For many followers of Jesus, Advent is the start of our New Year and a joyous season of hopeful expectation. It is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on and clarify just exactly what it is that we are expecting. What implications do those expectations carry? How might those expectations manifest in our lives as we move into this next season?
Expectation is an abstract and peculiar thing. At its best, it is a well of hope we draw from as we anticipate some future event. At its worst, it may fuel feelings of disappointment or despair when things don’t play out as we had hoped. Many first-century Jews might have experienced both of these extremes surrounding the coming of the prophesied and long-anticipated Messiah. To really understand why, we might first need to rewind a bit.
Rejecting the King of Kings
About 1,000 years before Jesus’ birth, the elders of Israel came to their prophetic judge, Samuel, and demanded he appoint a king to rule over them (1 Samuel 8). Samuel, knowing this was a bad idea, brought the issue to the Lord in prayer. God, also knowing this was a bad idea, asked Samuel to warn Israel about how their lives would likely change for the worse under a human king. The people of Israel, ignoring Samuel’s warning, were insistent and God ultimately accommodated their request by anointing Saul as Israel’s first king. We don’t need to read much further into 1 Samuel before we see Israel regretting that decision. It was, indeed, a bad idea.
Original Engraving: Israel Demands a King by J. Winter (Dutch, Eighteenth Century) / Cartoon by Johnny Kerr
The thing is, Israel had always had a mighty King, one that far exceeded the best the world could offer. But they didn’t fully recognize Him as such because their perspective was compromised by their envy of other nations. Lest we be too hard on ol’ Israel, I think it’s only fair to recognize that humanity still struggles with these same issues even today. In fact, we can trace this problem all the way back to the beginning; Adam and Eve ultimately rejected God’s rule when they gave themselves over to the serpent’s temptation, subjugating themselves to another, lesser ruler.
God has always desired for humankind to live in intimate relationship with Him, to experience His care and goodness firsthand. After the Fall, He tried again to establish that relationship with humanity through His covenant with Abraham. But Abraham’s descendants insisted on a kingdom modeled after the other nations of the world. They couldn’t see that life with God in charge was real life, that the other kingdoms of the world had it upside-down and backwards.
As we fast-forward back to the time near Jesus’ birth we see a fractured nation in the wake of dozens of human kings (most of them awful). In addition to the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah often being at war with each other, they also endured multiple external wars, conquerings, exiles, returns from exile, and dispersion. The temple of the Lord had been destroyed and rebuilt twice and Jerusalem was occupied under Roman rule.
Expecting The King of Kings
Jewish prophets had foretold the arrival of the Messiah and the faithful remnant of Israel were desperately hoping for delivery. But they still seemed to be stuck on the idea of a human warrior king—like David from the “good old days”—to march into war, conquer Rome and make Israel great again. As we now know, the humble carpenter from Galilee didn’t exactly fit the picture most of them had in mind. When our expectations are misguided, even good things can be missed, poorly received, or rejected outright.
“So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:18 (HCSB)
As we look back on the narratives of Jesus’ birth as described in Matthew and Luke, we have the benefit of hindsight that Jews in Jesus’ day did not. Even still, we can wonder at how our mighty King chose to reveal Himself to us under such humble circumstances. We can read in all four Gospels about how he lived in humility and loved boldly. These things should color our expectations for what is yet to come. Our King does not operate in accordance with any of the kingdoms of this world.
Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets but he came to do it on the Father’s terms, not the world’s. Because of this, Jesus’ ways often confounded the world. It is not that Jesus is a strange King, but that all of the other kings and kingdoms of this world are strange. Again, lest we pick on Israel too much, today we still find it challenging to do things Jesus’ way (loving our enemies, for example). In similar fashion to Israel, we often place our hopes in charismatic or powerful human leaders to fix what is broken. But the “wisdom of the world is foolishness” (1 Corinthians 3) and we cannot expect to right the world using its own foolish, upside-down methods.
Assuming you’re familiar with the Netflix phenomenon, Stranger Things (which the main image and title of this post playfully pay homage to), you might know where I’m going with this analogy. For those who are unfamiliar, I’ll first offer some context. The primary conflict in this sci-fi series set in the 1980s has to do with an alternate parallel dimension known to the main characters as “the upside-down.” In the upside-down, the same locations and infrastructure exist as in the human world, but it is always dark, cold, and foggy. It is a place where an evil presence reigns. It is devoid of life as we know it, instead being overgrown with ambiguous membranes and root-like tendrils with ashy spores ever drifting through the air. The upside-down is merely a shadow of what the world should be.
Much like the fictional group of main characters in Stranger Things, we find ourselves in this present age caught at the intersection of two parallel dimensions: the real world and a shadow world. Although this world in some ways resembles what God created it to be, it is presently a shadow of that, corrupted by darkness. We, like Jews in the ancient Near East, are waiting in expectation for our deliverer.
Anticipating The King of Kings
The word “anticipation” is unique from its near-synonym, “expectation” in that it carries the connotation of action. To anticipate is to prepare and take action based on the belief that what we expect will come to pass. We are in a fallen shadow world but we can still move through it acting as though Jesus is King, because He is! Jesus came to usher in a new era, establishing God’s rule on earth as in Heaven. Something actually changed when Jesus conquered death on the cross, and the world has not been the same ever since. We have been set free.
As followers of Christ we still encounter the darkness of this upside-down world, but we see it for what it is and keep our eyes focused on Jesus. To borrow an illustration from Pastor Gavin, we cannot walk a straight line without something on the distant horizon to fix our eyes upon (December 8, 2019 sermon). Paul similarly charges us in 2 Corinthians 4 to fix our eyes on what is unseen, reminding us that what we see is merely temporary, but the unseen is eternal. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we can trust that His ways are good, and that where He is leading us there is fullness of life.
During this season of Advent we may find it helpful to look back in reflection on the birth of Christ, but we also look forward to His promised return. As we look forward in expectation, let us ask the Spirit to continue revealing to us the eternal unseen. Let us listen to the voice of our true King so that we do not become distracted by lesser kingdoms and their upside-down ways. Let us anticipate the arrival of our King, knowing His rule is already established, and that we can trust His promise to return. May our anticipation move us into action, making the ways of our good King manifest, on earth as it is in Heaven.
by Johnny Kerr