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The political, economic, and cultural stress of our modern world has both those with means and those without asking “How long” until we can get through all this? Who is going fix all of this? The questions of “when” will we be delivered is the cultural pain which is behind the Advent story. Advent means arrival. At Christmas time we hear stories of the Hebrew people who were awaiting for the arrival of the anointed one (Messiah) who would restore Israel to their former place of liberty and prominence. Today, people are still waiting for the arrival of something better, but most don’t call it an advent, and most are not looking to God for help. Instead moderns turn to the American government for deliverance making politics our modern religion in which we place our faith for salvation.

Think about it. Who are you hoping will delivery you?

This lens is important for us to see that the Advent is not exclusively an historical event, but continues even until today, and has taken a million different forms. If the advent is limited to the birth of Jesus, then it’s essentially lost in history and none of us have any chance of experiencing it.

The arrival of Jesus as an infant was only visible to a few. This meant that those who would come to understand Jesus to be the “deliverer of their people” would still be waiting another thirty years before their expectations could possibly be fulfilled. Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:11, the mother of John the Baptist) received their advent first. Then Mary and Joseph (v.27). Then at Jesus’ birth, the shepherds and wise men (Matthew 2:1). The rest of the world/region was still waiting for their advent. The advent then is not so much an historical event of the birth of Jesus, it is a continuum throughout time when any person experiences Christ within their own life.

A blockbuster movie will have a release date, but it will take months and years before a critical mass of people have seen it and share a common understanding of it. The movie may have come out, but it hasn’t come for you until you see it. Until we see it from our context of life, we lack the ability to understand.

Much like our modern world, Jesus life and ministry was square in the midst of both conservatives (Pharisees) and liberals (Sadducees) as well as the religiously unaffiliated who were Roman nationalists. Much like those in Jesus day, most of us are still waiting because we have no sense of what has come, nor any experiential understanding with the Christ. Religion has made the ongoing story a static one within an historical context, and so do most of us it today. We are living in the present version of the only advent that has ever existed. The Biblical advent didn’t emerge equally or at the same time for those in the story and it doesn’t do so for us. Think about it… It took months and years for people to “see” or understand Christ. Paul’s advent came many years after Peters. Ours has come thousands of years later. Some will come later still.

The advent is a dynamic continuum of experience with Christ. It is not a static event. Furthermore, the Bible is a collective of stories reflecting just how varied the experience of the advent can be for a diverse world.

If people in Jesus day struggled to see Jesus as the fulfillment of Hebrew scripture, assuming he would come in military, political or religious power, then how much more will you and I struggle to see Christ today? Modern evangelicals or religious people may know about Christ, but not all have had an advent where they experience him. Just like those in the Bible, we spend our time looking up, or in the wrong places for Christ, not realizing we need to look down and inward to see his subversive work. All of us begin with no conscious awareness that “the axe has been laid to root,” (Luke 3:9) or that “his winnowing fork is in his hand.” (v. 17) 

Looking around, it appears that most of us have yet to experience the advent. Instead, I’ve discovered that most people have experienced Christ, but most have called it something else, framing it as a common experience instead of religious or spiritual one. When the church doesn’t see the advent, it cannot point it out to the world.

All experience is spiritual experience.

It might be a nice tradition to put a nativity scene in our home, or on a street corner, but even for the most religious among us, the work of Christ is entirely disconnected from our modern geo-political realities. Christ and His Kingdom have come, and are still staring us in the eyes, yet few of us can perceive very much of it. If the advent is to mean anything at all to a modern world, it cannot be a retreat into nostalgia, or a tradition that shapes biblical history into a “personal salvation” narratives. The biblical revelation is that the salvation was corporate as well as personal. Deliverance is for all people. The restoration of the world will not come by an oligarchy, nor a theocracy, nor nationalism, nor politics, but via an advent of a kingdom that leads from the bottom up and from the inside out. No wonder institutional power tried to kill it. And still tries today.

If what I’m proposing is true, we should be able to test it. Where is the advent Christ and his kingdom that we may see it?

What is so great about a sunrise or a sunset? Why do we seek to be in nature or to escape at times the hustle and bustle of the city? When we find ourselves enjoying the sunshine on our face, why do we want some moments to last longer than they do? Have you considered that in these moments, the voice that speaks to our inner most self is not actually us? That prompting to change up our life or reprioritize things, is our advent with Christ.

Have we considered our greatest source of pain? Can we see Christ there? When we experienced rejection from our family, friends, community, country or religion, could we not see the that we are following in the footsteps of Christ? When our body is broken, beaten, or riddled with pain, when we cannot go on physically, emotionally, or socially…can we not see the advent of the suffering Christ AS our pain? None of us have experienced anything that is worse than Christ himself. Yes, God desires this for his beloved.

The perfect day of skiing, or single track, or wave, or game, or smallest bit of joy which, only for a moment, gets us out our slavery, oppression, debt, and anxiety is the advent of Christ. Yes we call this a million different things, but each is an entry point whereby we experience Christ and his kingdom here. I know religion invalidates these, but only because it’s broken.

Christ never started an alternative religion. Acknowledging Christ in and as our life, or what the Bible calls: learning to live “in Christ” or “follow Christ“, is not a conversion to or from any world religion. It is the advent which has finally come to us. It is the moment we finally replace what is true for us, with what is ultimately True. It’s our turn for the Advent. This deep part of us that touches the transcendent within the joys and pains of life is our union with Christ, and I invite you to prove me wrong. Test it. Speak to that voice beyond the rays of the sun, or through our children, or beyond our failures and weakness. Ask, seek, and knock. Engaging here is not “make believe” nor our imagination, it is the most real part of our life and we intuitively know this to be true. Christ will always lead us to the revelations of himself via creation, people, and scripture, and once we see and hear this advent, our lives and our world will never be the same.

If this experience of Christ isn’t “good enough” for you, then like the pharisees, you are trapped in your religious framework. Next week we’ll explore the advent that awaits those who can’t or won’t see it here. 

Until then, may we all find a fresh advent and meeting with Christ in the joy and suffering of life.