Not Just Any Port in a Storm - Advent, Day 3

December 5, 2006 by djackson.

 Advent readings:  Isaiah 1.21-31, 1 Thessalonians 2.1-12, Luke 20.9-18

“My hearers, we grow old,” said the preacher.  “Be it summer or be it spring with us now, autumn will soon settle down into winter, that winter whose snow melts only in the grave.   The wind of the world sets for the tomb.  Some of us rejoice to be swept along on its swift wings, and hear it bellowing in the hollows of earth and sky; but it will grow a terror to the man of trembling limb and withered brain, until at length he will long for the shelter of the tomb to escape its roaring and buffeting.  Happy the man who shall then be able to believe that old age itself, with its pitiable decays and sad dreams of youth, is the chastening of the Lord, a sure sign of his love and his fatherhood.”

It was the first Sunday in Advent; but “the chastening of the Lord’ came into almost every sermon that man preached.

- George MacDonald, “The Gifts of the Child Christ”

The chastening of the Lord came into a lot of Isaiah’s preaching as well - Advent preaching at that.  He saw the first coming of the Lord as a necessary change of command.  Israel’s mutinous crew ran large before a gail-force wind that threatened to heave them onto the reefs and rocks and hole them below the spiritual waterline.  The prophet fired a shot across their bows and warned them to heave-to before the Almighty’s boarding party swarmed up the sides.

Jesus’ preaching on the second coming was pretty big on chastening, though his metaphor was more Bolshevik revolution than Mutiny on the Bounty.  He reminds his hearers that we are only renters on Apartment Complex Earth and that the Landlord makes real, if irregular rounds. 

Paul puts all this lofty language into manageable proportion with a little practical advice about working hard, paying your own way and generally treating people with respect.  Sometimes calloused hands show a tender heart better than a too-ready flow of tears.

At winter the year grows old and the weary world sinks into a dark night Sabbath of the soul.  The Christian can enter without fear this blackened tunnel, because the light at the other end is neither an exit nor an oncoming train, but the promised star which shines above a shabby stable and reminds us that safety in Christ’s second Advent arises from faith in the meaning of his first.

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