Advent One – Luke 21:25-36
Strange things will happen… to the sun, the moon, the stars… the nations on earth will be afraid of the roaring sea and tides, and they won’t know what to do… people will be so frightened they’ll drop to the ground…
Today is the beginning of the year of Luke, from December through next November, except for the story of the Magi from Matthew and some Sundays in the gospel of John, we’ll mostly hear the gospel according to Luke this year. It’s one of my favorites because always, Luke shows Jesus turning the world right side up. The lowly are brought up, the oppressed are set free, the oppression in the world order is broken apart. But, obviously, when you’re in the middle of a world order being upended, things look terrible. So we begin Advent remembering than when everything looks terrible, there is more going on than we can see.
I’m not terribly into the apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic genres (describing the destruction of the whole world and life as we know)—in books or movies or life—but this year, I’ve brushed against these stories a couple of times. I read local author Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Future Home of the Living God. It is a near-future dystopia where because of climate change there is no longer any snow, barely even a memory of snow. On days like today, where our numbers are leaner due to the snow, it might seem like that’d be okay (!) but reading the description converted me to take snow as a gift. And in addition to the changes in weather in the story, evolution has reversed, leading to horrific changes in nature and human community. The main character, Cedar Hawk Songmaker, the book’s narrator, puts her thoughts about their lived reality this way: “Maybe God has decided that we are an idea not worth thinking anymore.”
One of my relatives this week, commenting on actual horrific fires and the threat of a tsunami in California and Alaska these past weeks wrote, “The earth isn’t very happy with us.” So, it’s not as if we can’t get our imaginations wrapped up in these stories that maybe we too are witnessing the end—when finally, although humans have been worrying about it for thousands of years, maybe this time it’s really true… of all the end times, maybe this is really it.
As the gospel writer Luke ventures into apocalyptic for a part of his story, his very early Christian community had to be wondering the same… as the temple was destroyed, and Rome fell, it looked like God (who controls all things, right?—heavens and earth, seas and skies)… God must have abandoned them. But no, Jesus says, “When all of this starts happening, stand up straight and be brave.”
When you don't know what to do, when you’re so frightened you want to lay down and die, don’t spend all your time thinking about what you’re going to eat or drink or worrying about life… but watch and keep praying for strength and remember God’s promise “the sky and the earth won’t last forever, but my words will.”
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Karoline Lewis wrote this week: Those are words I am holding onto dearly these days. For dear life, in fact. A promise that exposes false promises. A promise that keeps me going. While it is true that so much of life is trying to hold on to what inevitably will change, having this knowledge does not make it necessarily less difficult to cope. Do you feel the same?
On this first Sunday of Advent, moving into the season of Advent, we know ahead of time, we can see in front of us, just how much will pass away these next four weeks -- and quickly. Everything we anticipate at Christmas, everything we plan, what we try to take in, will be gone in a mere month. So, we will attempt to hang on to these moments with tried and true methods -- photographs, videos -- all the while realizing that even these go-to ways of keeping memories will themselves one day pass away. Nothing lasts forever.
And yet, perhaps there is no other time that this is felt more deeply than during the holidays, the mindfulness that nothing lasts forever. This month seems to accentuate the fleetingness of so much of life. Our attempts to remember events are also the means by which we cope with the loss -- that this moment in time can never be repeated in time, ever again.
Luke tells his community that as followers of Jesus, as people trying to live in love with justice and mercy, they may experience legal difficulties, problems with neighbors, things falling apart… but that they and, as we receive his words today, we can stand up and raise our heads, knowing that God’s redemption is drawing near. Even if everything is falling apart, that’s not a sign of God’s absence or God’s lack of concern.
Even as we look ahead to the end of the story—Jesus death on a cross—death does not get the last word. Disciples’ hopes are dashed in their deep grief at Jesus’ death and then, Jesus meets them along the road and in the evening, around the table.
Starting this Wednesday, we’ll gather around tables downstairs in the Fellowship Hall for a meal and evening prayer. Through the simple food and words of that evening, we’ll practice noticing in and around the real, scary, worrisome events of our lives how Christ meets us, inviting us to be brave in the face of them. In Advent, we celebrate God’s coming in history (past), mystery (present) and majesty (at the very end). Advent isn’t just about the birth of Jesus but the many ways God comes to us—a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a lantern flickering in the wind, a deep breath… so we hope that you will make a little space in busy lives to come and share bread, pray together and find ways to be open to the mystery of the present so we can receive the love that Christ has for us.
The Wailin’ Jennys sing:
When the storm comes, don’t run for cover (x3)
Don’t run from the coming storm, there ain’t no use in runnin’
Don’t run from the coming storm, You can’t keep a storm from comin’Gotta stand up and let it in, let love come through your door…
God’s work is not yet finished… God’s promises are still being kept, God is still saving and liberating people… God’s work is not yet finished. How do we wait in the meantime?
By lighting candles, sharing a meal. By loving one another as fully as possible… by letting others love us… by pursuing justice, mercy, goodness.
Jan Richardson, who has written about Advent at the Advent Door for years now says this:
The season of Advent gives us the apocalypse each year not only so that we might recognize it, should it come, but also—and perhaps especially—that we might enter more mindfully into our present landscape and perceive the signs of how God is working out God’s longing in the world here and now. The root meaning of the word apocalypse, after all, is revelation. And God is, in every time and season, about the work of revealing God’s presence. The one who came to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us, and who spoke of a time when he would come again in fullness, reveals himself even now in our midst, calling us to see all the guises in which he goes about in this world.
Advent reminds us, year in and year out, that although we are to keep a weather eye out for cosmic signs, we must, like the fig tree that Jesus evokes in this passage, be rooted in the life of the earth. And in the rhythm of our daily lives here on earth, Christ bids us to practice the apocalypse. He calls us in each day and moment to do the things that will stir up our courage and keep us grounded in God, not only that we may perceive Christ when he comes, but also that we may recognize him even now. There is a sense, after all, in which we as Christians live the apocalypse on a daily basis. Amid the destruction and devastation that are ever taking place in the world, Christ beckons us to perceive and to participate in the ways that he is already seeking to bring redemption and healing for the whole of creation.
Nothing lasts forever – except God’s unending love and promise. God took on temporary life… to give us eternal life. God took on transiency to give us a permanent home with God. God took on death to give us resurrection. Because, with God, forever means forever.
CBC Radio, Published on Aug 2, 2011,Winnipeg folk trio The Wailin' Jennys dropped by CBC Radio 2's Drive for a Session to perform music from their album 'Bright Morning Stars'. Watch
