Did you notice the out-of-season hymn on Sunday? It was “All Glory, Laud and Honor,” one that we generally associate with Palm Sunday. It’s even prescribed by the rubrics of the Prayer Book for that day - one of only a few instances where the Prayer Book recommends a particular hymn. As Meg noted in her article last week, Bach’s church in Leipzig included Palm Sunday music in its Advent observances. Doing so marks the parallels between the coming of Christ into Jerusalem before he was crucified, the coming of Christ in his birth that we observe at Christmas, and the coming of Christ that we expect at the end of days. It also reminds us that Christ comes to us every time we receive the Eucharist. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” we sing at the Sanctus during the Eucharistic Prayer, and in so doing we echo the song at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Advent is a season when we try to think of past, present, and future at once - which is really hard for humans to do! But this is how God’s time works. One of my favorite illustrations of God’s time is in the TV comedy The Good Place, where Ted Danson’s character explains eternity as “Jeremy Bearimy.” He says, “Things in the afterlife don’t happen while things are happening here, because while time on Earth moves in a straight line — one thing happens, then the next, then the next — time in the afterlife moves in a ‘Jeremy Bearimy’.”
A “Jeremy Bearimy” loops and doubles back on itself, and the dot above the “i” is a pretty good representation of how Augustine describes eternity, where all time is present to God.
This is where we live, especially in this season of Advent where past, present, future, and eternity loop around, double back on themselves, and where God beckons us onward in expectation of Christ’s coming.
Come, Lord Jesus!
Kara+
P.S. I’m writing this from London, where I just saw part of a Roman wall that was built about 80 years after Jesus was raised from the dead. I also got to touch John Wesley’s pulpit at the church he founded. It reminded me in a very tangible way of the beautiful story we are caught up in, the story of God’s action for us in Jesus Christ.