It is Advent in the church once more. The word "advent" means "coming, arrival." It is used in the church to point back to the first Christmas, the birth of Christ, and to point forward all the way to the end of time, when Christ will come again. The end of the world, the end of everything we know. The return of the Christ in final victory.

It is Advent in the church once more. The time to prepare inwardly for the First Coming at the birth and the Second Coming at the end of time. Advent is the time of preparation. The time of watch- ing and waiting. The time of earnest hoping beyond hope that God will come to us. To us. Come to mend our broken hearts and renew the whole creation. It is Advent in the church once more.

An early American hymn sang the longing of this season this way: "With inward pain my heartstrings sound, My soul dissolves away. Dear Sovereign, whirl the seasons round. Dear Sovereign, whirl the seasons round, And bring, and bring the promised day. And bring the promised day."

Whirling the seasons round was certainly what the Sovereign was doing all this past week! We were whirled from summer into winter in one great spin! The rains have come, and the crisp, clear nights. Just in time for this new season of the church year, Advent, beginning again.

The Advent scripture readings point us backwards, yes, but forwards, too, whirling us around. Demanding our attention. Positing something radically new and different for this world and for our lives. Offering God's response to our deepest longings and fears. Before we ever get to the stories of the birth, these apocalyptic readings take us each year way out to the end of time. As far out in time as we can get. And then beyond. And what they promise is that what we discover way out there is not horror and chaos, but the abiding presence of God. Christ at our beginning and Christ at our end.

In the season of Advent, before Jesus is ever born, we are reminded that Christ is indeed the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. The Greeks first used that expression "alpha and omega" because the alpha and the omega were the first and the last letters of their alphabet. Like our A and Z.

We might say that Jesus Christ is the A and Z of the alphabet of all time and of our lives as Christians. And although, as Matthew tells us, the Son of Man will come at an unexpected hour, that the timeline of the day of the Lord's coming, no one can predict or discern, we need not fear. For the entirety of time and the whole of our lives is encompassed within the scope of his everlasting love and care.

Advent takes us to the beginning and to the end of the story. Back to the future. And this knowledge, you see, which dares to speak of the end, and gives name and form to our deepest fears, allows us to rest in the confidence that there is something more, something beyond the end. And that something is the all-embracing love of God in Christ Jesus.

Dear Sovereign, whirl the seasons round, and bring the promised day.

Surely, we are different this year than we were last. We bring different questions to the birth, different doubts and fears and insights and needs this year. We bring different selves and a different world to this moment of promise and hope, to this time of beginning and of ending.

As Advent begins in our hearts and in our world this year, violence clings so tenaciously and grief hangs so heavily. Like so many churches, we experienced a great influx of hurting folks in the week that followed 9-11. And, like most all faith communities across the country, we observe that attendance has quickly returned to pre-attack "normal." Most Americans, it is reported, have returned to their former habits in regards to church-going, Bible-reading, and prayer.

However, at the same time, a recent poll from the Barna Research Group reveals a significant upturn in peoples' concern about the future. The greatest concern is registered among adults 35 and younger, nine out of ten of whom say they are concerned.

That fear of the future eats away at our hearts and our souls. That fear of possible violence and chaos makes relationships-personal and international-precarious and fraught with anger. Fear of cataclysmic ending keeps us from taking ourselves and our lives seriously and from spending the precious little time we have in endeavors that are worthy and loving and beautiful. Fear holds us back from loving ourselves and one another as deeply and as wholeheartedly as we might. Fear paralyzes and distorts. Fear diminishes and dehumanizes. Fear disempowers-and ends only in death.

The gift of Advent comes in the naming of the fear and the articulation of the promise beyond. "Fear not," the angels sing, and this is what they mean: Christ is Alpha and Omega, A and Z. This gift, you see, is not just about the past or the future. It gives us our lives back now to live in joy and confidence.

The challenge to the church, and to each of us Christians, in this season, is to find ways to powerfully communicate the courage and hope that come from such a faith. We have seen it in recent weeks, in the witness of two remarkable Christian women, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, imprisoned by the Taliban and now home free. Their testimonies of the faith that carried them through that frightening time with such graciousness are a powerful witness to the quiet confidence that comes from trust in God.

Their witness reminded me of the courage of four other women who likewise served Christ in a war-torn land, but whose lives ended in death at the hands of soldiers. These four served in El Salvador in the late '70s and were killed on December 2,1980. One wrote to her niece here at home shortly before her death. With violence swirling around her, so much terror and fear, she wrote confidently: "I don't know what tomorrow will bring. I am at peace here and searching. And at this point, I would hope to be able to go on, God willing... this seems to be what he is asking of me at this moment."

I pray that this may be for each of us a Holy Advent, in which we take our own Advent journey into unearthly trust, asking God to lead us into the radical and all-embracing promise of our faith. The faith that is strong enough to counter all fear. The faith that knows Christ as our beginning and our end.

It is Advent in the church once more. Let us awake spiritually through Word and Sacrament, silence and prayer, and earnest longing for faith, to the promised coming of Christ: the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the world.

© Patricia E. Farris, 2001. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.