Apocalypse Now: Stepping into Advent
It may seem odd to begin Advent with visions of the Apocalypse, but this season challenges us to pay attention to how God’s presence is breaking into our lives. How are we called to prepare and pay attention?
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Transcript
In the name of the father, and of the son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good morning. So we are all starting to come back. Some, I guess some are still with their families and on different trips. As we all celebrated last week in whatever way that we celebrated, we were in Arkansas or as we sometimes call it, the Arkansas. It was a wonderful time. We went back and visited the family. We came back, but if there was a theme or a title to this year’s trip, it was this: no possums were harmed in the celebrating of this holiday. We got there and Lisa’s, stepmother told us that the month prior they had had a celebration in their little hometown where they raced 40 possum. And I told her I’m going to need documentation. So she sent me the video. That’s right. You can check with me at the end of the service if you want to see.
But we all are in this wonderful season where we gather with family and friends and we travel, and so much time is spent on wonderful stories. We go back and we see people who we’ve known our whole lives and who have known us in different ways than we might currently live. And we all gather and we go back and we retell stories, and it’s not always a happy time. We also know that all of this is also a different layer for this season. We go back and sometimes there are people who were there last year who were not there this year, and that’s very much true too.
So we go back and we gather with those who we love and who have cared for us, and we re-member ourselves. We regather and we reground and recenter ourselves and give thanks for all that has made us the people who we are. Tensions, bright spots, happy, joy, grief, sadness. Somehow all of that combines and is woven to make us the people who we are. And we come and we give thanks to God for all of those stories. And so we situate ourselves at seasonal changes like this.
I always think it’s very important just to take a little time and situate ourselves and pay attention to where we are on this day. Because this day, this first Sunday of Advent, truly is a stepping off point for many months that we will gather in this space. This is the start, if you’ll look at your bulletin, if you’ll turn to the readings, we’re going to look at those on page four and page five.
But this is the start of year C in our three year cycle. Year C is Luke’s year. Year A is Matthew’s year. Year B is Mark’s. Year C is Luke’s. John – we pick up John and those wonderful threads through Holy Week and at other times of the year. So we also hear those stories. This other layer of what stories that we hear, we’re going into a different season, and we’ll hear things from Luke’s point of view, which at some times is slightly different from Mark and Matthew, and it just adds another layer to how we practice our faith.
So this first season of advent truly does kick off this time for our lives. And so if you think about it, so much that we will do all the way through Easter season kicks off on this day. This first day of the church’s year. When we take these steps into this new way of being to discern and notice what the spirit is doing in our lives.
So we’ll spend these four weeks of advent and then we’ll have Christmas season. This year we get two Sundays during Christmas season. Most years we just get one but this year we get two. So we’ll have two Sundays to sing carols and celebrate Christ’s coming into the world. And then we’ll have Christmas, Epiphany. And believe it or not, right around the corner Lent.
But we’ll get to that later. So I thought it would be important this Sunday to just ground ourselves and say, this is where we are, this is where we are. This is where we find ourselves. So if you look on page five at that first reading, this is where we find ourselves this morning coming off of this week, this past week.
Jeremiah. We start off the first Sunday of Advent with the prophet who we remember is writing and speaking out of a time of exile, of being taken out of familiar ways, of being. How do we sing a song in a strange land? The psalmist says, and so the prophet speaks to us over the centuries, and look at what he says this morning.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. So we situate ourselves in that space, and anticipating, paying attention that the Spirit is up to something, something new, something fresh, is coming our way.
And the prophet calls us right off, right out of the gate to keep our eyes open, to keep our ears open, to notice, to pay attention to how God is at work. And then we pick that up in the Gospel, which might feel like a strange Gospel to read during this holiday season. So much around us has already kicked into Christmas mode, and we’re not there yet.
We kind of are, but not really. We put our tree up because we just needed a sparkle and the cats needed something to do, so we put our tree up. But during this Advent season, it’s such a counter-cultural time for us in the middle of the busyness of the season and all that swirls, we gather for these four Sundays, and we pay attention in a different way to the text that we have in this morning’s gospel.
