Advent is preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ.  It is anticipation, waiting. Yet, as the readings for the First Sunday in Advent demonstrate, it is not simply the waiting for Christ at his first coming as a child in the manger, but for his second coming at the end of time when all things are brought to completion. Indeed, some theologians argue that the second coming is the “third coming” since Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist and otherwise throughout the year.

The passage from Isaiah shows us that the hopes of the coming of the Messiah predate the visible Church of the Jews and Gentiles formed after the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  The prophet Isaiah speaks of the longing for the peace of the Lord, which will be for all peoples and which would come from the God of Jacob. This peace would be for all nations, governed by the true King, “For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” (Isaiah 2:4-5).This anticipation, a revelation given to Isaiah and the Jewish people as a whole, permeates not only Isaiah, but much of the post-exilic prophetic literature and many of the Jewish non-canonical texts from the Hellenistic period.

With the coming of Jesus, those Jews and Gentiles that proclaimed him Messiah now awaited not the first coming, but the coming again of the Messiah who had walked among them. Paul yearns for this time and speaks of its nearness:

“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy” (Romans 13: 11-13).

The time is near, but when? Since there is no exact time given, it is always a time of preparation, anticipation and waiting. Paul speaks of “putting on the armor of light” in order to prepare, while Jesus himself gives images of readiness. Jesus says, “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24:42-44).

This warning is full of promise, but some worry about the time that has passed. This sense of anticipation, though, speaks to the necessary childlikeness of the disciple of Jesus. As a child I recall the anticipation of Christmas, or waiting to see my older sister come home from college, but I had no sense of time or when this might be. I was just so excited as I waited and so ready when the time came. Advent: a time to await the child Jesus in the first coming, the second coming, every coming, with the anticipation of a child, without weariness or doubt, just excitement.

John W. Martens

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John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.