God accompanies us as we run to Him – Adv I collect

Holy Cross-St. Stan's; Advent I collect and Year A readings.

Advent is for waiting – if people know one thing about Advent, it’s probably that.  We’re waiting for Christmas, which isn’t very long to wait and we’re waiting for Christ to come again, without knowing how long that will be.  Regardless, we’re waiting.  So why did our opening prayer, our collect, talk about running?  “Grant us the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ.”  That’s what we prayed at the start of Mass.  Running: it’s a fascinating and compelling characterization of what Christian waiting looks like.

It can be a dangerous image, because it could give us the impression that we arrive at the heavenly banquet under our own steam.  That Advent is all about our running, rather God’s action.  But when I think about my experience as a runner, it’s not my own strength that comes to my mind, but my need.  If you’ve ever done anything truly physically demanding you’ll know that moment, when every muscle in your body, from your heart out, rebels against you and tells you to quit, that you can’t finish this race, you can’t climb this mountain.  And then the gift comes.  “Grant us the resolve.”  Distance runners know, in a bodily way, that we stand in need of God’s strength to run with patience the race.  And God provides.

But, it’s not just the resolve God provides, but the destination and the starter’s pistol.  Our first reading from Isaiah is a poetic longing for peace with justice, where all nations gather to learn from the God of Israel, where the weapons of war are transformed into tools for feeding one another.  This pilgrimage, this holy walk to a holy destination, is started by a miraculous event: God establishes Zion as the highest mountain.  God elevates His house and then we start our running, our streaming towards the Holy City, going to the House of God with rejoicing.  That’s Advent, that’s what Christian waiting looks like: it’s not a passive, bored waiting; it’s an excited pilgrimage towards that Holy Mountain.  It’s recognizing that we’re not there yet, but God has wrought his victory, and we respond, respond by running.

St. Paul uses a different image in our reading from Romans.  God has given us the dawn.  We don’t live in the full light of day yet, but it’s not night anymore.  The darkness has begun to fade.  So, we respond.  We wake up.  We take off our nightwear, we wash and we dress for the day.  That’s Advent, to see the sun’s first rays, long for the fullness and respond.  Paul lists the behaviors we should cast off (mainly things which probably are most often done under the cover of night) but doesn’t try to list precisely what to put on.  No, our response doesn’t involve ticking off a checklist of good works, it involves a person: put on Jesus Christ.  Church, we’ve done that, at least, those of us who are baptized have.  We have put on Christ.  We’re running towards him on this holy pilgrimage of Advent, but we’re already His; we’re already wearing Him.

 “Grant us the resolve, the strength to run forth to meet our Christ.”  Encounter with Christ is the heart of Christianity and the destination of our journey.  We run with hope towards life eternal where we will live in that face to face encounter.  But that encounter is not something altogether distant, something we beyond glimpsing in the here and now.  We live in dawn’s first light and we long for fullness of day.

That’s why the collect continues, “Grant us the strength to run forth to meet our Christ with righteous deeds.”  Now, that could be misread, as if meeting Christ and righteous deeds were two separate things, as if we accrued enough righteous deeds to put on our resumé and presented that as evidence we were entitled to meet our Christ.  We’re not saved by our resumé; we’re saved by Jesus.

No, the righteous deeds don’t cause the meeting; they’re the foretaste of the meeting.  In feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, educating the unknowning, serving our neighbor in need, we encounter the face of Christ.  We don’t know the time when the pilgrimage will end, the gospel tells us that, but we do know how to act on the way.  We’ve been to the mountain, we’re wearing Christ.  Christ, who came to earth to live and love selflessly, to offer himself for our salvation.  Christ who’s waiting for us, on the altar, in the poor served, in the love within families and between true friends.  To dwell in that love, to live fully reliant on that love, to live out that love: That’s Advent.

This Advent, let’s run and in our righteous deeds, meet Christ.