Of all the readings this morning, there is an apocalypse, which, now that I think about it, that possum race was a very appropriate thing. It was its own version of an apocalypse. Because I tell you, when they turn them loose, they did not go where they wanted them to go. They went where they went.
So this morning from Luke, Jesus says there will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars. And on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
So how do we understand this in terms of advent season? Well, this is why it helps to spend a little time to situate ourselves. Because when we speak of Advent, of course, we’re speaking of three different things at one time. There’s not just one Advent, there are three. The one that we know most familiarly would be Jesus being born. That’s the one that the culture picks up on in its widest sense in the birth of Jesus.
That’s one. But the one that we focus on this morning is the Second coming, the second coming of Christ. At the end of days. And that’s such a fascinating thing to situate ourselves in on Advent One to say, how are we paying attention not only to the birth of Jesus in the manger, but also to the Second Coming, the culmination of all things, the fulfillment of all things, because we also orient ourselves toward that.
And as we’ll see on the fourth Sunday of Advent, which really is my favorite, I think is the birth of Christ within each of our hearts, every moment of our lives. So those three concurrent Advent themes are woven through our lives: the birth of Jesus, the coming of Christ at the end of the age, and the birth of Christ in each one of our hearts, every moment of our lives.
One point in time, at the end of time, and for all time. It’s a beautiful, beautiful opportunity that we have to situate ourselves to settle down and pay attention to notice, as they say.
I think most of us have watched apocalypse movies. It’s one of our favorite genres. There have always been in humans this morbid fascination with what the end of days would look like.
And we can think back even through our lifetimes at different markers where that was supposedly going to happen, when the year 2000 rolled around and everyone started storing beans because they thought when the calendar flips over, the world will end. In 2012, when the Mayans said the world was going to end and all the films came out, everyone kept storing beans.
We’ve kept storing beans. We keep. There’s always been a marker in our life of something that we look toward that tells us that something is changing, something feels uncertain, anxious, stressful, fearful. And so we wonder, is this the end? Is this it? But look at what happens in this morning’s gospel. Jesus says, now when these things begin to take place, don’t try to leave it.
Don’t try to numb out or check out. Jesus says, stand up and raise your hands because your redemption is drawing near. That, my friends, could really be a mantra for all of Advent season when times fill uncertain. When things are changing, what do we do? We stand up and we raise our heads and we pay attention for the Spirit’s presence in the Spirit’s work in our lives.
And we ask ourselves, how do we participate with that? What is our work to do to come alongside the spirit, to embody, to incarnate, to give birth to the presence of Christ in our world? So we may think there’s so much to do, there’s so much uncertainty that it’s not even worth it. There’s so much to do that we can never accomplish it.
Well, centuries ago, a rabbi named Tarfon had something to say about that in a commentary on Micah six, which we all know. You will know it when I read this prayer to you. But the rabbi, in another uncertain time, when people didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to make meaning, how to make sense of it, thought: It’s so much, it’s so great I can’t possibly accomplish it.
The rabbi said this: do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to neglect it.
So as we step into this season, when we sense and pay attention to how the Spirit is moving in our lives, calling us to be heralds of the coming of Christ, calling us to embody Christ in every moment of our lives. Let us pay attention for those times when we are called to stand up and raise our heads and ask, what is ours to do? Giving thanks to God for the privilege that we have to live, and to bear witness to God’s presence in our lives.
Let us pray. We give you thanks, O God, for this Advent season, which gives us an opportunity to situate ourselves to ground ourselves in anticipation of your coming once more. And always open our eyes, open our ears, open our hearts. To be aware of your movement within us and among us. Give us courage and strength in the days ahead to bear witness, to give birth to you. As we step into your dream for our lives to be bearers of light in uncertain days and for the blessings of our lives.
We give you thanks and it’s through Christ we pray. Amen.