Alastair's Adversaria - Advent Absence

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

The following was first published over on The Anchored Argosy Substack: https://argosy.substack.com/p/42-an-obituary-and-advent. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3…3O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035.

The following reflection is entitled Advent Absence. It was first published on the substack that I share with my wife, Susanna, Yanked Argosy. Jim Saladin, the rector of our church in Manhattan, is one of my favourite preachers. Over the last couple of weeks, he has been focusing upon Advent themes, working with the book of Haggai in particular. Had I been tasked with choosing a book to focus upon over Advent, Haggai would not have been my first choice. However, Jim's sermons have provided a strong case for it. Haggai challenged the returned exiles of Judah to commit themselves to the task of restoring the temple. The Babylonians had destroyed Solomon's temple, and while the people had returned to Jerusalem several decades after the fall of the city,

and were in the process of rebuilding their own houses, the temple remained in ruins. Within the book of Haggai, as Jim has emphasized, the Jews' failure to rebuild the temple was akin to foreclosing the story of Advent. In his sermons, Jim has brought out a variety of elements of the book. However, this observation and line of consideration particularly grabbed my attention. In Haggai Chapter 2, the Prophet tied the rebuilt temple to promises of future divine coming in blessing and judgment. While the Lord filled the tabernacle after its construction at the end of Exodus chapter 40, and Solomon's Temple at its dedication in 1 Kings chapter 8 verses 10 to 11, no comparable event is recorded of the post-exilic temple.

Rather, a promise is given of a future awaited filling in Haggai chapter 2 verses 6 to 9. For thus says the Lord of hosts, yet once more in a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine,

and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. The post-exylic temple, then, rather than representing the continuation of a historical theophony, as the institution of the tabernacle continued the theophanic event of Sinai, was a symbol of an awaited coming of the Lord, a sight defined more by anticipation and hope than by memory. Haggai, of course, is not the only place where the temple becomes a focal point of expectation.

Isaiah chapter 2 speaks of the nations going up to the mountain of the Lord in the latter days. Ezekiel describes an eschatological temple around which the nation would be reformed and from which cleansing waters would flow. Malachi declares that the Lord would suddenly come to his temple in chapter 3 verses 1 to 4, purifying its worship and bringing judgment. Zachariah describes the restoration of the temple and in the outflowing of the work of God in a series of night visions in the opening chapters of his book. Throughout their history, the tabernacle and the later temples

were an ordering, training, and elevating of the gaze of the people of God. In Solomon's Prayer of Dedication for His Temple, for instance, we find an implicit theology of the temple, as he is careful to distinguish the pedagogical, symbolic presence of the Lord in his earthly temple from his actual being. 1 Kings chapter 8 verses 27 to 30. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you.

How much less this house that I have built. Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you have said, my name shall be there, that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place, and listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel

when they pray toward this place, and listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. When we speak of God dwelling in the temple, we must recognize the improper sense of such terminology, while also appreciating the importance of the ordering of Israel's worship, understanding, life, and affections through the Lord's express commitment to it as his house. After the exile, however, while some sense of the temple as God's dwelling place clearly remains, the temple increasingly functions as a symbol of promised and awaited Advent. There is a movement from the Lord being regarded as dwelling in his temple to the Lord having promised to come to his temple.

As such, the presence to which the Jews were ordered was re-inscribed in a symbol of absence, whether in the Israelites' treatment of the Ark of the Covenant at the Battle of Afeck at the beginning of 1 Samuel or Judah's trust in the temple evidenced in the Prophet's sermon in Jeremiah Chapter 7, there was always a danger of the temple producing an imminentized sense of the law's presence, placing God in a bottle, as it were. The post-exilic temple was less susceptible to this. The temple continues to be extremely important in the New Testament, but the symbol of the temple undergoes further clarification,

being connected with the body of Christ and the church, for instance, and treated as a symbol of a heavenly reality. In this process, our gaze is elevated and focused. The eschatological sense of the temple's significance that becomes more prominent in the post-exilic period is developed. Indeed, the destruction of the physical building of the temple that Jesus declares and which the events of his death anticipate is a continuation of this process of purification of vision. Although the physical building and fleshly sacrifices of the temple

have now been removed, the ordering and the movements that they informed and guided continue and are intensified as they are both more humanized and more spiritualized, the capitalization of spirit being important here. And the advent significance that came into clear review in the second temple period has only increased in its importance. In many ways, the church, an assembly and community described as a new temple, must be keenly aware of absence at its heart. This absence is not a hollow, inert, ambiguous or miserable emptiness, but a space crackling with expectancy, longing, and desire for the one who has promised to come to us. In this Advent season, we should attend to this absence and feel it with a renewed keenness, an absence for whose form Christ's coming could be the only fitting answer.

Thank you very much for listening. If you'd like to support my work, you can do so using the Patreon or PayPal links below. If you'd like to read this and other reflections like it, take a look at the anchored Argosy, our substack. The link to that will also be in the show notes. God bless.