coming
Waking Up to Hope
by Linda Rex
November 27, 2022, 1st Sunday in ADVENT/Hope—This morning I was blissfully sleeping away when the phone rang. It was my husband calling from Florida where he had been delivering cold cases to grocery stories. It took a few minutes for my eyes to fully open and my brain fog to clear, but eventually I was alert enough to enjoy a conversation I don’t always have an opportunity to have.
As we enter the time of Advent where we prepare for the coming of Christ as God in human flesh, we are once again being awoken from sleep and given afresh our new “armor of light” which Jesus forged for us in his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. We are reminded to wake up and live in the truth of what God has done for us in Christ, is doing right now by his Holy Spirit, and will do one day when Jesus returns in glory.
In our gospel reading for this Sunday, Matthew 24:36–44, we are reminded to always stay alert, for we do not know on what day our Lord will return. It is easy to get so focused on a future day when Christ will return, on reading our circumstances to determine whether he might be coming right away, that we miss a critical understanding of what it means for Jesus to come to judge the world. In fact, we may be so focused on the future that we miss what the Lord is doing in us and in our world right now.
The Greek word which describes Jesus’ coming and presence is Parousia. Karl Barth and other theologians remind us that the Parousia of Christ is not just one event at the end of time, but is a singular event which includes the three “comings” of Jesus—the incarnation, the arrival of the Spirit, and Jesus’ return in glory. We need to think of the return of Christ in a broader way than simply his return at the end of time. And one of the reasons for doing this is that we will live life more spiritually awake and alert, rather than asleep or dead to the spiritual realities.
Even though Christ has come and has sent his Spirit, he has not yet returned in glory to establish his kingdom in its fulness here on earth. In our Old Testament reading for this Sunday, Isaiah speaks of the day when Jesus will establish his throne here on earth and all the nations will flow to his “mountain”. In that day, Isaiah says, “they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Isaiah 2:4b NASB). Recently I became aware of some classmates of one of my children who have been shipped overseas as part of the United States military presence in Europe due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. That we still need armies to protect our borders and still need soldiers to fight other nations’ soldiers is a clear indication that we are not living in the new heavens and new earth.
Seeing this war and all the evil, suffering and natural disasters around us each day may cause us to forget that Jesus is present and active by his Spirit right now in this world. We may lose sight of the magnitude of the judgment which Jesus underwent on our behalf on the cross. In Jesus’ sacrificial self-offering, our human flesh, which he bore, underwent crucifixion and death, entering the realm of the dead, to rise from the grave in exaltation into glory.
What Jesus did in his self-offering was to, as it were, divide by the sharp sword of the Spirit our sinful flesh from the Christ-resurrected redeemed flesh, bringing us all up into new life. As I was recently rereading Jeff McSwain’s upcoming book on placemat anthropology, I was struck by his use of verses 40 and 41 of our gospel passage for today. As Jesus hung on the cross, there came, in a sense, a severing of the old from the new flesh—two women at the mill, one is taken and one is left; two men in the field, one is taken and one is left. How marvelous that Jesus made it so that this inner battle we all fight between our sinful self and our true self has been victoriously won on behalf of our true self. The true spiritual reality for every human being is that our redeemed resurrected life is right now hidden with Christ in God. The old is gone—the new is come. We can begin even now by faith to participate in our real life which is hidden within Jesus’ own face to face relationship with the Father in the Spirit. We can participate right now in God’s kingdom life as the beloved adopted children of the Father in Christ by the Spirit.
In this manner, we are participating in the Parousia of Christ by the Spirit right now, amid this broken and sinful generation. Because our true life is hidden with Christ in God, the apostle Paul says to us:
“… it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Rom. 13:11–14 NASB).
In other words, we are reminded to wake up and remain alert at all times, living in the truth of who we really are in Christ. The Spirit is present and active in us and in our world. Christ is alive in us and with us, moving in our midst to bring about his kingdom purposes here on earth. We are participants in his mission and ministry here on earth by the Spirit, so we want to be busy following Jesus’ lead and allowing him to guide and teach us to live in the truth of who we are as God’s children. We don’t want to live in the darkness of sin and unbelief, but in the truth of who we are in Christ.
