Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries on the Second Sunday of Advent, 04 December 2022, by Major Michael Ramsay
The second candle of Advent is faith. The four
candles are (according to the source I am using): Hope, Faith, Joy, and Peace.
Advent is about waiting. It is about people waiting for the Messiah, the Christ
to come the first time (as we now know He did, as a baby in a manger in
Bethlehem) and it is about us waiting for Him to return, as we are now.
When people began waiting
for Christ to come the first time, they did not know when He would come; they
did not know how He would come; they did not know exactly where He would come (similar
to us now waiting for His return) – but when the signs of His pending arrival started
to appear, people started to notice and as people started to notice they
started to tell others and as they told others more people began to notice the
signs. (aside: all the miracles recorded in the Gospels are just recorded signs
themselves that point people to the Advent of Christ). The more people notice
the signs, the more they share the good news of Jesus’ arrival, the more people
can experience the Good News of Christ in our lives. (The word ‘gospel’ by the
way simply means, ‘good news’). In the season of Advent, today, we remember
that period of waiting to hear and experience the Good News of Christ coming the
first time and we apply the memory of His birth in a manger to bolster our
faith (as our candle today reminds us) that just as Christ came once to save
us, He will return again to have dominion, to rule, to reign forever. He will
be, as Isaiah 9:6 says, “…Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father
and Price of Peace; of the increase of His government and peace there shall be
no end…”. (That by the way was a line from a play that I needed to memorize as
a child in church)
The candles of Advent remind
us of what we need to be able to wait for something we so desperately want and
something we so desperately need. We need Hope: Hope that that for which we are
waiting will make things better; we need faith, faith that it will actually
come; we need the joy of anticipation that pushes away despair in our situation;
and we need peace – the peace that surpasses all understanding. It is only when
we have this Hope, Faith, Joy, and Peace that we can possibly make it, that we
can endure the waiting of Advent.
Advent Calendars are a
great glimpse of what waiting this way is like: everyday you open a number and
there is a small gift, a picture, a prelude to the greater gifts of Christmas.
They are appetizers for the main course of Christmas Day. The stores sell Advent
Calendars with chocolates in them; Susan often makes Advent Stockings with devotions,
Scriptures, candies, and other goodies in them for us; when I was young, my mom
made us Advent Calendars that would often have parts of Lego or toys in them – each
day you would get a new piece of Lego and add it to your creation and at the end
you would have a present; when I was a child I used to like to make Advent Calendars
by drawing 24 little pictures on one piece of paper and then cutting doors out
of a second piece and taping them together for people to open one door at a
time. Last year I made on-line advent calendars for my children where they would
click on the door and it takes them to an image, a story, or a song online. I
re-did them this year.
These different advent
calendars are all like the gifts that Jesus gives us everyday in our lives. The
daily miracles we experience in the midst of everyday reality, the successes,
the joy, the comfort, the love, that God shows us – these things we can experience
each one as a new door being opened on an eternal Advent Calendar, knowing that
at the end of all time (the eschaton, Maranatha!) we will experience the big
gift of Christ’s Ultimate Kingdom, where that is what there is, the Hope,
Faith, Joy, and Peace that make up of the Love of God.
The Advent Candles are
like a mini-Advent Calendar with only four or five doors. Behind today’s door
is Faith. Faith gives us something very important as we wait for Christ to return.
It gives us the ability to wait because we have the knowledge that what we are
waiting for will come. No one waits for something that the don’t in some way believe
may come. As a child in a Christmas concert, we performed a musical called the Music
Machine. I actually sang the one and only solo I ever sang in my life in it
– the song about self control. I still remember parts of that song and other
songs from that performance (and all those practices, many, many years ago); I
remember one song from the Music Machine called, “Faith’ The chorus of
that song sings Hebrews 11:6, "And without faith it is impossible to
please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that
he rewards those who earnestly seek him." And this whole song is based on
Hebrews Chapter 11, in which verse 1 and 2 define faith in this way: "Now
faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
This is what the ancients were commended for."
This is the Candle that
we have lit today. We have lit the Candle of Faith that it will be all right, we
will get through. This Candle is a symbol of the confidence we have in Christ’s
return based on both our knowledge of and relationship with Him and our knowledge
of His coming before. This faith can be used to transform not only the future but
also the present.
In Bible Study we spoke
a little bit about the Greek word in the New Testament for ‘Faith’ and I won’t
put anyone on the spot by asking what it is or what it means: the word means
more than just belief. The word means action as well. It means BOTH ‘faith’ in
someone or something AND ‘faithfulness’ of someone or something. And as we faithfully
serve Christ, He can and will transform us and our world even as we are eagerly
awaiting His ultimate return.
Let me share you some
stories from the kettles and more. This week from the kettles, I heard a lady
tell me of her father and how he served in the War and how God through The
Salvation Army was on the front lines giving them whatever they needed, free of
charge, without asking anything of them. I heard the story of another man, when
he was a boy, his folks were trapped in their addiction, their house burned
down, God through The Salvation Army found them a new place, furnished the
place and walked with the family so that the cycle of addiction was broken and
the children were free to not only live their own life but to help their
children and now grandchildren live their lives free of addiction and even
poverty.
And I will never forget
one Christmas season when I was at a lunch with a number of Executive Directors
of various non-profits in the community we were serving at the time. One told
me of a Barbie the Army gave her when her family was in need – she still has
the Barbie. Another told me of a hamper she received as a child and a third ED
of a local branch of a major non-profit told me a similar story. These gifts
from God, given through The Salvation Army, transformed these children’s lives:
they all grew up to serve God and others. These actions of love, these actions of
faith: providing the most basic things for people in need, was transformative. They
broke generations of poverty, addiction, and created lives of service and salvation.
My friends this is what
God is doing for us and through us by His faithfulness; so, as we leave this
service today, let us go out boldly in service, in faith and faithfulness proclaiming
His Gospel and then He may use even us to transform this world even now as we
eagerly await His ultimate return (at the eschaton) and which point the whole
world will be make anew. Maranatha! Let us pray.
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