The Advent season begins on the last Sunday of the month, 29 November. The overlap between the Gregorian calendar and the liturgical calendar symbolically represents that an end time is also a beginning time. Whereas we human beings look forward to the end of some things, like the work day, an illness, the sermon, or some other arduous aspect of life, we Christians generally do not look forward to the end of temporal life, even when life is filled with adversity. In contrast thereto, our neo-pagan society places very little value on life apart from one’s own disposition and selfish desires. This disregard for life seems particularly acute toward people at either end of the age spectrum.
Placing ultimate value on the temporal pursuits of oneself until that pursuit becomes unavoidably unpleasant is perhaps best described as narcissistic nihilism: narcissism, after the mythological figure Narcissus who was enamored with himself, and nihilism, derived from the Latin word nihil meaning nothing. So, narcissistic nihilism would be valuing the self above all else until even the self is deemed (or doomed) to have lost its value. Theologically, narcissistic nihilism is both a manifestation and an avoidance mechanism of that human condition known as Sin.
When Adam and Eve listened to the voice which told them that they “will be like God, knowing good and evil,” if they ate of the fruit of a certain tree (Genesis 3:5), they believed that voice to be true, and sinful humanity today still does too. Human understanding of what is good and what is evil, however, is so self-contradictory and confused as to defy not only cogent reason but also credible belief. In other words, human conduct, ethics, and morality contradict not only basic, reasoned logic but also the word and thus the will of the God who entrusted humanity with life in his image. Rather than destroy all sinful human beings, as they had destroyed his image given them, God the Father sent his Son, Jesus the Christ, to rectify and to save sinful humanity.
The liturgical season of Advent marks both the first and the final coming of Christ, the celebration of his nativity and of his final consummation of all time. Scripture’s portrayal of that final advent entails spectacular events when the Son of Man appears in all his glory to judge the living and the dead. Until that time, Christians find themselves similarly in a spiritual and cosmic overlap of time – created through baptism – between their end on the cross and their resurrection to newness of life in Christ.
Throughout the overlapping times between Christ’s first and final advent, mirrored in the Christian life, no shortage of individuals and groups have tried to foretell when the end will actually arrive. The book of Revelation, like its forefather the book of Daniel, provides ample material for vivid, various, and varied opinions on the matter. In both books, God’s faithful, namely God’s saints, find themselves at odds with the unbelievers all around them.
Given this dynamic, believers have thus throughout history found themselves the target of non-believers’ displeasure and disdain. Perhaps even worse, many faithful Christians also find themselves the disdainful target of other Christians, particularly those “enlightened” by societal unbelief. Whereas end-time prophets typically place the times of persecution and great tribulation for the faithful far out into the future, the battle between belief and non-belief is always and actually at hand, hear and now, each and every day that a Christian is alive in this life.
Still in bondage to human sin, i.e. under the sway of narcissistic nihilism, many Christians mistakenly believe that they are the center of the target of such persecution. Some of these Christians, self-assuredly “knowing good and evil,” even relegate to themselves the power to speculate who will be saved and who will be “left behind” at the end of time. In other words, from the time of Adam and Eve until the end of time, sinful human beings have misused and will continue to misuse God’s word as a means for to try to save their own skins while defying God. That happened in the garden and happened on the cross. Contradicting God is the nature of sin.
The battle against sin, however, is not a human battle which humanity can wage while under the power of sin. Similarly, the persecution which Christians have faced, do face, and will face due to their sin is not primarily about them or their future, no matter how much they may feel targeted. Instead, the battle against sin is God’s battle against all the enticing voices and charming manifestations of unbelief. That battle is not fought with traditional weapons of warfare but with the word of God in both law and gospel. As theologian, Andrew E. Steinmann, aptly puts it,
“This means that the kind of persecution that is most dangerous for the saints is not some future worldwide political ruler who could deprive them of earthly goods, limit commerce, require a numerical mark on their bodies, or even take their physical lives. Instead, the most dangerous persecution is the insidious corruption of the Gospel of justification through Christ alone and its replacement by a false gospel that mixes faith with works and false spirituality. It is this kind of spiritual warfare that can cause saints to shift their trust from the atonement of Christ to themselves and human or demonic teachings. If they compromise the exclusive claims of God in Christ in order to accommodate other religions, they will lose their relationship with the loving, merciful God who accomplished their full redemption in Jesus Christ” (Daniel, Concordia Commentaries [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2008], 382-383).
Fortunately, the time is always nigh. Jesus Christ comes to us (advent) wherever and whenever the gospel is purely proclaimed and the sacraments are administered according to the gospel. In so doing, God promises to be with his saints (his believers) amidst all the forces of unbelief which threaten them and their relationship with God, from without and from within. In that light, i.e. in the light of the gospel, Advent is not just a particular liturgical season to be signified with blue (or purple) paraments. Instead, Advent is the nature of the gospel itself coming here and now to save us from the most insidious corruption of the gospel, namely from ourselves wanting “to be like God” in defiance and contradiction of the one true God who revealed and reveals his love for sinful humanity in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
