No Line. No Limit.

Advent's Certain Mystery

In seminary, we talked a lot about “already and not yet.” In fact, we talked about it so much it just about lost all meaning for me. But the past few Advent seasons have gotten me thinking about that phrase again from a new perspective.

The idea of “expectation” takes on a different meaning after you’ve buried a child. My son Titus died three years ago. Advent as a season of waiting and preparation, expectant hope, feels hollow when you’re reeling from that kind of loss. Expectation feels as pointless as the endless waiting Vladimir and Estragon endure in Beckett’s famous play.

Are we waiting for something worth waiting for? Does our hope have any foundation?

And that’s just the thing. The mystery of Advent is that it holds a quiet confidence and assured certainty. Advent isn’t about wishing something nice might happen. It’s about remembering something that already has—we just haven’t experienced it yet.

That sounds like a riddle, doesn’t it? But this is precisely what Advent invites us into: remembering forward.

The Problem with “Hope”

Hope can feel flimsy. Wishful thinking dressed up in religious language. “Wouldn’t it be nice if...” “Maybe someday...”“Fingers crossed...”

We reduce Advent to waiting, anticipation, possibility. We light candles week by week, marking time until Christmas, treating the season like a countdown calendar. And if we’re being honest, most of that waiting is about nostalgia—warm memories of childhood Christmases, the comfort of tradition, the aesthetic pleasure of twinkling lights and evergreen wreaths.

None of that is bad. But it’s not Advent.

Because the New Testament doesn’t treat the future as uncertain possibility. The return of Jesus isn’t something that might happen, could happen, would be nice if it happened. Paul doesn’t write to the Romans: “Hey, I hope we get saved eventually—keep your fingers crossed.” He writes: “Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11).

Nearer. Not possible. Not potential. Nearer. The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. I love that analogy: daybreak is coming, ready or not. It’s not theoretical, it’s an enacted reality arriving toward us whether we’re ready or not.

Remembering Forward

We don’t just look forward—we remember forward.

The theological giant Jürgen Moltmann made a crucial distinction that revolutionizes how we think about the future. He differentiated between two kinds of future: futurum and adventus.

Futurum is the future that emerges from past and present causes. It’s calculable, predictable. You can see it coming because it develops from existing conditions. If you plant corn, you get corn. If you lose someone you love, your future is shaped by that absence. Futurum is the future caused by the past.

Adventus is something else entirely. It’s God’s future arriving toward us. Not emerging from what came before, but breaking in from God’s kingdom. An altogether different future invading the present. The future doesn’t emerge from the past—it transforms the past.

Christian hope, in Moltmann’s framework, isn’t about Christ’s timeless presence hovering above history. It’s about his coming—opening the road to life in time, because the life of time is hope.

This reframes Advent. It redefines how we wait.

We’re not waiting to see if God will do something. We’re not hoping it works out. We’re acknowledging a fixed reality—the kingdom inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection, the consummation arriving toward us—that we haven’t yet fully experienced in time. A sure and certain hope. An enacted promise.

This is what I mean by “remembering forward”—not nostalgia, not wishful thinking, but the liturgical act of acknowledging what God has already accomplished in Christ, arriving toward us.

So Christian waiting isn’t the rock-kicking, life-sucking drudgery so ably depicted in Waiting for Godot. It is an active waiting, a waiting that is busy preparing the present to receive the future. I often compare Advent’s waiting with the busyness and excitement that expectant parents experience as they prepare to welcome a new life into their family.

Traditional eucharistic liturgies capture this beautifully. In the anamnesis—the great prayer of remembrance—the church commemorates not only the cross, the tomb, the resurrection, the ascension, but also the second and glorious coming. Past and future, named together as accomplished fact.

But it’s not just a list. The Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas calls this “eschatological ontology.” The Eucharist isn’t simply remembering past and future events, but is itself a moment when the kingdom is breaking into time.

The liturgy doesn’t just say it remembers the future. It is the future arriving.

The Church genuinely remembers the future. Every time we gather at the table, we’re not reenacting a memorial meal. We’re participating in the feast that has no end—the banquet already set, the kingdom already inaugurated, arriving toward us.

The Pumpkin Pie Problem

Full confession: I ate two entire pumpkin pies by myself over Thanksgiving. No regrets. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack—pumpkin pie doesn’t last long in my house when I’m on a roll.

So when someone in my family announces we’re cutting the pie into “equal slices,” it really grinds my gears. Equal slices? That means I get less. If we’re doing equal slices, I want two. Maybe three, depending on how many people are at the table.

