Deck the halls with expectation. ‘Tis the season for anticipation.
The original lyrics better fit the tune, but these words do fit the season. Children dream sugarplum dreams. Soldiers count down the days to a holiday leave. Shoppers look forward to a smiling friend unwrapping that perfect gift. Worshipers sing of the arrival of the Savior.
Why such December expectations, Advent anticipations?
The answer–God places them in the hearts of believers. They prompted landlocked Noah to build a boat, and elderly Sarai to decorate a nursery. They moved Ruth to leave the green fields of Moab and David to sing songs. They spoke to Mary treasured words of shepherds and angels. They emboldened Peter and John to command, “Rise up and walk.”
Sadly, in post-Watergate America and in the post-reunion Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), cynicism–anticipation’s dread enemy–seems to be out-shouting the more hopeful voice. Alongside impatience, apathy, certitude, and self-importance, cynicism has been waging war on the more hopeful Christian virtues of faith and trust. Of course, sinning ways of sinful people continually pump more helium into the balloons of disappointment in the church, but the resulting pessimism misses the point of Christian faith.
Throughout the biblical record and pervasive through church history the refrain is sung, “Have faith in God!” Bold faith animates the stories told of the first century Christians. Deep trust radiates from the lives of millions of faithful through the centuries, and for good reason. God has come through for them. The one who promised to build a church against which the gates of Hades would not prevail has overcome time and again.
In this season of Advent, in a time when many Presbyterians are warning of the demise of the church, how can we recover the vibrant faith of our forebears? Might we dare believe again that the best is yet to come?
One way to regain such a hope is to look in the rearview mirror. Children look forward to Christmas 2005, because they remember the glee of Christmas 2004. Believers look forward to new breakthroughs because they remember how God liberated them from slavery, how God resurrected their Savior from the dead, how God has guided the church through one debacle after another. Attentive followers know that God’s promises will be fulfilled ultimately, if not immediately.
What words, what promises might this pastor-turned-editor-in-chief speak at such a time as Advent 2005?
One thing he would say is, “Have faith in God.”
Looking back over the past millennia of Christian history, including the nearly 300 years of an organized Presbyterian Church in the U.S., ecclesiastical cynics can cite innumerable stories to substantiate their dim views. Many are the problems and unresolved conflicts. But many are the triumphs, too. Many are the breakthroughs. So many issues that unleashed conflict in earlier eras were resolved in good, lasting ways. Many provocative ideas, at first shunned by the majority, took hold and the church recognized that the prophets had spoken. God’s will was revealed with greater clarity, and the church’s mission was enlarged.
The pages of The Presbyterian Outlook often have broadcast such prophetic utterances. E.T. Thompson, Aubrey Brown, George Laird Hunt, Robert Bullock and, most recently, Ben Sparks have challenged and stretched the church. They have focused the spotlight on our worst flaws, and they have reassured us that God would see us through–even through the most trying seasons of change. We are a better church for their good efforts.
Now as the torch is passed to this successor, he well knows that he stands “on the shoulders of giants.” He can hardly imagine being able to bring a word as insightful, challenging, and stirring as his predecessors. But one thing he can say is, “Have faith in God.” He can elaborate further: “May the spirit of Advent–one of anticipation and expectation–be with you in this holiday season and throughout the year and all the years that will follow.”
Perhaps that is enough to say for now.
