Elijah

Malachi 4:5-6New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.

AND

Mark 9:9-13New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. Then they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” He said to them, “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.”

I include both passages today because yesterday we saw Elijah taken back from the whirlwind, and today, from Malachi and from Jesus we see that in this Advent, this season of waiting, Elijah serves as a harbinger of what is to come.

In the gospels, John the Baptist is linked directly to Elijah - the one who is coming to restore all things.  

In the Mark reading, Jesus says both that Elijah IS coming, but also that Elijah HAS come.

And that, I think, is a perfect understanding of not only Advent, but our faith story.

It speaks to the "both now AND not yet" aspect of God that is sometimes hard to imagine.  It speaks not just of God's coming to the world, but also of God's continuing activity both now and in the future.

It speaks of a God who operates in "Kairos" time - God's time, as opposed to our linear "Chronos" time.

We wait in Advent for the Incarnate God come to earth in the form of a helpless infant: an event that we look forward to in celebration, but also back to as having happened.  And we look ahead, knowing that God is always moving forward and that there is still to come a time when all things will be restored.

Come Lord Jesus.  Come now.  Come again.  And thank you for coming already.  Amen.