We hear the word “equal” and immediately think scarcity. Division. Rationing. If everyone gets the same amount, that must mean I have to take less than I want. The pie is finite, so fairness requires sacrifice.

This is scarcity logic. And we apply it to everything—not just dessert, but opportunity, wealth, power, even grace.

If God loves them as much as God loves me, doesn’t that diminish what I receive? If the kingdom includes everyone, doesn’t that water down its value? If there’s no line to get in first, no hierarchy of the deserving, no mechanism to secure my spot ahead of others—doesn’t that mean I lose something?

And religious people are the worst at this.

The Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew’s gospel had the same problem. John the Baptist calls them out: “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, you brood of vipers?” (Matthew 3:7).

When these religious leaders lined up alongside the riffraff of Judea to receive John’s baptism, they weren’t coming to the Jordan because they wanted transformation. They were there to secure a place at the table in the incoming administration. They’d heard the Messiah was coming, and they wanted to make sure they didn’t lose their power, their privilege, their slice of the pie.

John sees right through them. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he says—not performative confession designed to keep what you’ve got, but genuine paradigm shift. Because if you think the Messiah is coming to maintain the status quo, to let you keep exploiting the vulnerable and hoarding resources, you’re going to be very disappointed.

No Line, No Limit

Here’s the thing about the kingdom of God: the abundance isn’t subdivided.

Everyone comes on equal footing before the grace of God. Everyone receives an equal measure—which is everything that God has to give. Everyone gets all of it. And there’s still more.

There is no line. And there is no limit to what God has to offer.

We live in a world defined by scarcity and predation. Most of nature operates on the principle that some creatures chase and kill other creatures to survive. Most human societies operate on the principle that those with power can easily gain more, while those without power find it nearly impossible to climb.

We live in a machine that churns and churns to generate wealth and power for those who already have wealth and power, and it runs on the exploitation of the vulnerable.

That’s the world as it is. But it’s not the world God intends. And it’s not the world that’s coming.

Isaiah’s Vision Requires This

Isaiah paints a picture of total transformation:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
and the leopard will lie down with the young goat;
the calf and the young lion will feed together,
and a little child will lead them.

The cow and the bear will graze.
Their young will lie down together,
and a lion will eat straw like an ox.

A nursing child will play over the snake’s hole;
toddlers will reach right over the serpent’s den.

They won’t harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.
The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord,
just as the water covers the sea.

(Isaiah 11:6-9)

This isn’t metaphor for slightly improved circumstances. This is the total transformation of predatory relationships—in nature and in society.

The Messiah will “judge with equity for the meek of the earth” and “decide with equity for the poor” (Isaiah 11:4). The kingdom isn’t about maintaining existing power structures with a religious veneer. It’s about the complete reversal of exploitation, the end of scarcity logic, the inauguration of shalom.

If Jesus came to leave things the way they are, then Isaiah’s vision is just wishful thinking. But Jesus didn’t come to maintain the status quo. If God sends Jesus to keep things the way they are, then things will stay the way they are. And Isaiah’s vision is just a bunch of hooey.

But that’s not the mission. That’s never been the mission. The Messiah comes to enact the peaceable kingdom, the new order God intends for creation, where destructive and toxic relationships are no longer part of the equation.

There’s no more predation. No more war. No more oppression. No more scrambling to get yours before someone else takes it. No more cutting deals to secure your place at the expense of others.

Because there’s never anything but plenty.

The Day Is Nearer

There is a day coming when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, when nation will not rise against nation and we will not learn war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).

There is a day coming when the dead will be raised, when grief is swallowed up in victory, when God wipes every tear from every eye.

There is a day coming. And it’s not a day we’re hoping for. It is nearer than when we first believed. Not because we’re optimistic. Not because we’ve got our fingers crossed. Not because we’re hoping really, really hard that maybe God will pull it off.

Because it’s already real. Because the kingdom is already inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Because God’s future is arriving toward us, pulling the present into transformation.

It’s a day that’s surely arriving. Because it has already arrived.

This is Advent. Not wishful thinking. Not nostalgia. Not religious aesthetics. But the proclamation of a certain hope, a sure and certain hope, a fixed reality we simply haven’t yet experienced in time.

The wolf and the lamb. The lion eating straw. The child safe in the viper’s den. Everyone receiving all that God has to give, with more remaining. No line. No limit.

The day is nearer than when we first believed.

Thanks be to God for that.