First Sunday of Advent - The Second Coming

In his book, Journey to the Heart of God, Philip Pfatteicher reminds his readers that Advent is not a game of 'pretend Jesus hasn't been born yet.'  Too much 'pretend' softens the subversive quality of God's coming to us in this way.  We sentimentalize the manger, the star, the angels singing, the shepherds with their sheep.

We should remember that the nativity was not sentimental to Herod, who had armed raiders kill infant children in the village of Bethlehem in hopes that one of them was this future king.  Real authority was born on Christmas Day and Herod-like tyrants the world over should be afraid.

Charles Wesley captures the authority and power of Christ which will be displayed at Christ's second coming in his Advent hymn, "Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending:"

Lo! He comes with clouds descending / once for favored sinners slain;

Thousand thousand saints attending / swell the triumph of his train:

Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  God appears on earth 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

Those dear tokens of his passion / still his dazzling body bears

cause of endless exultation / to his ransomed worshipers

With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars

Yea amen! Let all adore thee / high on thine eternal throne

Savior take the power and glory / claim the kingdom for thine own

Come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus everlasting God come down!

Closing with the last lines of the Bible, the hymn rings with both the praise and the agony that will come with the second coming.  His saints swell in Christ's triumphant train, all who hate him will be confounded, even as they recognize his authority.  Of course even the greatest saints find the root of their praise in knowing they were enemies, the 'wretches' of John Newton's amazing grace.  The great slave spiritual asked "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" to which all the saints will tremble and answer "I was there."  As P.T. Forsyth put it, "the final symphony of praise has a deep bass of penitence."  

This is why the saints of Wesley's hymn have already recognized Christ's virtue in his cross.  This shows us the clear melody and dominant strain of Christ's first appearance as above all a servant.  But he will not return a servant.  In the words of Herman Bavinck: "For he does not return in the form of a servant but with great power and with his own and the Father's glory (Matt. 16:27; 24:30; Mark 8:38; 13:26; Luke 22:27; Col. 3:3, 4; 2 Thess. 1:9, 10; Titus 2:13), as King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 17:14; 19:11-16), surrounded by his angels (Matt. 16:27; 25:31); Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; 2 Thess. 1:7; Rev. 19:14), by his saints among whom the blessed in heaven are perhaps included (1 Thess. 3:13; 2 Thess. 1:10; Jude 14).  Although on account of its unexpected character, his parousia is comparable with the breaking into a house of a thief in the night, it will nevertheless be visible for all human beings on earth and be like the lightning that flashes from one side of the sky to the other (Matt. 24:27); Luke 17:24; Rev. 1:7) and be announced by the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of angels (Matt. 24:31); 1 Cor. 15:52; 1 Thess. 4:16) (Bavinck, The Last Things, 126)

The First Sunday of Advent reminds us that now is the time to lay down our arms that we have raised against the kingdom of Christ.  All violence, treachery, debauchery, restless pursuit of fleshly gain must cease.  We must recognize the cross of Christ to be principally a false verdict and the greatest injustice, jeopardizing the complacent consciences of all humanity, to which the resurrection is God's verdict on Jesus Christ.  But the cross is also, as every Christian knows, a healing balm for the sin-sick soul.  We sense there that the Christ who forgives his false accusers and mockers from the cross, offers forgiveness to all humanity from that same cross.  P.T. Forsyth writes: "You must let that come home to you, to your own peculiar case.  To be perfect with God you must have Christ come home, come HOME, to you and sit by your central fire - come home to you, to YOU, as if for the moment mankind were centred in the burning point of your soul, and you touched the burning point of God's.  You must court and haunt His presence till it break forth on you..." (Forsyth, Christian Perfection, p. 147)