Readings for the Second Week of Advent

The Second Week of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent

Sing:
Lo! He comes with clouds descending, once for our salvation slain; Thousand Thousand saints attending swell the triumph of His train: Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ the Lord returns to reign.

Reflect:
Jesus came and so Jesus will come again. Advent, the time before Christmas, reminds thinking people that history is not eternal. The circle of life will come to an end and all life will enter Eternity.

We take for granted that what has been will be again, but that is a lie. We know that in our daily lives: at any moment everything can change for good or bad. One Christmas we had a new baby. Another Christmas we struggled with no work.

In the same way, the American Republic has been the mightiest nation in human history, but this country will not last forever. Social systems that guided my grandparents, parents, and my family may be swept away in revolution, cultural innovation, or decay. We must plan as if things will be stable, knowing that sometimes December 7 brings World War II to America and makes December 8 different.

The greatest difference can happen at any moment. Jesus will rip the sky apart, time will be no more, and a new world order will arise. We will know justice and so know peace. Human intellectual power will be freed from the hindrance of ego and vice.
There will be a last Christmas that will never end. We shall receive good gifts every moment . . . dazzling insights at every turn. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
Second Monday of Advent
Sing:
Every eye shall now behold Him, robed in dreadful majesty; Those who set at naught and sold Him, pierced and nailed Him to the tree, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see.
Reflect:
We all helped kill Jesus. This is a powerful moral statement and hard to understand. How could this be? How could my wrong choices kill God in the flesh?
God knows that every time we fall short of what we know is right, then pain results. We rip our own hearts or we destroy something good around us. God will not cover up pain or destruction. God wants to make all things new and if He were to merely “recreate” everything . . . we would be lost. Thank God, God loves us!

So God came down and took on the hard task of knowing pain. The Cross, raised into the heavens and grounded in the earth, became a place where all things met and all pains were joined. Jesus did not just “save” us from our mistakes, He made all things new by taking the pain inside Himself. He “gets it” and so can, if we allow Him to do so, transform what was to should be.
He can do this good deed because Jesus did not stay on the Cross. A God-man could not stay dead. He returned and now reigns in glory. We do not yet experience all of the benefits of His rule as He waits for the last of humans to be born, redeemed, and made whole. All of Adam and Eve’s children that God saw at the beginning of the world will have a chance at life and the choice of redemption.
The Lord Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.
Yet just as the first Christmas made the rich and the rulers in Jerusalem afraid, so His second coming will be bad news for anyone who will not change. If we reject the good gift of God, we will face damnation. This is not news. Does anyone who thinks about it believe that we could do anything to perfection but mar and destroy if we were unwilling to change?
We will weep, because we deserve to weep. We can choose to wallow in ignorance, our own ways, or we can turn to goodness, truth, and beauty. If we truly know and reject the good, then nothing good is left for us.
Advent can be the Day of Doom or the Day of Redemption for us, but no matter our choice, that Day will be the Day of the Lord. Jesus will be Lord.
Second Tuesday of Advent:

Sing:
Those dear tokens of His passion, still His dazzling Body bears, cause of endless exaltation to His ransomed worshippers; with what rapture, with what rapture, gaze we on those glorious scars!

Reflect:
Any mother of a child is changed by carrying a baby. She gains beautiful marks of her accomplishment and gift of life to her child. To the mature man, these are dazzling reminders of true love. Love brings two different types of humanity together to form something new. Fools find the scars of fecundity unappealing, romantics are in awe at what has happened.

God is the greatest lover and He is in the business of transforming every mundane and “average” thing to beauty. He makes a stable glorious and the nails of the Cross holy. When we get to Paradise, Jesus will still have the scars of His death, but those wounds will be contextualized in a City designed to make them glorious.

We will behold Him and love Him and all the broken parts of our lives will be healed in that vision. Our scars will become birthmarks to glory! We will see Him as He is . . . and He will have taken the ugliness that humanity did to His body and made them so glorious that we will be in rapture. The pain and the horrible acts of evil men in crucifying the Lord of Glory will still be painful and horrible, but God will have taken the marks of those deeds and put them in a place where the scar is part of the beauty. Like a great artists who takes the flaws in marble or in paint and uses the very flaws to make great art, so our Lord will have made all things beautiful without denying any pain.
God came to Mary and she said, “Yes.” Jesus was the result, Mary is the Mother of God and the marks of her birth, including her pierced heart at the Cross, are glorious. As a result, we too can say “yes” to God and also have Christ within us, bear Him, and birth Him in our daily lives.
Our scars can become His.
Second Wednesday of Advent:
Sing:
Yea, Amen! Let all adore Thee, high on Thine eternal throne; Savior take the power and glory; claim Thy kingdom for Thine own; Alleluia! Alleluia! Thou shalt reign and Thou alone.

