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Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal. Amen.

Today is the first day of Advent – the start of the Christian new year. Advent is often translated as “arrival,” but it can also carry a more active connotation: “coming.” The Season of Advent holds the fullness of these meanings. We acknowledge with renewed hope that Christ has already come to earth, and has already defeated death – he has arrived. And we anticipate Christ’s second coming – he is still on his way.

We are celebrating, but we are also waiting for the final celebration, when Christ will come in “glorious majesty” to restore all things.

The longer I have been in a congregation that follows the church seasons, the more I have come to appreciate them. While there is no way that Christians in the fourth century could have anticipated the cesspool of consumerism that this season has become, their work on the church calendar continues to be a blessing…

Because, following it – especially in this season – reorients our focus from the frenzy of secular Christmas, and calls us to a deeper, more focused anticipation. There’s no harm in enjoying the superficial fun of the season: Santa Claus and Jingle Bells and gift exchanges are perfectly acceptable ways to celebrate with family and friends (even if it is still Advent).

But, the church calendar reminds us that there is something eternal at work underneath all these distracting celebrations. There is something that calls for our singular attention, not as a test of our faithfulness, but because it is so wonderful. Someone has arrived to change everything, and he will carry us into a future of unfettered joy and ultimate freedom.

As a thought experiment, I tried to think of a time when I was called to pay singular attention, simply because it was so wonderful. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be…

When I was at Yale Divinity School, I got word that the Yale Figure Skating Club was putting on their winter show. Made up of amateurs, the show was typically just a way for hobby skaters to have some fun while their friends cheered them on. But that year, there were whispers that a special guest was coming…

Three-time world champion and two-time Olympic figure skater Nathan Chen was enrolled at Yale that fall. And word on the street was that he was going to come to the show.

With uncharacteristic clarity of purpose, I convinced a small group of seminarians to take the hike over to the main campus to see what we could see. I was the only figure skating mega-fan among them. So, while everyone else bought concessions and chatted about term papers, I was staring straight ahead, hand on my chin, laser-focused on the rink. I didn’t dare leave my seat. If Nathan Chen was going to be there, there was no way in heck I was going to miss it.

After more than a half-hour of very sweet performances by people who could barely skate, a young man swiftly and silently skated onto the ice. My friends – lulled into the stupor of greasy food and easy conversation – didn’t seem to notice…But I noticed.

I let out the loudest, highest, most piercing, blood-curdling scream. It was so unlike me, that I didn’t recognize it as my own voice until the person in front of me turned around in shock.

Nathan Chen was here, in the same room as me, and he just did a back flip!!! (They didn’t even let him do that at the Olympics because they thought it was too dangerous!!!!) And then, he did his signature quadruple jump, the move that would win him the gold medal in 2022.

The adrenaline was coursing through my body, probably as much as it was coursing through his. And I was just sitting there.

Amid the chatter and distraction around me, something demanded my singular attention. And I was determined not to miss out on the realization of the hope that I had carried with me to the rink that day. I didn’t know when he would arrive, but I trusted that he would.

And what I found was that the wait was worth it, not just for the satisfaction of seeing a dream realized. It was worth it to gather up my new friends, take a risk in inviting them, and spend an afternoon passing the time together in that chilly rink. The joy was abundant even before Nathan Chen got on the ice. The light was already breaking through…but nothing could beat that back flip!

In today’s reading from Matthew, Jesus tells his followers to pay attention: to “keep awake,” not as a test of their faithfulness, but because something wonderful is on the way. Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”

And, while no one knows the day or hour that Christ will return, they should “stay on the alert” with such single-mindedness that it is almost as if they’re waiting for a thief to break into their home. In modern terms, we might say it is almost as if record-breaking figure skater Nathan Chen is about to show up and do a back flip.

We don’t know when he’s coming, but the only way to live, in the meantime, is to stay alert to the promise that Christ will come.

Dr. Andrew McGowan notes the paradox in this idea of staying alert to a thing you can’t predict. He says:

“Jesus’ apocalyptic proclamation is framed by Matthew not as futurology, but as a call to live in a particular way now…So, while Jesus warns from trying to correlate world events and the end of time, the paradoxical message remains that the reader needs nevertheless to “watch,” even without knowing just what we are watching for.”

What Jesus is doing here is making it impossible for us to inoculate ourselves against the unimaginable glory of his coming kingdom. If we don’t know when he’ll arrive, we can’t settle the issue; we can’t put the Kingdom of God in a box.

What’s more, we can’t take a break or rest on our laurels. We’ll just have to be laser-focused on the loving, self-sacrificial, lively work of his kingdom. We’ll just have to let joy run in our veins like adrenaline, until it becomes infectious. We’ll have to take action based on the assumption that all our hopes will be realized.

Christ is coming – we don’t know when or how. But we know that when he comes, death itself will die, and we will live in the eternal light of God. In the meantime, we live with the knowledge that he has already arrived by looking for the cracks in the world where his light is already breaking through. And we make plans that align with God’s promises of joy and freedom, of wholeness and reconciliation, of unconditional love.

This is what Advent is all about.

At the beginning of a new year, we learn again how to “stay awake” to the presence of Christ who was and is and is to come. We learn again how to live in the paradox that some theologians describe as the “already and not yet” – anticipating the glory of Christ’s second coming without losing sight of the light that is already breaking through.

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Amen.