CAN WE STOP HIS COMING?

We can only wonder, as we look around in stores and shopping malls, whether the inevitable onrush of Christmas celebrations can be stopped-by our refusing to shop-by our ignoring the music and decoration-by our daydreaming about other more important things? Those of us who long for a celebration with some depth of meaning can't help but hope.

 

Help for such hope comes quickly with Advent hymns that point us through the sleigh bells, tinsel and smell of pine to the real meaning of the incarnation. The hymns of Charles Wesley, Anglican priest, religious reformer, and greatest of all English-language hymn writers, are among the most helpful. We remember his hymns especially this year because he was born 300 years ago this December 18. One of his most meaningful hymns is "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus."

 

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.

Israel's Strength and Consolation,

Hope of all the earth Thou art;

Dear Desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.

 

Born Thy people to deliver,

Born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us forever,

Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

By Thine own eternal Spirit

Rule in all our hearts alone;

By Thine all sufficient merit,

Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

 

This hymns speaks of divine activity in history, something with which our faith tradition is quite familiar. The transcendent God is not wholly separate from our existence but can be appreciated here and now: in the fact of creation, in great events, in small encounters, and most of all, in the one who is born a child to reign among us. In this hymn Wesley places Jesus squarely in the midst of our history. Jesus is the long-expected one, the deliverer not only of his own people but of all humankind. In Jesus, Wesley says, is the fulfillment of all human desire. In Jesus, Wesley says four times, the joy of every longing heart takes on flesh and blood. He is born among us, as one of us. He is God with us, Emmanuel.

 

And then, strikingly, providing a contrast to this fourfold repetition of his coming, are a series of imperatives: come, release, bring, rule, raise. These, we recognize, are things which have not yet happened, or which must happen again and again. We long for wrongs to be put right, for justice to be done. We long for that release from the fear that drives and poisons so much of what we do: the fear of scarcity, the fear of death, the fear of discovering who we really are and who we are meant to be. We still await the full unveiling of that ‘gracious kingdom' which breaks into history now and again, from a time beyond it, in acts of mercy, justice, compassion, and love. We long to experience how Emmanuel, God with us, will change not only us, but through us the very world in which we live.

 

That is our hope and this is what it means to celebrate Christ's coming; we can know, here already, now already, that the one who comes to us through or despite sleigh bells, tinsel and smell of pine is born to save us from ourselves and from all that would suppress and depress us here and now. We look to such changes as the Word becomes incarnate within each of us, letting us become little Christs to our neighbors, and especially to the marginalized and poor.

 

Advent is about much more than crossing off days on the calendar or enduring the ever-present holiday spirit; we are to live into it with the barely contained excitement of the child who cannot wait for Christmas Day because something may await us for which we are totally unprepared.

 

With such anticipation, we rightly wonder midst our annual holiday extravaganzas, will the real Jesus ever come?

 

Can we stop him?

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