Reflect:
Christmas is not about me, but about Jesus. Having said this truth, the temptation is then to think only how we are selfish. It is about me through being not about me! And so I say to myself: “Stop.”

Jesus.

He is God and is man. The fullness of God took on total humanity and brought Heaven and Earth together. The Son emptied Himself of the power of divinity and took on the weakness of humanity. He became man and then elevated humanity to the glorious throne of His divinity.

He is elected, but on a ballot where He is the only qualified candidate and only God can vote. He is the only qualified leader of all things, because only Jesus can be creator and redeemer. The Word that made everything in the beginning came and lived inside His own creation. As a result, only He is fit to govern. He has the power, the character, but also the empathy.
When we see an image of Jesus in the manger, we are seeing the abasement of God, but when God abases Himself that sacrifice becomes so glorious that the bottom becomes the top, the poor become rich, and the persecuted become the rulers.

Jesus inverted the entire order of a broken creation. Nobody worships Him because He is egotistical. He demands worship the same way a beautiful piece of music demands our praise. Anyone with taste must love beautiful music. Anyone with sense who sees God must praise Him because He is the perfection of beauty.

Alleluia!

Second Thursday of Advent:
Sing:
Honor, glory, might, and blessing to the Father and the Son, with the everlasting Spirit while unending ages run, with the everlasting Spirit while unending ages run.

Reflect:

Jesus came and earned what He had as God: honor, glory, and might. God became man so we could become like God and so live honorably, gloriously, and with might.

Honor in a person makes him fit only for praise. An honorable man will not stoop to conquer, but as a result, he cannot be defeated. Why?

You can kill an honorable man, but not make him break his code of conduct. He might die, but he dies as a gentleman. They say that some on Titanic changed into evening dress so that they could meet death like gentlemen. If so, they took from death much evil.

In fact, if a man could become wholly honorable, death would be defeated. God cannot forget the honorable man because God is just. As a result, in eternity this wholly honorable man would receive His due in the mind of God!

Jesus grew to be so honorable that demons, cads all, could not stand his presence. Hypocrites who loved the benefits of honor, but did not have the characteristics of a gentleman wanted Jesus killed.

Glory is the natural result of honor and Jesus gained great glory. Glory is what goodness does to anything it touches: it makes everything glorious! When Jesus, the honorable man, went the Cross, he made the wood glorious. When Jesus walked on the earth, he sanctified the very dirt.

If that seems odd, recall what even a sport’s hero can do with ink and paper. Bart Starr once signed a picture I had of him and turned that worthless photo into something glorious to me. His image made it interesting, His touch transformed it.
God fill my world with Your glory!

Might scares us because we are so used to narcissistic leaders who use power to oppress. Jesus gained might by honor which produced glory. There is power in goodness and that power makes everything touched glorious. Jesus emptied Himself of power of position, might that came from His divine nature. He came and through good choices, splendid works, and noble deeds became so honorable that evil men feared Him and good men loved Him.
The mighty man will never “use” people for power, but power for people, because true power comes from virtue. The power of fear and hatred can do great damage until it consumes itself. The tyrant, the Scrooge, the abuser is not mighty, but doomed. The meek will inherit all might.

We can choose this Advent to live honorably by His power. If we do, then we will glorify all around us by His glory . . . the way a cheap Christmas ornament bought for a first little Christmas tree can become a treasured family heirloom because of what we do with it over time. This glorification of all around us will make us mighty . . . even if martyred.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!  Amen.

Second Friday of Advent:

Sing:
“Sleepers wake!” A voice astounds us, the shout of rampart guards surrounds us: “Awake, Jerusalem, arise!” Midnight’s peace their cry has broken, their urgent summons clearly spoken: “The time has come, O maidens wise! Rise up, and give us light!; the bride groom is in sight. Alleluia! Your lamps prepare and hasten there that you the wedding feast my share.”
Reflect:
Jesus told a great many stories to warn us that His Second Coming would catch us by surprise. This song shares many of them . . . with the reminder that we must be prepared.
Big events that catch us unprepared can turn out disastrously even if we could not have known they were coming! Sometimes the boss drops by for dinner the night everyone has a cold and microwaved food was on the menu. Imagine the problem if we should have known or did know . . . and were caught unprepared.

