ecently, I’ve been reading and studying a lot in the book of Revelation. Or rather, as it gives its own title, the Revelation of Jesus Christ. It’s been a focus of two of my classes this past semester and has been on the forefront of my mind (in no small part due to the two papers I am currently writing on aspects of the book). How we see the return of Jesus Christ and how we read what he showed to John has a dramatic impact on how we live and how we worship.

The previous paragraph seems like an odd way to begin a post entitled “Advent 1″. It would be much more effective to begin with one of the prophecies from Isaiah or one of the Psalms or the account of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and her song that follows. Why haven’t I chosen, then, to use those passages? Certainly, those would be effective ways to begin an entry for Advent, and they certainly have their place, but I’m afraid that in the middle of all of the wreaths, candles and preparations for Christmas, we forget why Revelation is just as important an Advent reading as Isaiah or Luke. The Christian calendar isn’t defined by the biggest shopping day of the year or the biggest day of the year for returns (because we packed on a few more pounds in the past 12 months than our families accounted for); it’s defined by preparation for the coming of Christ and celebration of his arrival.

Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
-Charles Wesley

These aren’t just words that we sing to little baby Jesus who we’re waiting to place in the manger in our home nativity scenes. Even when we do well to use Advent as a time of preparation for the celebration of the coming of Christ at Christmas, we often forget that that’s not the only coming of Christ. We may confess with the Nicene Creed that “he shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,” but in the real world, where theology really happens, we don’t let it change us.

Born thy people to deliver,
born a child, and yet a king,
born to reign in us for ever,
now thy gracious kingdom bring.

This Advent, don’t only pray that our hearts aren’t overcome by the rampant materialism in our society, especially at Christmastime. Don’t stop with the prayer that asks that the glory of the incarnation will make our hearts alive as we celebrate Advent and Christmas. Pray those things! But also pray that we will be faithful, like the saints and martyrs in heaven pictured in Revelation. Pray that our songs, like theirs, would be directed to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Pray that we might “find our rest”, as Charles Wesley wrote well, in Jesus - the one who was born in humility and will return in glory.

[bibleblock]Revelation 22:20-21[/bibleblock]

rom the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

My English teachers from my past would be shocked to read the following admission: I like essays. And now to properly nuance that statement: I like reading other people’s essays. Much like short stories, I find essays valuable to read because they often deal with issues in much more concise ways than entire volumes. Also, reading an essay allows me to feel like I can read material in managable chunks, rather than try to read an in-depth analysis and feel guilty that I can only sit through 40-45 pages before I become completely bored with the subject matter.

I’ve been reading a collection of essays on Christian Worship by John D. Witvliet. Dr. Witvliet is the director of the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, MI. He is both a musician and a theologian and is able to wed the two disciplines in his writing. Here is a selection from the essay “Soul Food for the People of God” that is appropriate as we prepare for the Advent season:

Good music can also inoculate us from spiritual disease. Consider the prominent spiritual disease of sentimentality: religious experience as candy-coated happiness and bliss. If we feed our souls a steady diet of musical candy, we will have little spiritual protein to sustain us. This is no more true than at Christmas. Here is a time of year when broken and hurting and grieving people often hurt the most. And yet it is a time of year when we most often serve up rank sentimentality in our music. This can happen as easily with music sung by pop artists as with music sung by English choir boys. Even really good choirs often sing many songs that are lullabies to Jesus or that are about three ships sailing in or about unknown words such as fum or about swinging steeple bells or merry gentlemen not being dismayed — all of which prevent us from focusing on the incomprehensible paradox of the incarnation. When the incarnation does come through, when we do sing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” (one of the most theologically profound of all carols) and actually attend to the meaning of the text, our souls are fed with the protein of deep spiritual life.

from “Soul Food for the People of God” in Worship Seeking Understanding by John D. Witvliet, p. 235