Preached on the First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021

Year C: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

Advent Sunday always seems a bit overloaded. It’s the beginning of a new year in our worship, inviting us to look ahead to the feast of the Nativity next month—a slower, more patient approach to Christmas than the frenetic retail season that poses as the real Christmas. And it’s also, paradoxically, the Sunday when our readings focus on something quite different—not new beginnings, but the end of the world as we know it and Jesus’ return in glory. This tradition about Advent Sunday is ancient, but it feels to me as if it has new relevance in our time. We find ourselves full of forebodings. Disaster often seems right around the corner. Will there be another surge of Covid-19? Will the economy recover? Will the world be overwhelmed with refugees? Will the far right put an end to American democracy? Or, if you’d rather, will the far left put an end to American freedom? And, of course, there’s the big overarching anxiety—have we already ruined the world we live in? 

We’re not the first generation to live in an apocalyptic age Think about the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as throngs of Alans and Suevi and Vandals and Goths overwhelmed it. Think about the black death. Think about the atomic cold war of the last century. But, still, we’re in the midst of something big whose outcome we really can’t foresee right now. And that’s scary enough.

One of the main occasions of apocalyptic anxiety is the point where one human community finds itself being ground down by another. The prophet Jeremiah lived in just such an age. The kingdom of Judah, the last remaining chunk of independent Israel, was under siege by the vastly more powerful empire of Babylon. It was also fragmenting from within as people fought with one another over the scraps; and neighboring peoples were circling around like jackals hoping to pick up something tasty. And, in that time of anxiety, Jeremiah found a message of apocalyptic hope. God says to him:

In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.

There’s no date attached, but, still, it’s the kind of message every human community longs for when it finds itself being destroyed or shoved aside or despised—some greater power to intervene and turn the tables on our enemies. Some apocalyptic thinkers like to elaborate on the punishment of our enemies. Jeremiah’s focus, though, is on the life and welfare of his own community. Yes, Judah will be saved from its enemies. But the great thing is that, as it starts over again, it will live in justice and righteousness—will once again return to its own highest ideals. 

Paul holds up the same kind of hope for the little Christian congregation in Thessalonica, a church he had founded and loved dearly. “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” And because Paul loves them he visits them when he can and he prays for them always. And what does he pray for? “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love.” “A community of love” is another way of saying what Jeremiah called “a community of justice and righteousness.” For Paul and Jeremiah both, there is a hope that God will indeed intervene. Paul speaks of “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” But, to him, the end of the world as it is now is important because it will bring the full realization of the world as it could be and should be—a just and loving community.

Later Christians sometimes find it hard to stay focused on justice and love. One great desire in later Christian apocalyptic has been to specify more precisely how horribly those other people are going to suffer. Another has been to pin down God’s timetable so that you can know exactly how long you have to wait for the end to come. There’s been a lot of that in our own times! And even Jesus’ disciples were concerned about this. In Luke’s Gospel, a little before the passage we read this morning, they ask him, “Teacher when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And Jesus’ first words in response are “Beware that you are not led astray.” Jesus knows that this will be a key opportunity for charlatans and for people whose apocalyptic enthusiasm arise out of their own delusions. 

The part of his speech that we heard this morning starts off, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars—and on earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” Yeah. So what else is new? Jesus tells the apostles that there will be signs in the heavens, but he doesn’t say whatsigns. And, given the importance (and respectability) of astrology in the ancient world, some of the disciples probably thought, “Well, yes, there are always signs in the heavens. How is that going to help us?” Then Jesus goes on to the talk about the seas and the waves. Yes, there are always storms and, in our times, rising sea levels, to make them worse. Then he talks about people “fainting with fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.” Well, yes. Every age has some opportunities like that. 

And finally Jesus goes on to say, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” When did they begin? Long before the disciples’ time or ours! Jesus is saying that the time to start paying attention is now, whenever that may be. And it’s not just the time to pay attention; it’s the time to act like people who trust God’s grace and love: Stand up straight! Lift your heads! You are not mere victims, even if your enemies and victimizers still seem to be in control. It’s like the fig tree, he says: when it starts to leaf out, you know summer is coming.

All this is hard to grasp. But it’s true. People have been known to find peace, justice, love in themselves, with God’s help, even under truly terrible circumstances, impossible though it seems. But then—as if all this were not difficult enough—Jesus adds something even harder to imagine. “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That fig tree has sprouted leaves almost two thousand times now and the end—in the global, catastrophic sense that Jesus’ disciples were thinking of—still hasn’t happened. 

What has happened? Something has been planted inside this world that can triumph even under dire adversity: Jesus’ message of love. It was first planted, of course, at the creation of the world, but we always have trouble grasping how central it is. Jesus keeps underlining it, again and again and again. Paul grasped what a profound difference it could make for people in this world. Jeremiah rejoiced to hear that there would still be a time when God’s love would bring justice. But all this doesn’t have to wait for the literal end of the world before it can become known among us, before it can create a new world even inside this fragmented, sometimes cruel world that we live in now. It still holds good and it creates a single generation out of all those who hear it and grasp it, a generation now thousands of years old, a generation that includes us. 

Remember his words to his disciples—us, too: “Stand up. Raise your heads.” Become new now. Live by love. 

There’s a thousand-year-old Advent hymn that celebrates both the first advent at Bethlehem and the second one at the end of all things. And it ends with this prayer addressed to Jesus:

By your first advent, O Lord, claim us as just and faithful;

by your second, set us free.

So that when you judge

all deeds

in the bright light,

we, then, clothed

in unblemished garments,

may follow

your footsteps

wherever we find them. 

That’s the great hope of Advent: to complete our journey into love along the path that God is showing us. 

Note: A full translation of the tenth century sequence hymn Salus aeterna can be found in Run, Shepherds, Run: Poems for Advent and Christmas, ed. by me (Harrisbug: Morehouse, 2005.