That great medieval spiritual leader, St Bernard, used often to speak not of one Advent but of three. The first Advent is the one we are most familiar with; this period of waiting to celebrate again the birth of Jesus at Christmas. The third Advent can seem the most unreal – that moment at some stage in an unknown future when the world comes to an end, with neither a bang nor a whimper but with a transformation beyond our imagining when the human race is judged and the kingdom of God’s reign comes into being. This was the ending which the early Christians confidently expected would come soon and one of the many extraordinary characteristics of early Christianity is that the failure of the kingdom to come as quickly as they had hoped, did not in the end disrupt their faith or destroy their hopes.
Why that did not happen can in part be glimpsed in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians; they expected the end to come soon but in the meantime they were to rejoice, pray, give thanks, and to discern the true nature of all that came their way. It is a model for interim living. However, long the journey turns out to be, however remote the ending may seem, the interim life has in itself a durable sustainable quality. Rejoice, pray, give thanks, discern.
The frequency of Paul’s encouragement to rejoice is remarkable. We know how much persecution and confusion and division these early churches experienced and yet they are to rejoice – rejoice in circumstances where rejoicing seems the last thing possible. This must be the deepest kind of joy; a sense of connection with God which sustains itself even in the darkest places; a courageous, unconquerable joy; this is rejoicing beyond a common joy.
Rejoice, and pray; and pray not just when you meet with other Christians, not just in worship, not just at set times, but all the time without ceasing; this must be a particular kind of prayer; this is the prayer which sustains that sense of connection with God even in the darkest places; this is not the prayer of many words, though it may involve few words or just one word or thought at the back of your mind all the time; it may involve wearing or carrying something – a constant memento of God; such prayer is a slowly maturing desire to relate all things to God.
Rejoice, pray, and give thanks; again not easy in the dark places that Paul and his early Christians so often knew; a thanksgiving which is nurtured by the God of small things – the moments in the day which lift you up, the smile, the beam of sunlight, the sense of comfort or kindness or beauty, and above all the sense of that enduring connectedness with the rich reality of God.
Rejoice, pray, give thanks, and discern: so much of our experience is ambiguous, complex, confusing; so much seems to obscure God’s presence and undermine our connectedness with him; and to discern means to question, to probe, to wonder why. Why am I feeling like this, why do I always react like this, what is it about my circumstances that I could change and what must I accept; and if I could change, what is stopping me; and how do I want things to change and is that desire real or illusory; and what might be the first small but real step towards change? Discernment is a testing of the spirit within us and a testing of our circumstances; how and in what way are we to come closer to the reality of God and so also come closer to the self in us whom God is nurturing?
Rejoice, pray, give thanks, discern – these were the means whereby the early church sustained itself even when the end failed to come as soon as they had expected; these things sustained them, together with the possibility of the second Advent which Bernard spoke of. The first Advent, leads to the first coming of Christ at Christmas, the third Advent to the final coming of Christ, but the second Advent is always possible wherever we are on the Christian journey.
A hint of this truth is found in the gospel of John’s account of the ministry of the Baptist. The religious hierarchy of Jerusalem is desperate to know who he is. But John refuses to be categorized or pigeon holed – he refuses to give them the information they need to report back to the sacred civil service. All he will say of himself is that he is a voice in the wilderness. They have files on messiahs and prophets, but the system breaks down when it comes to voices. Even the Jerusalem department of transport might find it hard to know how to respond to a memo requiring the way of the Lord to be made straight. And so the experts weigh in; it is not known for voices in the wilderness to baptize. He must be leading the people astray. But then the voice cuts through all the religiously bureaucratic red tape – for in fact the Lord is already there anonymously in their midst. John’s interlocutors must at this moment be feeling a little jumpy – the Voice has told them to prepare the way of the Lord. But the message is even now redundant – the Lord could be the man standing next to them in the crowd, the Lord is at that moment about to make himself known – the voice has performed its task, and if they found the voice hard to pin down what will they make of the Lord the voice has proclaimed?
The second Advent is that sudden sense of the reality of Jesus ready to make itself known to you and to call to you in the present moment. And this second Advent has perhaps never been better expressed than in the words of that great physician, organist and theologian Albert Schweitzer: ‘He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word; ‘Follow me!” and sets us to those tasks which he has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience, Who he is.’
(the final paragraph of ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus’)