Comforters: Luke 21:25-36
First Sunday of Advent
“There will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars. On
the earth, there will be dismay among nations in their confusion over the
roaring of the sea and surging waves. 26 The
planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from
fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. 27 Then
they will see the Human One coming on a cloud with power and great
splendor. 28 Now when these things begin to happen,
stand up straight and raise your heads, because your redemption is near.”
29 Jesus
told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When
they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is
near. 31 In the same way, when you see these things
happening, you know that God’s kingdom is near. 32 I assure you that this
generation won’t pass away until everything has happened. 33 Heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away.
34 “Take care that your
hearts aren’t dulled by drinking parties, drunkenness, and the anxieties of
day-to-day life. Don’t let that day fall upon you unexpectedly, 35 like
a trap. It will come upon everyone who lives on the face of the whole
earth. 36 Stay alert at all times, praying
that you are strong enough to escape everything that is about to happen and to
stand before the Human One.” (CEB)
Ahmaud Arbery
is dead.
He was 25 when
he died in February 2020, collapsing after a point-blank rifle shot. A trio of white men had decided that this
black man was suspicious as he went through their Georgia neighborhood and
decided to follow him in their truck, demanding he stop and let them question
him. He did not stop. They chased him down. This past week, the shooters were found
guilty of murder and now face life in prison.[1]
In a system
that so regularly bends away from justice for people of color, this verdict is
a moment of hope for those who fear being unheard, being forgotten. It is a moment of hope that maybe, if we are
deliberate enough, this could be one nation with liberty and justice for all,
one day.
“Take care
that your hearts are not dulled.” This
passage from the gospel of Luke is, like the passage last week from Daniel, an
apocalypse—a revealing of God’s work in the world. It even has some of the same imagery of the
Human One—Whom we Christians interpret as Christ—coming in on the clouds. Unfortunately, this is an apocalypse that has
been coopted several times over by people who are looking less for hope and
more for a road map, forcing the words into a measurable sequence of
cosmological events that we can predict and thereby be sure to be at the
airport ready with a sign for the incoming Jesus. Were that the case, the statement, “I assure
you that this generation won’t pass away until everything has happened” would
be a lie. The generation that heard this
little apocalypse is quite dead at this point.
This is not
meant to be taken literally but it is meant to be taken seriously. For all the fact that it would be nice if we
could measure Christ’s return by the moon being in alignment with Venus or what
have you, this is not that. Luke was
writing to an audience who had watched the Roman emperor tear down the Temple,
who lived daily under the threat of an empire that tolerated them at best, and
who was dealing with infighting as the thread that would become Christianity
began to separate ever further from its Jewish origins. Certainly, there was “dismay among nations”
as the faithful navigated several layers of conflict and uncertainty. Take heart, Luke says to his listeners,
stay alert; your redemption is near.
How near? How are we to stay alert, we who listen again
from the position of people who “faint from fear and foreboding of what is
coming upon the world”? The promise of
hope cannot be “Jesus is coming back on Tuesday;” Tuesday has long since come
and gone and we may not be under Rome but we are certainly aware of there being
shaken heavenly bodies.
Rev. John Petty tells the story, “I
was once at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, held each summer in my fair city,
and noticed a street preacher at the corner of 3rd and Milwaukee. His
exhortations were to get right with God because Jesus was coming soon. An
old man was walking by about this time, walking with a cane and moving
slowly. When he heard the message of the street preacher, he straightened
up and said, ‘What in blazes are you talking about? He's already here.’
“Indeed, Jesus is here, and he has
always been here. He didn't go drifting off into space waiting for some
future day to come back, like some alien from outer space. In his
incarnation, Christ is interior to the world, intimately connected with it,
never to let it go. This generation will not pass away ‘until all
might be fulfilled’--ews panta genetai? All has been fulfilled.
The kingdom of God is ‘among you’ (Lk 17:20).
