Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
Instability seems to be shaking the foundations of our world on all sides. Where can we find a place to stand on firm ground? What offers a sure place where we can leave change and deterioration behind? What can give me an immovable, unshakable anchorage? Simon and Garfunkel expressed the hope that one can shield himself with the self-made armor of his own room, protected from the love that has only brought tears and disappointments. “I am a rock. I am an I-land,” they sang. But “I” prove less than a reliable, unshakable rock, and the delusion of my attempt to stand still and rest on my own two feet just tumbles me into doubt and despair. The seventeenth-century English poet John Donne recognized that no one is an island. My own stability and reliability as a sure place to stand quivers at the sound of the ambulance siren, for I know that the siren also wails for me.
God is the Unmovable. God is Stability personified. And yet God is always on the move. He leads his people on the move. In Eden he moved quickly to find the delinquent Adam and Eve, who had missed their appointment with him. He summoned them to move back into conversation with himself. He raised them from their deathly decision to doubt his Word and defy his person. He sent them into his world to care for it and for each other.
As society deteriorated around Noah and his family, God called on Noah to arise and build a boat. He called Abraham to arise out of his comfort zone in Ur and trek across the desert to an unspecified promised piece of real estate. And Abraham did it, simply on the basis of trusting the word, the promise, of God. Israel followed Moses on the march to the sea, across Sinai, to the banks of the Jordan, grumbling as they trekked across the desert, but moving on. God is the Unshakable, and therefore his people can move freely, in confidence, in his world.
Advent sets our sights on the movement of Jesus, who, even in Advent, is already pointing us to the path that led him to the cross.
Advent—“coming”—is a time for moving in the midst of instability, disappointments, broken love, and wailing sirens. It is a time for arrival, to be sure, but we experience Advent as only a short stop as life moves on into the church year. Advent focuses on Jesus arriving, first as a baby in the womb of his mother, then as he moves into our lives each day, finally as he will move into our world on the Last Day to judge all and set his people into motion as they complete the move from earthly life to eternal life.
Isaiah’s call for building a road in the desert (40:3-5) foreshadows the Holy Spirit’s call for us this day to be constructing access to our Lord for those around us. The construction process can seem formidable, more massive than cutting through mountains and bridging valleys in the Rockies, the Himalayas, or the Alps. But when the mouth of the Lord speaks, glory is revealed, even as we wander and stumble through the wilderness of a world that seems to be falling apart. His glory, his Shekinah, brings his presence into our daily life, where too often it feels like the very ground under our feet is quaking.
Advent sets our sights on the movement of Jesus, who, even in Advent, is already pointing us to the path that led him to the cross. Advent celebrates him as the coming king, the one whose Advent sent Jerusalem’s population into elation and celebration. Though many hoped for political deliverance, the true deliverance Jesus brought far exceeded their dreams. Their hopes for national glory fell far short of the mark that Jesus was pursuing. Their goal was Judean independence; his was freedom from every evil that would last forever. Their hopes were smashed as the Romans destroyed their city and scattered or slaughtered its people less than four decades later. His hope endures, blossoms, and thrives until the end of time. For it is a hope that truly delivers from every sin we commit and every evil that afflicts us. He came with the power to save, and he comes to deliver all the goods that he gathered for us as he moved with our sins on his back from the chief priests to Pilate to Herod to Pilate to Golgotha to the tomb—and out again.
Humble faith in Jesus moves us beyond the wildernesses in which we find ourselves lost and struggling to regain balance and momentum, children who have become homeless through the wearing and tearing of daily life. The relationships that have held us, we thought, upright quake and quiver. When the darkness descends and we think we have strayed from our way, the voice of Jesus cuts through fog and darkness, the face of Jesus shines into the dust and grime. Hope blossoms, and trust collapses into the arms of the one who has come with the power to save.
Therefore, in the midst of moving through Advent, we are a folk that rejoices even in the midst of terror and turbulence. The one who comes with the power to save, to restore our humanity, wipes away tears and ends our trembling. He carries us with him to the cross, where he dies for us and we die in him to our old selves.
A quarter century ago many churches changed the liturgical color of Advent from a purple hue to blue. Purple reminded us that Advent is a season of repentance, for to be as well-prepared as the well-prepared maidens of Matthew 25:1-13, we must acknowledge how great our need is for the One who comes with the power to save. But blue is the color of hope, of the hope of moving with the One who comes beyond this life to a life in his new creation.
We awake, arise, and join the triumphal parade that makes a spectacle of the Evil One and all his misleading false paths, as we follow the Messiah, the King of the Jews and of every other tribe and nation, to the cross, through the empty tomb, into the fullness of life restored to harmony with our Creator.