Advent traditionally lasts for the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Traditionally, each week focuses on a different theme and selects a specific Scripture reading.
- Hope – Isaiah 9:2-6
- Peace – Isaiah 40:3-5
- Joy – Isaiah 12:2-6
- Love – Luke 1:45-55
Hope
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
– Isaiah 9:2-6
Merriam-Webster defines “to hope” as “to cherish a desire with anticipation : to want something to happen or be true.”
Normally, when we talk about hope, it’s no more than wanting something to happen. “I hope my team wins in tonight’s game.” “I’m running a bit late. I hope traffic is light.” “I hope my computer starts cooperating.”
This isn’t Biblical hope.
The life of the righteous is grounded in a hope that implies a future because its point of reference is God. To hope is to trust.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
– Hebrews 11:1
Biblical hope is trust. And this is where tradition, memorials, remembrance comes in – we trust that God will act because we remember that he acted in the past.
God led his people out of slavery in Egypt and to the Promised Land, and they remembered that and celebrated that each year with Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, so they could have hope that he would continue to care for them, even when things looked bad.
Remembering the promises of the past and drawing strength from them is how we can look up at the night sky and say, with Rich Mullins, “Sometimes I think of Abraham, how one star he saw had been lit for me.”
Normally, when we talk about the prophecies of the Messiah at Christmas, we’re reading backward – looking backward from Jesus’ life to the prophecies about him for apologetics, as evidence that Jesus is who he said he was. But the prophecies’ first recipients read them forward – as hope. God proved faithful in the past, so when his prophets shared his promises to deliver them in the future, the Israelites could have hope in those.
How much more so now! Because the first-century Jews thought their hopes depended on their keeping God’s Law – they understood that Israel had gone into exile due to sin and that, because they were still under foreign rule, the exile in a sense continued. The Pharisees weren’t just legalists for fun; they emphasized keeping the Law because they believed that was a prerequisite to the Messiah coming and God fulfilling his promises. But we see that hope fulfilled – instead of waiting for God’s people to keep the Law, God came as a human and fulfilled all righteousness himself. We don’t just remember deliverance from slavery in Egypt; we remember each week deliverance from sin and death at the Lord’s Supper, and we hope in Christ’s second coming, when the prophecies say, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
Peace
A voice cries: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
– Isaiah 40:3-5
Peace isn’t just the absence of conflict. For example, prior to October 7, 2023, Israel and Hamas weren’t fighting, but they weren’t at peace, either – each was preparing to blow the other up the next time hostilities erupted.
Real peace is shalom, wholeness, everything as it should be. Between people and, ultimately, between people and God.
Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, claimed that he was the son of the gods and had built in Rome the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace. He sent messengers to proclaim what he called the “good news” of his new reign of peace.
The New Testament draws on this imagery and subverts it. Jesus is proclaimed the Son of God, and we now share the Good News of his reign.
We should be converted to peace; we should be converted to Christ, our peace, certain that his disarming love in the crib overcomes every dire threat and plan for violence. With confidence we need to continue to ask the Child, born of the Virgin Mary for us, that the enormous energy of his peace might drive out the hatred and revenge that lurk in the human soul.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!
– Luke 2:14
We can know peace today. Luke may emphasize “Quirinius the governor of Syria” because Quirinius’s taxation of 10 AD was so hated that it sparked the Zealot movement of armed resistance to Rome; Luke instead presents Jesus as offering peace in the midst of oppression. Tragically, many of Jesus’ contemporaries didn’t understand that - the Zealots and Sicarii thought that the only way to have peace was to seize political power, through violence if necessary, and take their country back for the Lord. And so at Jesus’ crucifixion they shouted “We want Barabbas,” the insurrectionist. This eventually led to the Jewish-Roman Wars of 66-73, the destruction of Jerusalem, mass death at Masada. I sometimes fear that we’re repeating those mistakes today – thinking that God’s peace requires taking political power by any means necessary, winning the culture war, instead of entering into the peace that Christ has already won in the midst of the fallen world.
