Morning Devotion for the Season of Advent
December 6, 2021
Invitatory
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”
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.
Our king and Savior now draws near; Come let us adore him.
Reading: Revelation 1:4-8
John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
At some point each Advent, the hymn “Lo! he comes, with clouds descending” is sung. It is a paraphrase of the text from Revelation. I have enthusiastically sung this hymn for years. The tune is powerful and majestic; which served for a long time as a convenient excuse not to pay close attention to the text of the hymn itself. The first two verses, however, are as follows:
Lo! He comes, with clouds descending, once for our salvation slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ the Lord returns to reign.
Every eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty:
Those who set at nought and sold him, pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see.
Initially – or in the midst of a liturgical celebration – these verses may seem untroublesome. For they are in line with the presumption of many Christians. There are some – the saints, the ones chosen by God – who will greet God’s victory with great glee. Their faith will be proven to be right and truth, and they will be vindicated by Jesus’ ultimate claim of authority.
And the second verse seems to be a natural companion to the first. As some will be rewarded, there are others who, by rights, will be subject to the retribution of God. Having betrayed or condemned Jesus, they, in turn, will be rejected at the very moment of Jesus’ assumption of the kingdom. This is simply what they deserve. As the righteous rejoice, the wicked will fall to wailing.
And this seems perfectly orthodox. Or, we might say, it’s what we would expect. Which is exactly the problem.
Because the text from Revelation never even suggests that with Christ’s coming some will win and some will lose. What it says, quite explicitly, is that even those who could not and did not recognize Jesus will now see him for who he is. All will be made clear – for everyone. And it’s on this account, then, that all the tribes on earth will wail – for, astonishingly, the text here makes no distinction between those who got it right and those who were in the wrong. And the issue between us is no longer who deserves what. This isn’t of concern to God. All the tribes will wail because in Christ’s return all that made them distinctive and, thereby, divided, will be made irrelevant. Tribalism itself will no longer make any sense. And for all of us, whatever it was that made us most proud of ourselves will not be of any greater or lesser merit. For God will be all in all.
This bears constant repeating and reflection, for nothing is quite so persistent as tribal divisions. We see this in profusion today. And the church should never contribute to the practice of our standing opposed to one another. For this isn’t our future. It shouldn’t, then, be our present either.
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.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