Wait until the night the paper is due, write the paper, and you better pray the printer doesn’t break!

Jesus is coming . . . at my death, if not before. What can I do to prepare?

First, wake up. Too many times we live our days as if we are asleep. We watch television, but cannot remember what we saw the next day. We go to work and make mouse clicks whose meaning we soon forget. What is really happening? Who are the souls we are encountering? What is Jesus saying?

God help me to have a mind awake to constant questions, a heart that is always looking for love, and hands ready to take on a different task.

Second, get up. We cannot just wake up, we have to be dressed and ready to go. Too many times, we think out what we should do to prepare for the Kingdom, we are awake but we do not act.

God, help me to get up.

Third, hurry up. Time is short. Time is always short because death brings me forward in history like a run away Tardis to the end of time. The longest life is short for all we might do and must of us do not live the longest life!

Finally, party well. If we are unprepared, His Second Coming is doom, but if we are prepared, then it is an invitation to a Holiday without end. We are going to a party. Remember this truth lest a grim spirit infect our deeds. We must never allow a clenched jaw to replace the smile and laughter of the Kingdom. Damnation is grimly serious, but redemption is jolly.
The Christmas feast is coming: wake up, get up, hurry up- jollification is coming.

Second Saturday of Advent:

Sing:

Zion hears the watchman singing; her heart with joyful hope is springing, she wakes and hurries through the night. Forth He comes, her bridegroom glorious, in strength of grace, in truth victorious; her star is risen, her light grows bright. Now come, most worthy Lord, God’s son, incarnate Word, Alleluia! We follow all and heed Your call to come into the banquet hall.

Reflect:

Nobody fasts for the sake of fasting. Charitable organizations wish they would run out of work. Police officers would be delighted with the end of crime.

Advent is not for its own sake, but for the sake of Christmas. We are heading for joyful hope and our beloved. I remember sitting with Hope at our first date until all the chairs were up on the other tables. I am not sure what we ate, the conversation included an odd digression on consubstantiation, but the rest is a blur. Mostly, I remember Hope. She was there and the whole evening went so well.

I asked her out to dinner to be with her. I spoke to listen. I got dressed up to see her. And all I can recall are her eyes.

And so when I think of the fasting my church does to prepare for Christmas, I recall: we are preparing for a feast where He will be present! When I do my devotions or go to work, I remember that this is getting ready for holiday without end when Jesus comes again.
Advent is joyful hope. Hope can be a cheat and a fraud. When a conman comes with hope, he also brings disappointment. When the Beloved is coming, there is joyful hope. Joyful hope is based on best reason and experience, not on mere wishes. Advent is based on the knowledge after more than two thousand years that Christmas is coming . . .

Let’s keep the feast . . . soon!

Rose Sunday in Advent:

Sing:
Lamb of God, the heavens adore You; let saints and angels sing before You, as harps and cymbals swell the sound. Twelve great pearls, the city’s portals: through them we steam to join the immortals as we with joy your throne surround. No eye has known the sight, no ear heard such delight; Alleluia! Therefore we sing to greet our King; for ever let our praises ring.

Reflect:

In most Western churches, this is the Sunday in Advent when the purple color of repentance is replaced by rose. What is better?

We are tired of fasting. We know we are sinners. We cannot wait to see the Beloved and join with Him in the great feast, but there are still days and days of Advent to go. God in His great mercy says: “Joy is coming! Do not lose hope!”

The greater problem with the real feast, the party at the end of the age, is that we cannot really imagine how good it will be. If I pick one style of party, many will be turned off. Once I was asked in class to imagine the “ideal island.” My first thought was (and would be!) the British Isles. Evidently this was a “mistake” as almost everyone else thought a Hawaiian type island. My best island turns out to be nothing like most people’s.

What about Paradise? I cannot imagine that actual golden streets would attract me as cobble stone is so much more . . . romantic? Of course, the images of the party are not the party. The Beloved is the one we are going to see . . . and He knows us personally. He will meet us where we are at and give us the feast we desire.
I may get mushy peas, battered cod, and a pint in a pub while you get a suckling pig, poi, and fruit. We will be together, but celebrating as individuals. The feat will be one feast, but we shall each be fully satisfied.

Music captures the feast best. Everyone can hear a great piece of music and love it differently. We love what works for us: one music, many listeners. The great party at the end of Advent, true Christmas, will be a piece of music so complex, rich, and beautiful that everyone can love it, but in their own way.
I cannot wait for Christmas . . .