We can know peace in our own lives. When my sister Rachel was three years old, she was diagnosed with a rare blood disease. My grandfather decided to take Matthew 11:24 literally (“Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours”) and prayed for her physical healing, to such an extent that I think some of his colleagues at the Christian college where he taught were worried about what he would do if she wasn’t healed. After Rachel died, my grandfather talked about how they experienced a peace that passes understanding – that, even though their hearts were breaking, they could be at peace. And he talked about how, although we desperately wanted Rachel to be healed, he realized that physical healing would be temporary. Everyone dies, whether age 4 or 94. The Lord does not – praise God! – satisfy himself with temporary solutions. Jesus has defeated death. Because he came to earth at Christmas, and because we await his promised Second Coming, we know that death is not the end.
Joy
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day:
Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
– Isaiah 12:2-6
There are so many substitutes for joy. Consumerism, entertainment, pleasure-seeking… This season, I’ve noticed that Wal-Mart is running a series of Grinch commercials. Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” 1957 story and the 1966 cartoon are among modern culture’s most beautiful expressions of how the true meaning of Christmas isn’t found in stuff, and here Wal-Mart uses it to… sell more stuff.
Joy is distinct from happiness. The word “happiness” derives from happenstance, but we can have joy regardless of our circumstances.
Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in all things.
– Kay Warren, Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
– Psalm 118:24
My sister Rachel started singing this song the first day in the hospital, after they’d finished the blood tests and bone marrow tests.
Love
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 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. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.
– Luke 1:46-55
Philip Yancey explains just how radical the love of God as revealed in Christ is:
On our own, would any of us come up with the notion of a God who loves and yearns to be loved? Those raised in a Christian tradition may miss the shock of Jesus’ message, but in truth love has never been a normal way of describing what happens between human beings and their God. Not once does the Qur’an apply the word love to God. Aristotle stated bluntly, “It would be eccentric for anyone to claim that he loved Zeus”—or that Zeus loved a human being, for that matter. In dazzling contrast, the Christian Bible affirms, “God is love,” and cites love as the main reason Jesus came to earth: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
– Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
– John 3:16-17
Because Jesus loves us, we can show his love to others.
Christ
Just as our familiarity with the Christian message can cause us to miss how radical God’s love is, we sometimes forget how radical it is that Jesus, a King, come to live among us.
In The Jesus I Never Knew, Yancey describes a visit from Queen Elizabeth II: “her four thousand pounds of luggage included two outfits for every occasion, a mourning outfit in case someone died, forty pints of plasma, and white kid leather toilet seat covers. She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a host of other attendants.”
We expect kings and rulers to come in gold, splendor, retinues, attendants, displays of power.
At Christmas, God instead leaves all that behind. After centuries of speaking “at many times and in many ways” (Heb. 1:1), with his glory overwhelming and terrifying people, he emptied himself.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
– John 1:14
”Tomorrow, I Will Be There”
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” This performance by Peter Hollens is particularly good.
“O Come O Come Emmanuel” a translation of the O Antiphons, a set of 7 Latin verses from 6th century that Christians have been singing ever since. Together, the O Antiphons’ titles form a Latin acrostic, “Ero cras,” meaning, “Tomorrow, I will be [there].” They’re steeped in Scripture and offer a wonderful message as we wait for the celebration of Christ’s first coming, anticipate his Second Coming, and wait for him to come and act in our lives today:
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and gave him the law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, to you the nations will make their prayer: Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel; you open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open: Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
O Morning Star, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
O King of the nations, and their desire, the cornerstone making both one: Come and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour: Come and save us, O Lord our God.
I love the idea that we’re worshipping God using the same words that our brothers and sisters have been using for 1500 years. It’s not quite as cool as singing the Psalms, knowing we’re using the same words that David penned 3000 years ago, but still pretty cool! And we can them for eternity in heaven with our brothers and sisters across all of history.