Rutledge - Advent: the Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

Fleming Rutledges Advent preaching bursts upon us with the same elemental force as the preaching of John the Baptist. Rutledges fine crafting of language may be subtler than Johns, but she carries forward his incisive, apocalyptic message of judgment and hope. This is essential preaching for a church wallowing in self-referential sentimentality and caught in captivity to the compromises of the present political order. This is preaching that tells the truth about the worlds suffering and proclaims that God acts to rescue us. Do not drift anesthetized through another season of Advent; read this book.

Richard B. Hays

George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament, Duke University

When it comes to preparing a congregation to observe the Christian season of Advent, no one should enter a pulpit, prepare worship, or teach a class without first reading this book. Biblically grounded, theologically centered, homiletically effective, and spiritually uplifting, this collection of writings and sermons by one of the churchs great preachers is a winner on every front.

Eugene Taylor Sutton

Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland

My not-so-secret hope is that Fleming Rutledges Advent would become required reading in our seminaries and the focus of vestry book clubs, elder retreats, and worship leader workshops. Because that would give me hope for an apocalyptic renewal in the churchthat we would learn again how to live as an Advent people, hoping in a God who acts and is making all things new. Taking this book to heart would teach us how to live wisely, faithfully, and prophetically in the Time Between.

James K. A. Smith

Calvin College; author of Awaiting the King and You Are What You Love

This compelling book of Advent sermons from Fleming Rutledge represents a masterclass in homiletics with a delightful array of biblically grounded, historically aware, theologically informed, and deeply relevant offerings. The bass note of the collection is the prophetic quest to recover the true meaning of Advent: far from simply marking the last, chaotic run-up to Christmas, it is a season that encapsulates the fundamental dynamic of the Christian life in this time between the times, in which the church both hastens and waits in hope for the promised return of its Lord. Written with bracing realism and deep compassion, yet also with verve and humor, this work once again confirms Rutledges status as one of the leading preachers of our times.

Paul T. Nimmo

Kings Chair of Systematic Theology, University of Aberdeen

What a treasure chest Fleming Rutledge has provided for us! In this volume, the apocalyptic turn in contemporary theology takes on liturgical and homiletical flesh: Christ is the One who came, who comes, and who will come again, each time breaking into the strong mans house to bind him and plunder his goods. The Advent preaching here on display communicates this incision, that we watch and wait and hope as Israel in the Lord.

Paul R. Hinlicky

Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies, Roanoke College; Docent, Evanjelicka Bohoslovecka Fakulta, Univerzita Komenskeho, Bratislava, Slovakia

This is a fascinating book. Rutledges characteristic elegance and erudition are apparent throughout. But these graceful skills serve a deeper agenda, which is an interdiction into the rising sentimentality of Christianity through the beachhead in the church calendar which is the season of Advent.... To experience Rutledges deep grasp and subtle, repeated evocation of Advent realities is not just to experience again the importance and wonder of preaching done well; it is not just to realize a searching depth in this liturgical time: it is to be strengthened, encouraged, and, in a word, reshaped.

Douglas Campbell

Professor of New Testament, Duke Divinity School

Advent is the most complex of the churchs seasons, with its remembrance of Gods former mercies and its looking forward in trust in Gods promises. Fleming Rutledges wonderful sermons on Advent are more than individual gems (though they are that): collectively they provide a rich and full exploration of the season in all its manifold moods and themes. This book is the perfect companion to the beginning of any church year.

Alan Jacobs

Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program, Baylor University

The season of Advent has been cluttered by pre-Christmas commerce and sentimentalized by those who set their sights early and only on Christmas celebration. Even in churches this dark time of the year is often falsely lit by premature festivity and messages of peace and hope that take little account of the dire historical moment in which we live and the urgency of our need for discernment and for what Fleming Rutledge calls apocalyptic hope.... Replete with rich, mature, vigorous theological reflections on Advent, this book is invigoratingedgy, intelligent, unflinching, and joyful in all it reclaims. A timely, lively prophetic word.

Marilyn McEntyre

author of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies and Whats in a Phrase?

For Fleming Rutledge, the proper celebration of Advent is crucial for the exposition of the faith of the church and the practice of the individual Christian. She argues passionately for a return to the original twofold focus of the seasona looking back to the incarnation and a looking forward to the second coming of Christ and the consummation of all things.... The sermons in this volume demand more than one reading. They are born out of an intimate knowledge of Scripture, prodigious learning, and Rutledges own experience as a Christian believer, parish priest, and teacher. They are written with clarity and conviction and, occasionally, an almost heartbreaking honesty.

Allan Warren

Rector of the Church of the Advent, Boston

Many of us in the American church are addicted to preaching that makes us, the hearers, into the heroes. We listen to sermons to receive adviceabout how we can do better or we can try harder or we can be stronger in this or that aspect of Christian life. For all of us suffering this theological addiction, Rutledges Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ is the rehab program we need. God is the saving agent here, and Gods coming in Jesus Christ to dismiss our efforts at self-justification is the recurring theme. Reading this book liberates us to enjoy a new theological sobriety.

Wesley Hill

Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania

Advent is that yearly opportunity to rekindle interior dispositions of hope, longing, patience, and trust. To have a tutor like Fleming Rutledge take us up to Christmas is a gift indeed!

Timothy Cardinal Dolan

Archbishop of New York

Advent, Rutledge writes, is not for the faint of heart. And these sermons, rich and uncompromising, mirror the season itself. She further contends that every biblical sermon should give a reason for hope and should contain a promise. Her sermons splendidly fulfill that expectation by grounding both hope and promise in the Lord Jesus Christ. They wondrously help rekindle our Advent imagination.

Robert P. Imbelli

author of Rekindling the Christic Imagination

In this fine collection of writings and sermons, Fleming Rutledge gives us an invitation to the themes of the Advent season, one that sweeps away cheap comforts and superficial reassurances and offers us the hope of Christs coming again. The church needs more preachers like her.

John Bauerschmidt

Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee

In this remarkable Advent collection, Fleming Rutledge turns her compassionate but clear-eyed gaze to the darkness of the present, to show how it is transfigured by the Light that is to come. This is first-rate theology in service of the church, sermons and reflections that stir the mind even as they touch the heart.