First Sunday of Advent — Matthew 24.36-44
Properly speaking, Advent is the time when the liturgical calendar points us to the Parousia, the End when Christ Jesus our LORD will appear in fullness and glory. Thus every year Advent begins with the lectionary sticking us with strange and alarming passages seemingly at odds with Christmas cheer. Next Sunday, John the Baptist, with his camel hair coat and his lunchbox full of locusts, will call us all a brood of vipers and warn us about the wrath to come. But whether we associate the season of Advent with the Nativity or the Last Judgement, the object of our expectation does not change.
All we are waiting for is Jesus.
No matter if we make Advent about his first coming or about his coming again in glory, our focus does not change our hope.
All we are waiting for is Jesus.
The one in whom all things draw together. The one in whom all things are being healed and transfigured. The one in whom all things are sustained in the joys of God.
All we are waiting for is Jesus.
We are waiting for Christ to be born. We are waiting for Christ to be born in us. We are waiting for Christ to be fully realized in the world. We are waiting for Jesus to become all in all things.
All we are waiting for is Jesus.
We are waiting for a concrete person. We are not waiting for an abstract principle. Thus, we are not waiting for peace. We are not waiting for justice. We are not waiting for judgment or rectification or new creation. We are not waiting on an action. We are waiting on a person.
In Advent, all we are waiting for is Jesus.
We are not waiting for the world to change. We are not waiting for the lowly to be lifted up or the poor to be filled with good things. We are not waiting for the rich to be sent empty away. We are not waiting for the proud to be scattered in their conceit.
We are waiting for Jesus.
Only because he is the concrete one for whom we hope, do we anticipate what his Mother dared to sing— that the lowly will be lifted up and the poor filled with good things and the rich sent away empty and the proud scattered in the imaginations of their hearts.
During Advent, we long for him alone.
And we can entrust ourselves to the Last Judgment because we trust Jesus.
