by Scot McKnight
Advent evokes expectations, anticipations, and hope in our hearts, all connected to the coming of a Jewish Messiah on Christmas Day.
These expectations fill up the minds of many ordinary Christians today. Specifically, we wonder why pastors and churches behave as they do. This week I was told of a woman who was violently exploited for years by a pastor, and I heard of a pastor who was falsely accused, and I heard of another pastor who lost her job because she spoke up against toxicities in a church.
Advent is designed for sitting in the hope that someday God will act to erase all toxicities and make the Bride of Christ pure and spotless.
Old Testament readings for Advent include texts like Isaiah 64:2 that implore God to “come down to make your name known to enemies and cause the nations to quake before you.” When God comes, the prophet says, “You [God] come to help those who gladly do right, who remember your ways” (64:5). The prophet grieves that everyone seems bent on sin. “Yet,” he says, “you, LORD, are our Father” and that means “we are all the work of your hand” (64:8). So, “look on us, we pray, for we are all your people” (64:9).
The Second Week of Advent electrified us with the announcement God’s glory is on its way. Isaiah 40:9 announces:
You who bring good news to Zion,
go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem,
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
This God “comes with power” and this God “rules with a mighty arm” (40:10) and yet this almighty God “tends his flock” with the tenderness of “a shepherd” and “gathers the lambs in his arms” (40:11).
The Third Week of Advent, we discovered the God Who Comes as a mighty God and loving shepherd comes to us in a baby boy, for we read from Isaiah 61 these tender words, words Jesus will make his own in his “inaugural” sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30):
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn.
This God fills us with hope that in Christ the glories of goodness, of tov, come to us. The tov God designs a world for us, designs a plan for us, designs a Savior for us, and designs a life for us.
Front to back, the Old Testament teaches us that our God is good (tov) – sing it – all the time! His Spirit that came upon Jesus is the same Spirit that comes upon the Church in Acts 2. That same Spirit is in us so that we might be filled with tov (Galatians 5:22). To be filled with tov means we follow Jesus in the Spirit-filled train of behaviors in this beautiful text in Isaiah 61.
Advent is a time for us to anticipate and be ready for a good (tov) God becoming tov incarnate in his Son and calling us to himself so that we might become agents of tov that resist the toxicities in our churches. Yes, Advent is the time for us to anticipate the coming of a God who roots out the toxicities of evil and establishes the glorious manifestations of his Son. Those toxicities include abuses of power through fear-mongering, the abuses of women and children through sexual exploitation, and the abuses of power that prevent our African American and Latin American and Asian American brothers and sisters from having a voice. These are all toxicities that Advent anticipates can be eradicated by the birth of God’s Son.
This last week of Advent, let us sit in hope and anticipation that Christmas will give birth to a Son who will transform the Church into a noble body of believers who live out the gospel because the gospel is at work in them through the Spirit who came upon Jesus. That Spirit empowered him to be King. During Advent we anticipate that Ruler and his reign. May we sing with the Psalmist these words:
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness (Psalm 96:8-13).
Out of such worship we can become agents of tov on mission to glorify our King by joining our King’s erasure of evil and sin, beginning with us.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Scot McKnight is one of C4SO’s Canon Theologians. He blogs at Jesus Creed, which explores the significance of Jesus and the orthodox faith for the 21st century. Scot is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. McKnight, author or editor of some seventy-five books, is the Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, IL. Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the nation, has appeared on television, and is regularly speaks at local churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries in the USA and abroad. Scot’s latest book, written with Laura Barringer, is A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing.