Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world
The praises of Advent in the quiet darkness of nature’s year belong to the blessings of Christmas. They are God’s readying Word for us in preparation for his being with us and so they must be about his Word in us. The preparations of Advent are not only God’s doings for us, but also his work in us. Advent signals the great wonder of the Christian faith. Emmanuel, God with us, comes to us so that his life may live and take shape in us. The praises of Advent are God’s songs in the hearts of his people.
But what are those praises? In the watching and the waiting of Advent, we praise even the darkness; such is the purposeful expectancy of Advent.
On the darkest day of nature’s year we look to the coming of the light in a spirit quite removed from the forms of paganism both new and old. Our waiting is a waiting expectantly and not in the fear and the anxiety that, perhaps, just perhaps, the sun will not rise and that, perhaps, just perhaps, the days will not increase and that, perhaps, just perhaps, we must sacrifice ourselves to the order of nature to insure that the wheel of life rolls on. Our waiting is the counter to the greater darkness of despair and disillusionment that belongs to the fearful uncertainties of our utter hopelessness, the malaise of our contemporary world.
No. The greater darkness of the Advent season has far more to do with our spiritual lives than merely the physical phenomenon of the winter solstice. The darkness is about the forms of spiritual wickedness and folly in each of our lives, individually and collectively: “the far-spent night,” we might say, of our rebellion and revolt; “the far-spent night” of our turning away from the light of God’s Word in law and prophecy, in nature and in human experience; “the far-spent night” of the terrors of despair and destruction. But to be aware of this is part and parcel of the meaning and purpose of the Advent season. It means, strange to say, to praise the darkness.
We praise the darkness for the Light it brings. Beyond the pagan opposition of dark and light as good and evil, there is the realization of the power of God who makes something good even out of our evil. In the order of redemption, the darkness itself is light, we might say. It is the counter to our modern despair. To know this is to praise the darkness for the light it brings. It was, says Dante, in “the dark wood,” selva oscura, the dark wood of the winter of our souls, our souls in manifold disarray, “that I learned a great good.”
How can this be? Because something is known in the darkness, something the darkness, as it were, communicates. But it is only known as known when it comes into the light. The darkness belongs to the Light.
The quiet darkness is word and light in the Word and Light of Jesus Christ. We praise the quiet darkness of Advent for the Word and Light of Christmas.
What does it mean? Repentance becomes the occasion of rejoicing; the cause of our greatest joy. “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is the note of advent. The epistle for today sounds the note of rejoicing. It is sung in the awareness of our darkness, not the darkness of nature, but the darkness named here as our “anxieties,” literally, our being “full of cares,” overwhelmed, as it were, with our own preoccupations and businesses; something, I think, that we know only too well in the hustle and the bustle, the noise and the rustle of the pre-Christmas season. High anxiety indeed! And yet, as the epistle exultantly proclaims and exhorts, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, Rejoice.” It is exactly the note sung in the repeated refrain of the great advent carol, Veni Emmanuel.
John the Baptist prepares the Lord’s way by preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What he preaches he does not and cannot accomplish himself. He is not the forgiveness of sins and yet he belongs inescapably to its fulfillment. “I am not the Christ,” he says, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” In the voice of the one crying in the quiet darkness of our wilderness world, we hear the Word of God. In the one who is not the Christ, we see the Christ coming to us. In the judgment that is repentance, we know the Christ who is forgiveness. “The Lord is at hand. In nothing be anxious.” The darkness and the quiet are words and light which reveal him to us. “Behold,” John the Baptist cries, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” We come to Christ who comes to us.
Repentance becomes the occasion of rejoicing. It brings us to the greater joy of Christmas because it signals to us the purpose of his coming and the meaning of the divine humility in the Word made flesh. We are not being shown “fear in a handful of dust” (T.S. Eliot) but joy at the means of our redemption, the darkness itself bearing light in the greater Light of Christ; the quiet itself sounding words in the greater Word of Christ; the judgment that is repentance awakening songs of rejoicing. And so shall we rejoice at the great feast of Christmas when the Lord at hand is God with us. Then we shall know our darkness in his heavenly Light and our quiet in his almighty Word. Then we shall know the majesty of God in the tender humanity of the Son of God, the Word made flesh and the Light of the world.
Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church, Windsor
Advent IV, 2013