What is interesting about this passage in Matthew is that much of it is written in the present tense, even though it doesn’t always show in the translations. I find this interesting, because the present tense shows the present reality of what Jesus was saying. We go about our daily lives as people did in the time of Noah, and even so, Jesus is coming and present in each moment by the Spirit, separating out what is passing away from that which is everlasting and eternal. We need to be on the alert at all times, attentive to what Jesus is doing to bring about his kingdom life in this world right now. If we allow ourselves to doze off, we will miss out on the hope, peace, joy, and love he means for us to experience in our daily lives as the beloved children of his Father.
And as we are living attentive to the Parousia of Christ by the Spirit right now, we learn to live in the truth of how we will be living forever as God’s children. We share with others the good news of what God has done by including us in his life and love, and it becomes our way of being that will carry on beyond this life into the life to come. Living in expectancy of Christ’s constant coming and presence or Parousia, reframes our hope of his coming in glory, enabling us to let go of trying to figure out how soon he will be here, knowing that he is already present and at work, and we are even now a part of what will continue on beyond the end of this age into the world to come.
Thank you, Father, for sending your Son and sending your Spirit. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us new life and a great hope for the future. Enable us to always be attentive and alert to you and your presence in us and in this world right now by your Holy Spirit. Even so, come, Lord Jesus—Maranatha! Amen.
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.” Matthew 24:36–44 NASB
[Printable copy: https://newhope4me.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/olitwaking-up-to-hope.pdf ]
Turn Us Again to Yourself
By Linda Rex
LOVE
December 22, 2019, 4th Sunday of Advent—I was reading a devotional this morning which used the story in the gospels of a man who was bound by demons and wandering about in the tombs, in the region of the dead. This man broke any chains that held him, but when Jesus spoke to him, he found true freedom.
How often I have felt like this man, wandering about in my own personal chains, unwilling to be shackled by the bonds of love God has for me. How often I have harmed myself rather than submitting myself to the love and grace of God as expressed to me in his will for my life! I know I am not alone in this—I see it often in people around me. It is our human condition apart from God’s merciful intervention.
One of the most basic steps in facing our addictions and being freed from them is coming to understand that apart from the intervention of a “higher power’, we cannot be free. We can try harder and harder, we can work the plan faithfully, but we have to eventually end up at the place where we realize in a deep and significant way that apart from divine intervention, we have no hope of ever being any different than we are right now.
God’s method of intervening in our circumstances did not involve him being a distant, cold and uninvolved deity. Nor did he seek vengeance on us for our pitiful failures at trying to be what we believe we need to be in order for him to accept us. God’s way of turning our hearts back to him, of restoring our relationship with him, was to enter into our very existence as a human being and to personally turn us around back into face to face relationship with himself.
Historically, the nation of Israel was in many ways like you and me. They were brought into relationship with God, but they refused to let him be the center of their life. For a while they would live as his people, but in time they would turn away from him, back into their idolatry and hedonism. They would reap the results of living life on their own terms, come to the end of themselves, and then turn again to him—for a while.
But this was not a surprise to God. None of this is. He knew long before our cosmos existed that we would have this proclivity to turn away from him to other things. He knew it would require his personal involvement to restore us back to our original design so that we could be the image-bearers of God he intended us to be.
We hear the cry in Psalm 80:2b-3, 7, 17-19 of the psalmist Asaph asking three times, “Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.” Prophetically he pointed to a Son who would be the source of our genuine revival, the only means by which any of us will be saved. Our only hope of being people who would never abandon God would be for God to himself turn our hearts back.
So we have in Isaiah 7:14 the promise of a virgin bearing a son who would be called Immanuel, meaning ‘God with us.’ What a thrilling promise! This Advent season, as we gaze upon the nativity scenes we see around us, as we are reminded of the reason for the season, we are given a hope for something more than our constant failures to love. We are able to have peace of mind and heart because we know God has sent us a Savior—someone who has done and will do what we cannot and will not do. We are able to have joy, because we are celebrating the reality that God has come and stands in our stead, on our behalf, filling us with his real presence in the Holy Spirit.
