Senior Pastor Jon Tyson of the Church of the City New York told his congregation in a recent sermon titled “There is a Darkness” that Advent should be a time to think deeply about suffering through the lens of Christ.
Senior Pastor Jon Tyson of the Church of the City New York preaches about Advent on Dec. 4, 2022. | YouTube/Church of the City New York“There is a darkness. We're actually in the season of Advent. It's not Christmas yet. And Advent is the point in the church calendar that is actually about longing," Tyson preached on Dec. 4.
"It historically references the longing in Jesus’ first coming, the longing that people had between the Old Testament and the New Testament, almost 400 years. The Jewish community was pushed around by empires rising and falling and the whole time they're asking, ‘when will you show up, God?’”
He said Advent is "about the longing for the second coming of Jesus."
“That's what we're experiencing," he said. "'Lord, how long will injustice reign on the Earth? How long until You come and establish Your kingdom?' It's about longing. It's the tension of the now and the not yet.”
Christians, he said, are “in need of an honest diagnosis of the brokenness at the heart of the human condition," or else they "will only continue to bandage" their symptoms "without ever fully being healed," for they "do not have the strength, understanding or power within to fix [themselves].” CP.