“Everything might pass away,
including heaven and earth, but, Jesus says, ‘my words’--logoi mou—'will
surely not.’ The early Christians would have pricked up their ears at the
word logoi. The logos referred to the work of God as
revealed in Jesus. All may be gone, but one thing will always
remain: the good news of God in Christ.”[2]
Today we begin the season of Advent,
from the Latin adventus, “coming” or “arrival.” It is the reset button of the Christian year
in which we prepare ourselves again for the grand story of the life of Jesus,
beginning with the Christmas narrative of His birth. The four weeks of Advent are a way for us to
center again on the improbable miracle of a God become human, humanity embraced
by God; this is a time in which we take the deep breath of recognizing again the
cycle of birth, baptism, teaching, death, and resurrection. In a similar way to our planning of the
rhythm of the calendar year and our goals for it that happens in January,
Advent is our opportunity to consider who we are going to be as people of faith
in Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter. Pentecost, and Ordinary Time.
It is why a text like this is such an
important beginning for the season, this Sunday in which we light a candle for
hope: we are indeed waiting for a different world and we are indeed
experiencing fear, but we are also living in the middle of the Kingdom come to
earth where we are called to “stand up straight and raise your heads,” refusing
to be dulled by “day-to-day anxieties.”
“Jesus told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the
trees. When they sprout leaves, you can
see for yourselves and know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things
happening, you know that God’s kingdom is near.’”
A text about trees sprouting may seem
incongruous in Michigan in November, but it is exactly that cyclical rebirth
that speaks of hope. The snow is on the
ground and we hope for a spring in which the fig trees sprout again; Ahmaud
Arbery’s killers are facing some measure of justice and we hope that we will
follow that kind of accountability in other cases; we find ourselves in a time
of fear and foreboding and we hope for the nearness of the Kingdom, of
redemption. This is not a weak kind of
hope that absently wishes but the ferocious power of hope that sustains light
in the darkest of winter evenings. It is
the hope with which we face the signs in the sun, moon, and stars. It is the hope from which we walk into an
unjust world where sometimes the fig trees are drowned out before they bloom
and often the people who shoot men without cause go free and we demand equity,
justice, and mercy. It is the hope of
knowing that the Kingdom is not only near but already here, is swirling around
us as surely as the blustery winds that bring December to our doorsteps.
Debie Thomas writes of Advent, “I
love that the Church begins its new year when the days are still getting
darker. I love that the season rejects
shallow sentimentality and false cheer.
And I love that the Gospel gets us started this week with images — not
of swaddling clothes, twinkly stars, and fleecy lambs — but of the world as it
really is, here and now. Gorgeous,
fragile, and falling apart.”[3]
The world is a mess. I don’t need to tell you that; you’re aware. But in the precise moment that things are a
mess, lift up your heads. Stay alert to
the fig trees that are about to bloom and the redemption that brushes against
your fingertips. Join in the reality
that Christ’s words will not pass away.
For the month of Advent, St. Luke’s
will be focusing on the concept of warmth.
This will show up in sermons and the weekly email and will find concrete
expression in several mission partnerships we’ve formed. Here in the Bay area, we’re working with the
Good Samaritan Rescue Mission to give blankets for those who come through their
doors and have nowhere else to go. In
awareness of our global connection as United Methodists, we are also working
with Church World Service and their blanket program that gives climate-appropriate
blankets to refugees. These are small
but so very important pieces of comfort for those who are living in the places
of fear and foreboding, who are bending under the weight of the day-to-day anxieties. They are an invitation for us to be part of the
redemption that is near, the reclamation of a promise of hope in this season of
beginning again.
Professor Marc Kolden writes it like
this: “The earlier portions of Luke 21 make this clear…[that] this is a time
not for predicting, but for testimony (vss. 13-15). Such testimony will involve
both words and faithful actions of people infected by hope: we will ourselves
be signs, our hope will be contagious, and some around us may also be infected
with what has been called ‘a resurrection hope in a crucifixion world.’”[4]
Look to the fig tree; when the sun
and moon and stars are falling around us and the nations are in turmoil and the
shadow is deep, lift up your head to see that redemption is near, that the
Spirit is at work, that justice still exists and we are part of building the
Kingdom that is already and not yet, that Christ’s words of comfort and
challenge will never pass away. Take
heart, people of Advent, for the story begins again and we are renewed in it,
by it, with it.
May we have the strength to stand
strong in the uncertainty of a fearful world.
May we have the courage to follow the God Who beckons us into unknown
wonder. And may we have the empathy to
bring comfort, even if it is as simple as warmth on a cold November day. Amen.
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