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Morning Devotion for the Season of Advent

December 15, 2023

Invitatory

The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Reading:

“No act of ours can be a condition for the coming of God's Kingdom. God's Kingdom, on the contrary, is the condition of our acting; it underwrites the intelligibility of our purposes.” Oliver O'Donovan: Self, World, and Time

“Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.”

Meditation – Peter Vanderveen

I think that for most people the word “repent” is tied to penance. It calls up a sense of guilt for which some amends must be made. And when the word “repent” is used as a command, when, for example, John the Baptist cries out for everyone to repent because the coming of the Messiah is near, the reflex reaction is to feel uncomfortably indicted. The implication is that we are always already in the wrong and that we had better scurry to change our ways before the wrath that is our due descends upon us. “Repentance” in common usage is a scolding term (which also happens to be very useful for those who wield it).

I don’t know whether it will ever be possible to rid ourselves of this association. It’s deep in our bones. But I don’t believe that this is what John or Jesus had in mind when they used the word. Repentance doesn’t automatically convey guilt. More broadly, it is a call to turn around and change direction. Far less damningly, it can cite our need to see something anew or to allow ourselves to be surprised. It can suggest that what has been long-expected is indeed coming but in a completely unexpected way. More radically, repentance could mean that to see the Messiah truly we must let go of our own conviction that God counts our sins against us. Maybe this fear of ours is just plain wrong. And maybe John’s physical eccentricity was meant to complement his message, challenging what is most firmly embedded in our minds but not in God’s.

The power of Advent is that it is meant to dislodge – from the very start – the things that haunt us most and that prevent our communion with God: our placing of our own sense of guilt between God and us chief among them. The beginning of the Gospel is not found in either God’s condemnation or our own determined efforts to somehow outrun our judgment. It is announced in a repentance by which we are turned to discover a completely different and unsettling reality – that God comes with the gift of freedom from the worst of our selves, apart from any measure of our own deserving. No strings attached.

As we seem to be increasingly consumed in the endless, and bottomless, passion to continually blame others for their perceived faults, repentance is very much in order – but in a stunningly refreshing way.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those

who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.