Advent reminds us that when Israel had absolutely no hope of ever getting anything right with God ever again, God did not forsake her. He came himself, in the womb of a virgin, allowing himself to be carried as a promise to his people of their deliverance. Advent reminds us that we are not left abandoned in our sin and selfishness—there is a Savior who is one of us and yet is God himself—he has come to bind us once and for all to God with unbreakable cords of love and grace.
The kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ, and today we as his people are pregnant with his presence by the Holy Spirit. God is even at this moment working deliverance in this world—preparing for the day when all things will be transformed completely and God will finally dwell forever with humankind. Our failures to love, our sinfulness and the evil which so often enslaves us, do not and will not stand in the way of God accomplishing what he set out to do from before the beginning of this cosmos. He will finish what he has begun—he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
Advent teaches us love in a profound way—of God’s desire to be near to us, so near that he actually enters into our human existence himself. The presence of God in our humanity is the greatest gift of love God could ever give. He knew the cost of this gift would be the suffering and death of his Son, but he gave it anyway. He knew the rejection of his Spirit which would occur, but he gave his Spirit anyway. God freely gives—do we receive?
Whatever struggles we may have with our addictions or failures to love God and others, we find in Jesus that God is present and real in the midst of them. He is at work, as we are willing, to heal, restore, and renew. We are given Jesus Christ—he is in us and with us by the Holy Spirit. What is our response?
I’ve often thought that Joseph was an incredible man. He had betrothed himself to a young virgin who turned out to be pregnant with someone else’s child. He could have made a public spectacle of her—but he was so loving in not wanting to do this. And when God told him to marry her anyway, he did it (Matthew 1:18–25). His humility and sacrificial spirit bear witness to the humility and sacrificial Spirit of God himself. Will we in this same Spirit of humility and sacrifice receive the wonderful Gift of God in our humanity? Will we surrender to the reality we are in desperate need of God, and God in Christ has come, is present now by the Spirit, and will come again one day?
Thank you, Abba, for loving us so well. It was not enough for you to create all things, to set everything in motion, and to walk away. You dove right in, taking our very humanity upon yourself in your Son Jesus, renewing us from the inside out. Thank you for sending us your Spirit, enabling us to be one with you, and to be healed, restored, and renewed, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“… concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power 1by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ; to all who are beloved of God…” Romans 1:3-7a NASB
Is That the Alarm—Already?
By Linda Rex
HOPE
December 1, 2019, 1st Sunday of Advent—Years ago my body clock used to wake me up before my alarm went off at five in the morning. I was grateful for this because there was nothing I hated more than to be woken from a sweet dream by the hideous drone of the alarm clock. I’ve had that alarm clock for years and now when I set it and then turn it off, in the morning it still buzzes. It’s on those days when I’m trying to sleep in and it wakes me up anyway that I have a distinct desire to throw that old alarm clock in the waste bin.
Back when the apostle Paul was writing his letter to the people in Rome, I doubt very much he had an annoying electric alarm clock. But he understood very well the need for us to be woken from our sleep—to resist our tendency to find that place of least resistance and stay there.
We are entering the season of Advent, when we reflect on and celebrate the entering in of the Word of God into our humanity in the incarnation. The people of Israel had longed for many years for their messiah to come and rescue them from their oppressors. They had the scriptures preserved by their prophets and priests which told them about his coming, and they longed for him to bring to pass the new age of the Spirit when they would be given the heart to obey and serve their God.
The sad reality of the first advent of Christ was that when he did come, he was not recognized. He was not what the people expected, so they rejected him and in the end saw that he was executed in an excruciating death on the cross. What they longed for and wanted for so long, they did not accept, but denied and rejected. They preferred their spiritual sleep, their political power, their religious trappings, and their physical comforts rather than being willing to awaken to their need for the Messiah to deliver them from evil, sin, and death.
