Advent, Week 3
For this reason, I bow my knees
This is the third (and last) in a series of Advent meditations. Yes, I’m taking next week off. But before I continue, as a gentle reminder, you can sign up for one of my two January Rule of Life workshops: Friday, January 10th, 11 am – 3 pm EST OR Saturday, January 11th, 9 am – 1 pm EST.
Here’s what Steve had to say about the workshop, after he attended:
“I had no time to take Jen’s ‘Rule of Life’ workshop, which is precisely why I needed it. Everything about it was top-notch. Jen cares deeply about guiding participants into a thoughtful and faithful examination of how they spend their time. That care comes through every step of the way. Take the time. It’s worth every minute.”
Find out more about registering for the workshops here.
I haven’t honestly spent much time in the Book of Revelation. For as many times as I’ve read the Bible through in a year, if I’m completely candid, I tend to drop off in December and leave Revelation behind.
(So much for my working genius of tenacity.)
Revelation is a confusing book, and I’m not the only one to think so. John Calvin wrote a commentary on almost every New Testament book except Revelation. Martin Luther argued for its removal from the canon.
Our church chose to preach through Revelation this year, which is certainly one reason I’m thinking about that book this month. (You can find this sermon series here.) Additionally, our oldest son is attending an Anglican church in Toronto, and they are preaching on the four traditional themes of Advent. No, not hope, peace, joy, love but death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
(We wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.)
Nathan sent me the sermon on judgment, preached by Dr. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson at St. Paul’s Bloor Street, and gushed over text that it was one of the best sermons he’d heard in his life. (Growing up in the church, that boy has heard a lot of sermons.) Of course I had to listen—and was moved powerfully by Dr. Wigg-Stevenson’s explication of Revelation 20:11-15: The Great White Throne Judgment of God.
(Have a holly, jolly Christmas. It’s the best time of the year.)
Revelation 20 and the Great White Throne Judgment of God is not the place you go to feel all the warm fuzzies of the wintry season. But as I listened to the sermon and later reread the passage myself, I discovered this much, that it is a text to turn to when you’re in the middle of Advent and longing to know more deeply the love and grace and mercy of God. These miracles of God’s heart toward humanity are extraordinary, and yet we cease to notice them for how familiar they get. The music plays, it encores, and we can no longer hear it.
(Joy to the world, the Lord is come!)
I have been wanting to write, in one particular project, about what it means to live as the beloved of God, but I’ve found myself asking whether I even know God’s love myself. How does the love of God really move me, really change me, really baptize my vision of all of reality? Of course the Apostle Paul tells us a strange thing about knowing the love of God, that we will need “strength” for such a task (Eph. 3:14-19). Twice he repeats the word strength, and I can’t help but wonder why it’s this capacity that is singled out for the task.
It seems that “strength” suggests at least this much, that the love of God is a tsunami, hurricane force and we are leveled to try glimpsing it. Paul says: try grasping this love and stay standing. No, you will be hurled to your knees and left begging for mercy if you don’t beseech strength. The love of God is a holy, holy, holy will in the world, and it does not just prop you up with false and flattering kindnesses. It judges.
(Hark the Herald Angels Sing!)
The holy righteous judgment of God is what takes place in Revelation 21, where every human creature, small and great, is brought before God at the end of mortal time. Books of Deeds are opened. It’s a scene where what’s witnessed is the record of every human life being read aloud, every joy and tittle of human thought and word and deed brought into the blinding light that is God. Revelation, as a book of images, gives us a picture of the scene, and it is not a benign one.
Earth and sky fled away, Rev. 20:11. No place was found for them.
When the truth is told about the nature of our lives, cover will be sought, by all of creation. We are guilty, every one of us. Every good deed, found wanting. Every evil deed, unconcealed. Every negligence of love for God and love for neighbor and proper love for self surfaced for all to plainly see, and we will be naked and without excuse. As Nancy Guthrie perceptively writes in Blessed: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Revelation, “It is stunning that so many people think this is going to work out well for them.” No, the more honest reply would really be, Do not, O God, read only from these Books.
But of course, there is another book. A Book of Life. If your name is in that book, you’ll be spared the judgment you deserve. More than that, you’ll be given a reward you never earned. The names in this book aren’t the good people, the nice people, the honest people, the chaste people, the generous people. If there is any goodness, niceness, honesty, chastity, or generosity in them, it’s because they were saved. Baptized into the death of Jesus, Lamb of God, and raised to walk in newness of life. His life.
For by grace you are saved through faith, the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-9. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
To picture this scene in Revelation is to know that a way must be made for humanity to remain in the eternal presence of a holy, loving God. This way is not a way they can make for themselves because none is righteous, no not one. What will give them strength to stand in the presence of God’s holy love?
Fleming Rutledge glimpses at an answer in her Advent book: “A power from outside is coming, a power that is able to make a new creation out of people like us, stones like us, people who have no capacity of ourselves to save ourselves. The power that is coming is not our own power—not the power of our deeds, or our inner strength, or our spiritual discipline, or our faith, or even our repentance. It is God’s power that gives good deeds and inner strength and spiritual discipline and faith and repentance. We are able to repent and bear fruit because he is coming.”
He is coming. This is the good and terrifying news of Advent.
Yet to all who receive him, to those who believe in his name, we will be given strength, if not to stand, than to bow.
(Fall on your knees, O hear the angels’ voices! O night divine! O night, when Christ was born!)
I’m taking next week off, so this is my sign-off until December 30th. I hope to have a year-in-review for you then, but I pray for you, as Advent gives way to Christmas, that you will be brought ever more deeply into the light and holy love of God.
Thanks for helping another reading through the Bible in a year sinner who needs the rvelations of Revelation.
I wept (WEPT!) as I read this to my husband. There is nothing else to say. God, my savior, give me the strength.