Advent 2025

These days I intentionally shield myself from most news. Every morning, I receive a couple emails with “highlights” of the previous days’ happenings. I will admit to a couple things: first, I recognize that shielding myself from news is not the best coping strategy. Second, with all the bad news that is out there (hence my attempt to put up a defensive shield), I open those news emails each morning with the words going through my head, “I wonder what blew up yesterday?” or something similar. I have the expectation that what I am about to read is going to contain more examples of what I consider to be bad news.

Our passages for the first Sunday of Advent thankfully have a different vibe, however. The word that Isaiah “saw” was one of people from many nations streaming into God’s presence, expecting God to teach them and desiring to grow spiritually. It will be a time of peace, a time when famously the nations “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 any more.” This is good news, indeed, for a world in which violence is now a commonplace.

Paul in Romans 13 reminded the original recipients of this letter that this day of salvation, the day of the Lord, “is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” If this was true in Paul’s day, two thousand years later it is certainly true for us as well. Because night is turning to day, Paul calls on his first audience and us to dedicate ourselves to living in the day, not the night, focusing on doing what is righteous and aligns with God’s justice, as well as being people who are at peace and promoters of the peace of God, the peace that God offers all people in Jesus Christ. As we hear the psalmist say, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem . . . Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.”

Instead of expecting bad news, may we this Advent season live into the hope that is found only in Jesus Christ. At Advent we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but Advent is also a season of expectation during which we await Jesus’ second coming. This second coming, according to what Jesus said and was recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, will occur “at an unexpected hour.”

So, what do we do? This Advent I encourage you as I am encouraging myself with this good news, these words of hope and expectation. Rather than holding onto an attitude that expects the worst, may we be encouraged by the good news that God has intervened to save the world and the further good news that one day God will restore peace and order, and may this good news inspire us to be people of hope.

Jim McConnell, Interim Dean
Professor of New Testament Interpretation