes a number of good points here. While it is true that there is a lot of stuff associated with the secular Christmas that is perhaps more an excuse for sin than a joyful celebration of the birth of Jesus, the temptation for a certain kind of Christian is to throw the baby out with the bathwater, put on sackcloth and ashes (metaphorically anyway) and seek to turn the celebration into no more than a sombre commemoration and a guilt trip about how messed up the world is around us.

I've always felt there's something strange about claiming to have good news for the world while we go out of our way to show the world that we Christians don't really want to enjoy ourselves too much. All pleasure is sinful after all, right?

The message of the Bible could not be further from this. I think Wilson gets it right when he says:

Do not treat this as a time of introspective penitence. To the extent that you must clean up, do it with the attitude of someone showering and changing clothes, getting ready for the best banquet you have ever been to. This does not include three weeks of meditating on how you are not worthy to go to banquets. Of course you are not. Haven't you heard of grace?

Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through thirty days of Advent Gnosticism.

Yes exactly! As Wilson concludes, grace is what it's all about. And God's grace in Christ was not a stale mince pie and a lukewarm sausage roll in a cold grey room, it was a sumptuous, lavish banquet with Michelin star cooking, champagne, laughter and song. 

That's why 'tis the season to be jolly as the carol says.

Advent

Happy new year to my readers - new church year that is. Today is Advent Sunday, the beginning of a new church year and the beginning of the traditional season of preparation for Christmas.

How might we mark this season? What does marking advent really mean, beyond putting up an advent calendar and beginning the Christmas countdown.

For me there are two indispensable parts of celebrating and reflecting on advent, which can be summed up as looking back and looking forward. The two activities are not unrelated of course. There is something beneficial in the looking back that helps us look forward more effectively. That is the balancing act involved in keeping advent well.

Looking back each year, we try to imagine how it must have been to be part of Israel in Old Testament times, waiting for the long-promised King and Saviour who would be sent by God, or for the characters in the New Testament stories waiting for the birth, especially Mary and Joseph. Though the events of Christmas are already long in our past, during advent, we somehow try to put ourselves back before the birth of Christ came to catch a sense of the anticipation and longing they must have felt. And so many of our Bible readings look at prophecies concerning the Messiah and our sermons and hymns at this time reflect upon the promised Messiah.

But advent is also about looking forward to Christ's second coming. Just as Old Testament Israel looked forward to the coming of the Messiah that would change the world, the New Testament church looks forward now to the second coming of the Messiah that will end the world as it is and remake it perfectly for eternity. So we also focus on Bible passages, sermons and hymns that look forward to Christ's return in glory.

I hope that this year we will seek to keep the advent season in both ways and prepare for the celebration of Christmas spiritually as we inevitably prepare for it in many practical ways too.

Understanding Advent

I don't think I've ever understood the waiting for the birth of a baby through the advent season as well as I do this year. As we wait for the birth of our son due on 8 January, I really felt a fresh insight into what Mary and Joseph experienced in those months, weeks and days before Jesus was born.

Of course there is a lot of emotion and sentiment in this as we have a unique "study guide" to advent in our lives this year, but this is something that will stay with me forever.

When you see a pregnancy close up, I can't help but think it gives some kind of extra insight into the mystery of the incarnation itself. The creator of the world really did come to us through the wonder of a pregnancy, the trauma of a birth, and the helplessness of a new born baby.