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Advent 1C - Dec 1, 2024
Rev Sarah Colvin
You can find this week's readings here.
Here we are in December.
December means Christmas. The weather in the northern hemisphere gets colder. We start getting Hallmark Christmas movies and hot cocoa. Christmas music is ever present in the stores. There are presents. “Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow…” But always in the Church, for Christians, December first means Advent. The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming,” which is a translation of the Greek word parousia.
Advent is also the beginning of the liturgical year for churches (Happy New Year, suddenly, we are now in year C, which is primarily devoted to readings from the Gospel of Luke). Advent is observed over the four Sundays before Christmas Day. And I love Advent. Advent holds the anticipation of the celebration of the Earthly birth of Jesus around 2,000 years ago, but also is a preparation and anticipation for the second coming of Christ. So, recap, the coming of Christ is both the Christ child; and in the same breath, we look towards the second coming of Christ.
Now, you just heard the Gospel. And you may be thinking that I am somewhat delusional. We just went over why we might be looking forward to Christmas, but why, considering this Gospel, would we look forward to Advent?! I had a friend who used to say, “Jesus is coming, look busy.” I don’t think that’s what we are reaching for.
Today’s Gospel is from Luke and is referred to as the “little apocalypse.” Jesus’s words of the little apocalypses are found in each of the synoptic gospels (remember synoptic meaning one vision—so the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the big apocalypse is found in the book of Revelation, and they all sound somewhat scary as on the surface.
First, let’s say that any parable in the New Testament with which Jesus teaches always has by design an element to push, to confront, to turn the reader on their heads. These are not intended to be literal meanings. We know of many people who take these words quite literally, leaning into a fundamentalist read of scripture. If this is your bent, you look and see all the earthquakes in the world, all the wars and devastation and think--- the end is near. That would be an appropriate conclusion. But we know from experience that it’s best to not prooftext the Bible; the Bible is not a forecast tool. The Left Behind series makes a good book series and movie drama, but this is not how God relates to us.
Conversely, despite countless earthquakes and wars, it’s also been 2000+ years and still no apocalypse, and so, on what might be thought of as a continuum, some people may think of these readings as a way to lean into some internal disruption to our spiritual or philosophical lives. But I think we miss the point with this read too, because it’s not just in our individual heads; rarely the gospel message is ever just about myself and my own piety.
I believe the truth is perhaps somewhere in the middle. In an earlier passage in Luke, Jesus tells us that the kingdom is within us. In Chapter 17 we hear, “Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ “
Now this thing, this kingdom that is among us, may share some facets with, but it is also not equal to any particular society’s social justice cause. I obviously can’t speak for God, but we know from the Bible that God, and Jesus is also always for the marginalized. God is on the side of the poor. God is not racist nor sexist. Jesus is partial to children. And also, God is also pro-family, except of course when Jesus creates distance between himself and his mother and brothers. But God is also about descendants and relationship. So, this read is neither liberal nor conservative, but instead the glue that holds this altogether is that all these apocalyptic readings are words of hope.
These words are hope for the bereft; hope is about being alive. The centrality of that hope is clearly stated in this week’s Gospel when it moves unmistakably to a cosmic disruption and the end, not just of that time and place, but of all things. It centers though not on meteorology but a person:
Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near (21:27-28)
Hope has to do with waiting for the coming of Jesus, awaiting God in all of God’s judgment and all of God’s mercy. This is what Jeremiah was referring with the words, “he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” And it’s not that we do anything to obtain righteousness, but that God has mercy to gift us with righteousness. It is hope in having a relationship with God at all. Because God is love, relationship with God comes with judgment AND with mercy. If it were not so, if it were without judgment and mercy, we couldn’t approach God, we couldn’t have a relationship. God calls us all to Godself and this is God’s gift.
So here, we sit with hope, because redemption is drawing near. In a tiny piece I read on hope this week, ….”people speak of hope as if it is this delicate ephemeral thing, made of whispers and spider webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” Hope is what enables us to act as Christians in a hurting world. Hope is love writ large, beyond what we can do to make the world right, because hope comes from God. It is what God can do and be through us to heal a hurting world.
Hope from God is enduring. As we prepare ourselves this Advent, we get ready to live life fully alive.
As so I leave you with my own poem:
afraid to live alive
Hear the beat in the drums of your ears
Blood pumps in arteries, capillaries veins
races hot viscous
Juice moves- xylem, phloem in sieve tubes
hemoglobin and chlorophyll, molecules of sustenance
Heaven and earth are conduits for milk and honey
Alive
Yet, a state of emergency is issued.
We quake, scared to death of wars of hurricanes of earthquakes
Afraid of being shaken, blown, drenched and shot into life
blown out of our drunken complacent stupor
Each has a time slot
Deep breath, chin up, shoulders back
await the Good Word
Or as Irenaeus puts it: “The glory of God is humanity fully alive… and the life of humanity is to glorify God.”
Welcome to Advent. Welcome to Life.
Image credit: Tissot, James, 1836-1902. Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56774 [retrieved December 3, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Jesus_Unrolls_the_Book_in_the_Synagogue_(J%C3%A9sus_dans_la_synagogue_d%C3%A9roule_le_livre)_-_James_Tissot_-_overall.jpg.
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