Advent Reflection: Come Down From that Cross

There’s a haunting line spoken to Jesus as he hangs on the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross.”It’s a taunt—but also a revelation. It exposes something deep within the human heart: the belief that we know better than God how God should act.

Advent reveals this same temptation. As we wait for Christ to come, we often long for a Messiah made in our own image: a God who acts on our timelines, answers our anxieties, and validates our instincts for control. We imagine that if we were God, things would finally run properly.

But the moment we imagine ourselves in God’s place, we begin to build systems that look like us—ideologies, economics, politics—and they inevitably carry our cracks. They bear our fear, our rivalry, our impatience. They promise justice but often produce violence. They aim for peace yet create pressure, competition, and exhaustion. They intend mercy but fall short, because our mercy always has limits.

Even when we genuinely desire to defend the weak or lift up the oppressed, we remain creatures of finitude. We cannot be fully just without also failing someone. We cannot be fully merciful without being stretched beyond our capacity. We cannot forgive endlessly without discovering the sharp edges of our own wounds.

Advent tells us why: we are not God.

And—thanks be to God—we do not have to be.

Jesus refuses to come down from the cross because the deepest revelation of God is not displayed in force but in self-giving love. The Messiah reveals divine power not in triumphal escape but in vulnerable solidarity. Advent trains our hearts to recognise a God who saves not by mirroring our expectations but by overturning them.

This Advent at All Saints’, we will be speaking to this reality through our sermons and worship.

We will explore what it means to relinquish the fantasy that we could do a better job of being God than God—and how that fantasy continues to shape our world, our politics, even our personal lives. Together, we will learn again how to wait for a God who comes not with the power we expect, but with the love we desperately need.

And so, we invite you to join us.

To gather for worship in Advent is its own kind of rebellion—a quiet but profound act of resistance against a world determined to run on its own wisdom and its own strength.To come, to wait, to listen, to hope—these are countercultural moves.They say, We do not put our trust in ourselves. We trust the One who did not come down from the cross—so that we might finally be lifted into life.

Come and worship with us this Advent.Come and wait with us.Come and learn again what only God can do.