For Luther, Advent Is about God’s Grace, not Our Preparation

I love it when non-Lutherans find help from Luther.  Here, two Episcopalians learn from Luther about the best way to observe Advent.

Andrea L. Turpin, fellow Patheos blogger at Anxious Bench, posts about Why I Love Advent.  In doing so, she cites a book by Fleming Rutledge entitled Advent: The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ.  (My bolds):

Rutledge draws heavily from traditionalist Lutheran theology to critique and reform her own tradition. She praises how the Episcopal church has guarded and maintained historic Advent observance. But she fears it too often devolves into mere exhortations to be better and do better—about genuinely good things such as alleviating poverty, fighting racism, and showing hospitality. But without also preaching that Christ promises to redeem and empower us now and bring complete justice and righteousness in the end, exhortations result in either despair that we can’t do enough or smugness that we are doing more than others (27). So she elaborates:

Whereas Roman Catholic preachers [in the early modern period] continued to exhort those attending Mass to double up on their penitential practices during advent, Lutheran preachers focused on proclamation of the undeserved grace of God—evangelistic sermons rather than hortatory ones….Related to the second coming, which Jesus repeatedly says will come by God’s decision at an hour we do not expect, is the Advent emphasis on the agency of God, as contrasted with the “works” of human beings.An exclusive emphasis on Advent as a season of preparation risks putting human endeavor in the spotlight for all four weeks of the season. All the Advent preparation in the world would not be enough unless God were favorably disposed to us in the first place…[hence] the theme of watching and waiting.” (4-5)

Advent is about the coming of Christ.  He came in the past at Christmas.  He will come again in His second coming.  But He comes to us here and now in the Sacraments and in the Word of the Gospel, the good news “of the undeserved grace of God” in Christ, through whose life, death, and resurrection, God “is favorably disposed to us.”  So Advent needs to be about evangelism to others and about our own “watching and waiting” for the work of God in our lives.

 

Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay