A Sound of Sheer Silence

The big idea that my rector has been pushing this Advent season is the idea that Advent is about three different concepts at the same time--the waiting for Jesus in Bethlehem in the 1st Century, the waiting for Jesus to come to us now, in our own individual lives and circumstances, and the waiting for Jesus to come at the end of time.  We tend to focus entirely on the first part, and neglect the second and third.  The problem with focusing on the first part is that it makes Advent, and by extension Christmas, something that exists only in the past--an event that happened and did whatever it will do, now is over, leaving us only to remember it. But Advent doesn't just speak to the past, but also the present and the future.   When we look back to see the children of Israel at the eve of the coming of Jesus , we are also seeing ourselves in our situation reflected in their faces.  First century Jews cried out to God for salvation--salvation from their own individual a...

Yesterday was the the First Sunday of Advent, the season of waiting and watching for the coming of Jesus at Christmas.  As was so well said by in the sermon I heard this weekend, there are really three different sorts of "coming of Jesus at Christmas" that Advent looks forward to--the one in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, the one that we believe will come at the end of time, and the one that comes to each one of us in an individual way, in that "sound of sheer silence" as the title of this blog says.  Those three ways are different, of course, but they are also the same in important ways, I think.  The more you carefully look at one of them, the more they resemble the other two. In that light, I was thinking over the course of this weekend about the how the people in the 1st Century were waiting and watching, and how that might relate to our waiting and watching.  What might we learn from them?  How are their struggles like our struggles, their fears like our fears...