Today is the first Sunday in Advent.  Advent is derived from the Latin word that literally means “arrival,” and it is the season of the church year when we prepare for the Lord’s arrival.  We get prepared not only to celebrate Christmas Day, when the Lord first arrived in the Christ child, but we are getting prepared for the Lord’s second arrival, “the Day of the Lord,” when King Jesus will return to set all things right and make all things new. As Christians, we live “in between the times” of Christ’s first Advent and his second Advent.

We’re using the lectionary this year to help us get prepared—a collection of biblical texts assigned to each Sunday that fits with the church year.  Our Advent theme is “the Lord is near.”  For most of us, this phrase likely conveys a sense of peace and comfort.  Like the words we began our worship with from Philippians 4:4-7, the promise that the Lord is near moves us beyond fear to a place of comfort and hope in the midst of pain and hardship.

But then the lectionary serves up this text from Isaiah about how, when the Lord comes near, mountains will quake and water will boil and judgment will come.  And our gospel text isn’t much better.  It skips right over our favorite parts of the Christmas story—with angels bringing words of peace and comfort and a cute little baby in a manger—to Jesus as an adult speaking some very strange and scary words:

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds’ with great power and glory.  Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”

Jesus is using a specific kind of rhetoric called apocalyptic language to speak about the “Day of the Lord” that the Israelites prayed for in Isaiah 64.  And, like Isaiah, the picture Jesus gives us of what it will be like with the Lord draws near is actually rather frightening—it hardly inspires peace and comfort.  

So what are we to make of these Scripture texts that speak of God’s judgment and God’s anger in the face of a sinful and broken world?  Is this any way to start us off in the season with Advent, when our stomachs are still full from Thanksgiving dinner and our spirits are feeling brighter as we put up our Christmas trees and pull out our favorite Christmas music?

I’m not trying to be the Grinch who Stole Christmas, but before we can get to the bright lights of Christmas, we have to face the darkness—the the darkness in our world and the darkness within our own hearts.  Before the Gospel can be good news, it is first bad news.  Before we can experience the Gospel as grace, it first comes to us as a word of judgment.  

Here is the bad news:  like the Israelites, we have all strayed from God.  And to encounter a holy God is to have the darkness that dwells within us brought into full view.  When the London Times asked a number of writers for essays on “What’s Wrong with the World?”, the great G.K. Chesterton sent in the reply shortest and most to the point:

Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely Yours,
G.K. Chesterton

An important part of Advent is getting honest with God and ourselves about our sin.  With humility, we acknowledge that what is wrong with the world, at least in part, is us.  Advent is the season of confession and repentance—of returning to the Lord.  We stand with the Israelites and confess, “We have sinned…We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy cloth.  We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.  There is no one who attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”

It is only when we come to terms with the reality of our sinfulness that we are open to receive the good news of God’s arrival.  Even though we deserve judgment, even though God is angry because of our sinfulness (anger is not in opposition to God’s love but a very expression of God’s love), God is ultimately a God of grace—he is our Father!  “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.  We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.  Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, do not remember iniquity forever.  Now consider, we are your people.”

With all due respect to the great preacher Jonathan Edwards, the urgent message of the gospel is not that we are, as his famous sermon is titled, “sinners in the hands of an angry God.”   The urgent message of the gospel is that we are sinners in the hands of a gracious God who forgives.  I love these words of John Calvin:  “Christ was given to us, by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith.  By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life.”

So now, this phrase “The Lord is near” can bring comfort and hope.  That’s why St. Paul can speak of the coming “Day of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians with such confidence and joy.  “I give thanks to my God always because of the grace of God that has been given to you in Christ Jesus.  For in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

But here’s the thing: God has drawn near to us not just to forgive us of our sins; God wants to change us—to make us his children.  And this means that God’s promise to draw near is a threat to us, even as it remains good news.  It is a threat to our autonomy—to our old identity and our old way of life.

The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard offers a parable that is helpful in showing just how the gospel is a threat to our identity.  Imagine a peasant man living in a great kingdom.  The peasant “never dreamed …that the emperor knew he existed, who would then consider himself indescribably favored just to see the emperor once, something he would relate to his children and grandchildren as the most important event in his life.”  But suppose the emperor did something unexpected: “If the emperor sent for him and told him that he wanted him for a son-in-law: what then?  Quite humanly, the day laborer would be more or less puzzled, self-conscious and embarrassed by it; he would (and this is the humanness of it) humanly find it very strange and bizarre…that the emperor wanted to make a fool of him, make him the laughing stock of the whole city.”

In the parable, the peasant recognizes the high and exalted place of the emperor.  An occasional encounter with the emperor would be delightful—maybe a trip to the royal palace once or twice—enough so that the peasant could keep his own comfortable life, keep his friends, keep his identity, yet have it embellished by the honor of the emperor.  “A little favor—that would make sense to the laborer.”  But what if the emperor wants to make him his own son?  The prospect of being adopted into the royal family is an offense—a threat.   It is too much closeness—too much intimacy—the kind of closeness that requires giving up one’s own identity.  It would be wonderful if the king would send him some money or some other gift to cherish and win the admiration of others.  But the king is asking for so much more.  The king is asking to be more than an accessory to his identity.  The king wants his full identity, his entire life.  The king wants to make him part of the royal family—the exalted, child of the king.

And so it is with God, who draws near to us in Jesus—far too close for comfort.  We’d much prefer a “distant yet convenient” deity who only helps us out when we’re in a bind but then goes back to keeping his distance so we can live our lives the way we want.  We like the idea of God as a cosmic Santa Clause who visits us once in a while only to shower us with gifts but makes no real claims on our lives.

But this is not who God is or how God works.  God refuses to keep at a safe distance.  The Lord is near.  And God has nothing less in mind than making us his adopted sons and daughters in Christ, thus exalting us to who he intends us to be.  This means we must die to our sin and lose our lives for the sake of Jesus.  Again, God doesn’t just want to forgive us, he wants to change us—transform us into the very image of Jesus. “God is faithful” writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:9.   “By him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
 
So on the first Sunday in Advent, I tell you, “the Lord is near.”  May this promise stir us to honest reflection and confession about our own sinfulness and deep need for grace.  May it make us uncomfortable.   But let it not stir us to fear or dread.  For our Judge is also our Faithful Father, our Loving Redeemer.  Though we have all lost hold of him and wandered far away, he has not lost hold of us.  He wants to make us his sons and daughters—the exalted children of the King.  And as his children, he promises to sustain us to the end. God is busy at work even now molding us on his potter’s wheel more and more into the image of Jesus, so that we might be blameless at the day of Christ’s return.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.