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A review by adamrshields
Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge
4.0
I have spent a lot of time watching Fleming Rutledge preach on youtube since I discovered her about 5-8 years ago. I am completely serious that I think she is one of the best preachers alive today, and I think many should read her sermon collections or watch her preaching on video.
I started Advent in 2019 as a semi-devotional reading for the Advent season. And it is so worth reading to get the historically accurate vision for what Advent is about. As a low church baptist, my perception was that Advent was a time of preparation for Christmas similar to Lent, where we remember that Christ came to earth 2000 years ago. So there is an aspect of that in Advent, but it is more accurate to say that Advent is a time of preparation for the second coming, not just the first. In other words, it isn't that Advent is ignoring Christmas, but that part of what we are doing is remembering the first coming as a way of looking forward to the second coming.
the truly radical nature of the Advent promise, which sweeps away cheap comforts and superficial reassurances and, in the midst of the most world-overturning circumstances, still testifies that “Behold, I am coming soon! . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:12, 13).
And because of the focus on the second coming, there is a lot of emphasis in this collection of sermons on judgment. Judgment is not a common theme for Advent or Christmas among my low church evangelical pastors, but it makes sense in the context of what Rutledge is preaching about. She points out the injustice around us and how we can rest in the fact that the second coming will make right the injustice around us, not as a way to gloss over the injustice, but as empowerment for our own work to right injustice. This quote highlights that balance well,
The church is not called to be a “change agent”—God is the agent of change. The Lord of the kosmos has already wrought the Great Exchange in his cross and resurrection, and the life of the people of God is sustained by that mighty enterprise.26 The calling of the church is to place itself where God is already at work. The church lives, therefore, without fear, in faith that the cosmic change of regime has already been accomplished.
or this one
All the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God’s righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his “making right” (verb) all that has been wrong. Clearly, human justice is a very limited enterprise compared to the ultimate making-right of God in the promised day of judgment.
Those that I have known that have regularly celebrated Advent frequently talk about hope, but I got the feeling that it was a hope toward our future in heaven that could at times diminish our world right now. But Rutledge frames hope by looking at the coming work of Christ to complete his making right of the world and that we do that best by rightly looking at the presence of evil in the world.
The great theme of Advent is hope, but it is not tolerable to speak of hope unless we are willing to look squarely at the overwhelming presence of evil in our world. Malevolent, disproportionate evil is a profound threat to Christian faith.
I could post quotes all day. But I won't. I will commend the book and note that it took me three Advents to finish reading it. There are 49 sermons here. And that is probably too many. Not that there is fluff here that should have been cut out, but that there is just too much content. I think it may have been a better book at 280 pages instead of 426.