Celebrating Advent - The Kingdom is Come - The Kingdom Will Come

Ryan Bell of the Hollywood Adventist church has written on Advent and makes this interesting statement

I wish I had time to post about the irony that, for the most part, ADVENTists don't celebrate ADVENT

While we have passed Advent and moved into epiphany, I think it is interesting to look at Advent and its importance for all Christians and especially Seventh-day Adventists. Bell argues:

The great danger facing Christmas is Christians who sentimentalize it. Once we’ve sentimentalized Christmas – de-clawed it – neutered it – tamed it; once we’ve reduced Christmas to sentimentality, it lays wide open to every abuse.

Has Christmas become something more than a celebration of Christ coming into our world? Is it just about a celebration of family and friends and "smiling and saying hello to people we don't know?"

Bell reminds us that the Jesus who stood up and read from Isaiah a passage that had Herod shaking in his boots has been replaced. Replaced with a Jesus that looks a little like the Santa Clause that we try so hard to distinguish him from.

But Advent is anticipation of the King coming to earth. The King with those different principles like the first being last. The King who called us to preach, "Fear God and Give Glory to Him for the hour of his judgement is come, and worship the creator." The King is come. Let us live as though the King has come until the King does come.

Sabbath as Promise

Charles Bradford notes in his book Sabbath Roots: The African Connection that:

Sabbath is a promise of heavenly rest, a gift that brings with it a token or pledge of life in the escheton, the kingdom of God. It is God's future experienced in the now. A portion of eternity set in the midst of time.

The Sabbath is promise, but it is experienced now. The Sabbath is the Kingdom of God experienced and brought to today. The Sabbath is our ability to catch a glimpse of what the future Kingdom will be about. The Sabbath is our proof that the future Kingdom will come to past. We are certainly called to talk about and preach that Sabbath.

The Sabbath A Great Cathedral

Here is an interesting quote from Heschel's book the Sabbath.

Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificient stream of a year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate

And

"When history began, there was only one holiness in the world, holiness in time."

When God gave us the Sabbath, God gave us something that could not be taken away by others. The Sabbath is something that we can only take away from ourselves.