…and I’ve been thinking about how Jesus is the Coming One.

Advent is a season of waiting. A time of anticipation before Christmas and staying awake for God’s arrival. But even more than waiting for a baby in a manger, Advent is a time of expecting the appearing of Christ. Many Christians have understood that as an event in the future that is often called His second coming or the day of His return.

But we mustn’t stop there.

To limit the appearances of Jesus to two points on a timeline — one, over two thousand years ago, and another, on a date that people have tried to predict on over 200,000 different days — is to miss something exceedingly important.

We are not in an in-between time of absence.

Christians might default to that way of thinking, but that’s not what we say we believe. Followers of Jesus believe that God is present, even today. 

Even in the darkness of Advent we know (or at least tell ourselves) that we are not in between two appearances.

In Matthew 11, John — the one we know of as the Baptist — is in prison. After hearing about what Jesus has been doing (and maybe bothered that Jesus hasn’t come to visit), he sends messengers to ask if Jesus is “the one who is to come, or should (they) expect someone else.”

John the Baptist is the key figure of Advent. He spends his entire ministry preparing the way for the arrival of Jesus. And here, in a prison cell, in a place of loneliness and darkness, he questions if Jesus is the one he’s been waiting for.

A life’s mission in flux. Have you been there before?

Let’s keep going.

I think it’s helpful to understand that John is not asking if Jesus is the One who came, or the One who will come.

John is asking if Jesus is “the coming one.”

Though he is unsure in this moment, his uncertainty points to the reality of who he is addressing!

The answer is, yes! Jesus is “the Coming One”. And even thought John is not aware of it, and whether we are aware of it or not, He is always appearing.

Later, in Matthew 25, Jesus explains that when he comes in glory he will separate the sheep and the goats. The sheep are placed at his right hand to receive the inheritance prepared for them and yet, the sheep don’t even know why they are sheep. So when they ask why they are receiving an inheritance, they are told that whenever they fed the poor, or clothed the naked, or visited the prisoner, they were encountering Jesus.

Jesus had been appearing to them in their unknowing and they are still seen as faithful.

There is much to say about that story but now is not the time. But what must be said in regard to the appearing of Jesus is that we cannot ever assume that Jesus is not present.

And it is also true that whenever we are with those who have been cast outside, we can be more than confident that in our going to them, we are going to Christ.

What John the Baptist didn’t yet realize was that though he had to send messengers to Jesus,  the messengers themselves were encountering Christ in John’s prison.

Jesus is the Coming One.

We wait for many things. We wait for the upcoming vacation, college finals to be over, for the weather to change and for the pain to go away. We wait for presents under the tree and we wait for the presence of God.

And nothing is more trustworthy than God’s appearance.

I’m not saying that in our waiting we won’t experience His absence. That absolutely happens and will continue to happen. However, what seems like his absence is the way of his presence being prepared in you. He is the Coming One and he can be trusted.

As Fleming Rutledge says, we cannot be a people who say that God is “obviously present all the time.” But in faith we are taught that “God is to be trusted, in spite of appearances.”

Advent is an expectant anticipation of God‘s appearance. A season of staying awake for the God who shows up. He may appear as a thief in the night or prisoner sitting in a jail cell. He might show up as a master of the house who has returned from a long journey or a child sitting on your knee.

It might not be what you’re looking for but He will come exactly as you need.

Jesus is, right now, the Coming One.