If they had been alert to the spiritual realities, they would have remembered the lesson found in their history in the story of Noah. The people of Noah’s day had their focus on eating, drinking, and all the everyday activities of their lives. Even though Noah and his family were a clear witness to them of their coming destruction, these people ignored the warning. They had the opportunity to be saved, but they refused it. The ark was built, the animals—who obeyed the call to be saved—were placed on the ark, but when the flood came, only Noah and his family entered into that salvation and survived the flood.
When Jesus spoke of his second advent, he used the story of Noah to alert people to their tendency to ignore the warning signs of coming destruction. As human beings, we often know the right thing to do, but we don’t do it, even though we know the possible consequences of not doing it. We realize that following our flesh reaps us death and destruction, but we still choose to listen to its desires and fulfill them. We have been given deliverance from evil, sin, and death in Jesus Christ—but what do we do with this gift? This is a critical question.
As human beings, our sinful proclivities draw us down a path God never meant for us to go. And this is why Jesus came—why we celebrate the season of Advent. Jesus came to free us from our sinful nature and to write within us a new heart and mind which wants to live in the freedom God created us for. God in Christ took on our sinful humanity, lived our life, died our death, and rose again, bringing us into the presence of the Father. This is the spiritual reality of our redeemed human existence—the objective union of God with man in the person of Jesus Christ.
God has done in Christ all that is needed for our salvation. He has built the ark, gathered the animals, and has everything in order, ready to save us. We are as good as saved—evil, sin, and death have been conquered by Jesus. We have new life in him—the flood of God’s grace and love has come to cleanse the earth, but are we on the ark? Are we living in the spiritual reality of God’s redeeming grace? Or are we still asleep—laughing at the idiots who would build a big boat when there is no rain or water to be seen?
Paul emphasizes our need to wake up—for our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. Indeed, the more we grow in our relationship with our God, the more we see our need for redemption, and the brighter the light of his redeeming grace is in the dark places in our hearts and lives. We can continue to live as though God has not saved us, is not saving us, will not save us. Or we can wake up to the reality that this is exactly what has happened, is happening, and will happen.
Advent is a time to be reminded of our need to wake up to the signs of the times—Christ has come, is present now by the Spirit, and is coming again to restore all things. We need to be alert to the spiritual realities and live in the truth of who we are as God’s beloved adopted children. The family we have been adopted into does not live in the darkness, but in the light. Our Abba loves and is loved, and this is what we are created for—to love God and love our neighbor.
Our old ways of self-centered, self-reliant, self-indulgent living are but a bad dream. We have a new life we have been given, the life of Christ, and we are to waken and live in the truth of who we are in him. Our loving Father says to us, “Get out of bed, get your dark pajamas of evil, sin, and death off, and put on the heavenly garments of grace and love, the Lord Jesus Christ. Get busy in the new day of your existence in the kingdom of light.”
We sometimes get obsessed with trying to figure out when Jesus Christ is going to return again. But Jesus says to us, “Wake up. Be attentive to my presence and coming right now.” The advent or Parousia (coming and presence) of Jesus Christ is actually one long extended event. Jesus came over 2000 years ago, died and rose again, but sent his Spirit, being present with us even now, and will come in glory when he returns again.
The calling for the church is to live awake to the real coming and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ right now—to live in a constant state of expectation, longing for his real presence in our everyday lives, alert to what he is doing and will do even now to redeem, restore, and renew all things. We are encouraged to put off our old ways of self-centered living and put on the new life given us in Christ. Yes, the alarm is going off and we may not want to admit it, but the truth is—it’s time to wake up!
Dear Abba, we’re finding it hard to get out of bed, to awaken to the glorious reality of our new life in Christ. Help us to get our old pajamas of evil, sin, and death off and to gladly put on our Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly garments of love and grace you have handmade for us. Holy Spirit, keep us ever awake to the spiritual realities, to God’s presence in each moment of every day, and enable us to live in the truth of who we are in Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.
“Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. Romans 13:11–14 NASB
See also Matthew 24:36–44.
Our Life in the Trinity 