Lo! He comes – Dr Michael Hull – St Vincent's Chapel, Edinburgh, the village church at the heart of the city.

‘Lo! He comes with clouds descending’, by the Reverend Charles Wesley, has been a popular Advent hymn in Britain for more than two hundred years. It abounds in imagery from the Book of Revelation and evokes the timbre of Advent. Advent is a time of God’s movement toward us and of our expectation of him. The word itself comes into English from the Latin adventus, that is, ‘arrival’, a word used for a Roman emperor’s visit to a city. Christians co-opted ‘advent’ for the coming of the Messiah, the King of Kings, to Bethlehem: ‘For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2.11). Over two thousand years later, from a liturgical standpoint, we mark the Season of Advent with four weeks of joyful anticipation of the Baby Jesus.

From just about every other standpoint, at least as far back as I can remember, Advent is a season of movement on our part. So busy is Advent in terms of rushing around to prepare for Christmas that the ‘Sunday next before Advent’ (as the Scottish Prayer Book has it) is oft referred to as ‘Stir-up Sunday’, an appellation from the collect: ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people […]’. Thus, it’s become the custom to begin stirring the Christmas pudding even before the start of the Season of Advent and likewise to begin our shopping season. This, unfortunately, furthers the misapprehension that Advent is about our movement rather than God’s. We focus not just on the pudding, of course, but on browsing, buying and wrapping. We shop ‘til we drop in the days running up to the Nativity of our Lord.

Yet Advent 2020 is going to be different to any Advent we’ve known, as will be Christmas 2020, because there’s likely to be little moving about or visiting on our part. Although the Covid-19 pandemic may constrain our physical movement and our material preparation, it need not dampen our souls and spirits, nor our hopeful expectancy of the Christ child. Advent is not about the things we do; it’s not about our rushing around, shopping or visiting. Advent, like Christmas itself, is about the things that God does, especially the ways in which God comes to us.

St Bernard of Clairvaux elucidates three ‘advents’ in his Sermons for Advent and Christmas. The first advent is the liturgical one as we await the Incarnation. ‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth’ (John 1.14). The second, and perhaps the most subtle of the three advents, is the ‘intermediate coming’ where Jesus, who is our ‘rest and consolation’, comes into our hearts each and every day. Jesus says that if we keep his words, then he and the Father will come to us and make their abode in us (John 14.23). This is the sentiment of our forebears who encountered the Risen Jesus on the Emmaus Road and said: ‘Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent’ (Luke 24.29). The third advent is the return of the Triumphant Christ to Earth, so aptly summed up in Wesley’s hymn as the moment ‘when God appears on Earth to reign […] every eye shall now behold him robed in dreadful majesty […], all shall their Messiah see’. Jesus is the agent in each of these advents: God is doing the visiting. It is God who moves, and it is we who are still.

That said, it will not be easy for you and me to accept constraints this Advent. Millions are in the same boat as my family and me. We’d planned to move about, to do as we’d always done in Advents past. That’s not going to happen this Advent, but we should not let our hearts be troubled (John 14.1). In our apprehension about the present and the future, we Christians ought to hear well God’s voice through the Psalmist: ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ (46.10). For all the darkness that has descended on the world of late serves to throw into sharper contrast the star over Bethlehem. Jesus is the light of the world. Our material preparation, gift giving and visiting, as generous as they were and are, pale in comparison to the generosity of God’s gift in the Christ child. Whilst there may be little movement on our part this Advent, there is no constraint on God’s movement. Nothing could have stopped God’s arrival in the fullness of time, nothing stops God from abiding in our hearts and nothing will stop God from returning in glory. Lo! He comes!

The Reverend Dr Michael Hull has been at St Vincent’s since 2015. He is also Director of Studies in the Scottish Episcopal Institute.