Isaiah 2:1-5

 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

Matthew 24:36-44

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left.  Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect

Welcoming the Guest of Honor

This morning we begin the Season of Advent, and so I want to explore what this means with you. We hear this word, “Advent,” every year, and it’s one of those words I call “church words.” Church words are words that we use specifically in church as part of church language and culture, but for which we may not know the background or deeper meaning. Here I’m reminded of Tevye’s line from Fiddler on the Roof about why we do the things we do. Tevye says, “That I can tell you in one word, ‘Tradition!’” So, let’s take a look at this word “Advent” with an eye toward tradition. Now, one of my preaching mentors told me years ago that if you really want to put people to sleep during a sermon, talk about word definitions. So I’m taking a risk here, as usual, and you know that I like to talk about word definitions and word origins. But stay with me because I think you will find this interesting.

My first introduction to the Advent tradition was from my mother. When I think of Advent, I think of my mother. I grew up in a very religious family. On my father’s side was the Salvation Army. Everyone in that extended family had some connection to the Salvation Army. And, as you may know, the Salvation Army is a Protestant Evangelical movement that began in 1865 as a ministry to the homeless and destitute people living on the streets in London’s East Side. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, was originally a Methodist minister. He was a traveling Methodist evangelist, an itinerant preacher, as was often the case in the early Methodist tradition, a practice begun by John Wesley. Like Wesley, William Booth would travel around England and preach in different churches, according to the Methodist custom. But after a few years of this, he and his wife, Catherine, wanted to take the Gospel message out of the church and into the streets, to meet the people in the streets and to minister to them there. So William Booth left the Methodist church, and he and Catherine developed this street ministry, and it was really bare bones. It was a streamlined form of worship, that is, it was minimalist. There was no ceremony, no ritual, no liturgy.

So I grew up in this minimalist Gospel tradition. As a kid growing up in the Salvation Army, we did not observe the church tradition of Advent. Advent was part of Lutheran tradition, “high church” so to speak, not so much the Methodist or Salvation Army tradition. By the way, these days the Salvation Army does observe the Advent tradition.

This was on my father’s side. My mother, on the other hand, did not grow up in the Salvation Army. She grew up in a church called the Evangelical United Brethren, the EUB church. And in the mid-20^th century, when my mother was a young girl growing up in Bellevue, Ohio, there was a movement among the Methodists and the Evangelical United Brethren to restore some of the so called “high church” liturgical practices, and this included Advent. So my mother was more accustomed to Advent. She liked Advent. It had been part of her spirituality growing up in the EUB church.

And so when I was a kid, it was on my mother’s initiative that we, as a family, observed Advent at home. Even though we were in the Salvation Army and not observing Advent at church on Sunday mornings, we observed Advent at home, that is, we placed an Advent Wreath on our dining table at home, and we lit the Advent candles each evening at supper time during the Advent Season. As a family, sitting at the table together before eating, we would hold hands and sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” together as one of us lit the candles. My brother and I got to take turns lighting the Advent candles, and we were told to keep our hands away from the candles during dinner, and not to play with the wax during dinner.

And so I learned at home that the meaning of Advent is connected to this hymn, the Gregorian Chant: “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” And so now, to unpack what this means, we see that the word “advent” comes from the Latin, “adventus” meaning “to arrive,” and that this word adventus was the name of a ceremony that developed in the third century, in the Roman Empire. It was a ceremony called the “Imperial Adventus.”

Now, the Imperial Adventus was a welcoming ceremony, to welcome an emperor, or another high-ranking official, into a city. But it was more than just a welcome. When the Roman Emperor visited a city, it was an important event, a mutually beneficial event, because it defined a relationship. The visit bestowed on the city the Emperor’s approval, and at the same time, the city’s residents showed their approval and expressed their loyalty to the emperor. So it was a way that the citizens legitimized the emperor’s rule. And at the same time, the emperor let the city know that all was well in the relationship, and that, he would not be bringing in the army.

The Imperial Adventus ceremony had a formal structure. A group of representatives would venture forth from the city to greet the approaching emperor on the road. They would welcome him and accompany him back into the city in a ritual procession, a pro pompa: so here, think of grand parades, flying banners and lots of pomp and circumstance. This was followed by speeches, hymns, poems; all types of honorific praise to the emperor to let him know he was welcome.

Now, we can see the parallel here, especially when we consider Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. For Christians, Advent is the welcoming ceremony and the preparation for Jesus’s arrival, the birth in Bethlehem. And, in a more mystical sense, the Christian disciple welcomes Christ’s arrival into the spiritual heart, so that O Come O Come Emmanuel is an invitation for the Christ, the anointed one, to come into my heart.

Here, it might be useful to pause and consider: “What do I invite into my heart? What are all the trivial and inconsequential things that I allow into my heart? Moreover, what are the harmful things I allow into my heart? And so the invitation this morning is to ask ourselves this question, “What do I invite? Who do I invite? What do I welcome into my heart?” This arrival, Christ’s arrival, as a spiritual metaphor, Christ’s entry into the heart was perhaps first articulated by Athanasius, the fourth century bishop of Alexandria, Egypt.

Athanasius was a fascinating character, best known for his role in the first Council of Nicaea in 325, in a complicated period in church history called the Arian controversy that had to do with the intricacies of the developing Trinitarian doctrine. Athanasius was a Doctor of the Church, one of the great church Patriarchs, and a prolific writer and brilliant theologian. So here is a piece of his writing on the Adventus:

“And like as when a great king has entered into some large city and taken up his abode in one of the houses there, such city is at all events held worthy of high honor, nor does any enemy or bandit any longer descend upon it and subject it; but, on the contrary, it is thought entitled to all care, because of the king’s having taken up his residence in a single house there: so, too, has it been with the Monarch of all. 4. For now that He has come to our realm and taken up his abode in one body among His peers, henceforth the whole conspiracy of the enemy against mankind is checked, and the corruption of death which before was prevailing against them is done away. For the race of men had gone to ruin, had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of God, come among us to meet the end of death. (Ch. 2, 9) [1]

Next week, we will continue this discussion of Advent tradition. And now, as we enter the Season of Advent, may we prepare our hearts to welcome the Christ, to welcome Him as a guest of honor in our hearts. Amen? Amen.

[1] St Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word (as observed by S. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity) as found in https://thepocketscroll.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/adventus/ accessed November 29, 2025