First Sunday in Advent,
December 2, 2018.
Jeremiah 33:14-16 [Jerusalem] will be called [the Holy One] is our righteousness.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.
Luke 21:25-36 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.
O God, our righteousness: grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.
Good morning! Happy Advent! Happy Churchy New Year! Und fröhliche Leipzigerwoche! I’m so happy to be back with you after four months of time away. I’m eager to hear about how you’ve changed and grown while we’ve been apart. I hope you’ll find a time to talk with me so we can catch up; or if you’re new here, so that we can get to know one another. I have a lot to tell you about my adventures learning Quranic Arabic and learning grandmothering of a new granddaughter and a newer grandson. and my adventures in Queens, NY, Annapolis, MD, Roslindale, MA, as well as Istanbul, Vienna, southern Spain and Lisbon. I also have a lot to say about Advent and ways we might approach this season before Christmas. I have at least a dozen sermons that I want to deliver this morning, so I’m going to keep my time in this pulpit short because there really is too much to say!
While outside on Newbury Street, the commercial Christmas machine is in full swing; inside, our lessons for the first Sunday of Advent are not about preparing for a holly jolly festival, but about how to respond to the chaos and devastation among nations confused by the roaring sea and the waves and the shaking, windy skies. That seems like an apt description of what is just beyond the glitzy decorations of the shops selling hollow promises of happiness. The powers of heaven certainly are being shaken, and I would argue that this scenario is as true now as it was at the end of the first century, as it is in every age. Indeed, Jesus says, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.
I think Jesus is always right about this, because in every age, people faint from fear and foreboding of the calamities they see and experience coming upon the world. And certainly in every generation people proclaim that the end (capital t capital e) is near. I want you to notice something about the verse that says, “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” The phrase is in quotes because it’s a reference to the wisdom and apocalyptic literature of the Hebrew Bible – Daniel, Joel, Isaiah, Psalms, Zephaniah. This year it occurred to me to ask, “who is the ‘they’ that will see this strange vision?” I’ve always imagined “they” being a way of saying “people.” You know, impersonal, general. But reading more carefully, I see that the grammatical referent for “they” is the powers of the heavens. It’s the powers of the heavens that will see, through the fog, the cloud, that the Son of Man is coming with power and great glory. The powers of the heavens are the “they” who will see the Son of Man – the peasant of peasants – who will come to redeem the world.
Rather than looking for the Son of Man coming in a cloud, Jesus is instructing his followers to look at the fig tree and all the trees. This is something we can do. Rather than fainting from fear and foreboding when chaos and devastation are all around, stand tall and raise up your heads. In other words, this is not the time to keep your heads down, to hide out or get small or play it safe or try not to be noticed. And, Jesus warns his followers to be on guard that we aren’t caught in the snare of self-indulgent excess, wasteful expenditures (which is what dissipation means) or in numb and stupid unsteady lurching or passed out (which is what drunkenness means) or in paralyzing fear that keeps us from living and loving.
When you see confusion and chaos, your redemption is drawing near. When you see everything coming undone, know that the realm of God is near: your redemption, the revaluation of your dignity is drawing near. The opportunity to get close to God is never closer than in the middle of devastation. Loving kindness is never more important, never more valuable than when the world is being turned upside down and inside out.
In Jesus’ instruction to pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man, the “you” is plural – not singular. Pray that you all – you Emmanuel Church, you Episcopal Church, you City of Boston, you New Englanders, you Americans, you nations. Advent is not a season for personal piety or repentance or preparation – that’s Lent. Advent is communal, institutional, societal, governmental, international. In Advent, perhaps more than any other time in the church year, the Church’s focus is to offer affliction for the most comfortable as we work to change and grow, so that we can better provide comfort for those who are most afflicted. Our focus in Advent is properly on large-scale repentance and preparation, clearing the barriers and making the path – well, direct between people and the shalom, the salaam, the well-being of God.
Jesus tells his hearers what to do when (whenever) it seems like the world is getting turned upside down. When confusion and fear are colluding to reduce us to passivity and despair, knocking the wind right out of us, we are not to squander our energy, engage in avoidance or create distance or indulge our anxieties. We are to stand up, raise our heads and know that redemption, revaluation of our dignity is near. We are to look at what is right in front of us right now. You know, the Biblical idea of end times is not about being transported from a doomed world into never-never land. Rather, it is about the end of injustice and poverty, of war and violence, of hunger and oppression. It is about transforming our communities, our institutions, our societies and nations into bodies of well-being, of peace, so that every city can be called, “The Holy One is our righteousness.”
It’s said that no tree looks more dead than a fig tree in the Palestinian winter. So imagine noticing little leaves sprouting out of buds on the branches – tiny tiny hopeful signs of growth – of change – of new life. Jesus seems to be saying that in the midst of the devastation, pick your heads up and look for and see the signs of hope that are right in plain sight, right now. See the nearness of God right now. Christian hope, according to Jurgen Moltman, is not an “opium of the beyond;” rather, it is “the divine power that makes us alive in this world.” It’s not a hope that things will return to the way that they were, that the past will be different, or even that a bad thing will never happen in the future. It’s hope that right now, Love (a Biblical name for God), Love is redeeming what seems dead or shameful or worthless or wasted or hopeless, in us and through us, in here and out there. Advent is a season of reckoning and a season of hope that right now Love can do that. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is making a way where there is no way. Raise your heads and see that Love is very near. This Advent, you don’t have to do everything in grateful response to that Love, but please do something.