Year C, Advent 1
Jer 33:14 – 16l Ps. 25:1-9; I Thess 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth distress among the nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.”
So Tuesday, I guess, the President is announcing if (and how many) more troops are being sent into combat in Afganistan. Troop levels are down in Iraq something like 18%, but the number of armed contractors is up 60%. There is a major climate change conference in Copenhagen this weekend coming up that is unlikely to act decisively enough to make a real difference, largely thanks to China and the US. Dubai’s economy, Dubia the icon of the Middle East, its economy is faltering? And I don’t know about you, but we had twenty-three to our house for Thanksgiving… I am still reeling.
But really, aren’t these the signs Jesus is talking about? Wars, rumors of wars, distress among the nations, the deafening roar of the sea, this planet shuddering under our footsteps?
Jane talked about the end of days a couple of weeks ago. She expressed her discomfort with the whole subject. I was raised UCC in Boxford, imagine how chagrinned I am about the apocalypse. I didn’t learn how to spell that world in Sunday school. Well, some years ago I was living in Portland, Oregon. It is a pretty progressive city, and it also has a concentration of Seventh Day Adventists. The big hospital is Adventist even. The Seventh Day Adventists are a very conservative denomination, quite literal in their use of Scripture, socially un-progressive. I don’t generally find a lot of common cause with them. They had a free newspaper that I read on occasion for fun, and I read this one article about the coming, the immanent apocolypse. It was about the signs. It was just as the second Gulf war was starting, and Climate change was beginning to be talked about, and 9/11 was fresh. It felt a lot like today, actually, if we really read the news. And the article said to beware of the Accuser, the Evil One. He wasn’t going to have horns or smell of brimstone. He wasn’t even going to be a single person. He’ll be hard to recognize, by design. The herald of the end of days is a trickster.
The thing that got me about this article was the artwork. There was this great photo of some men in very good, very dark suits, but their faces were hidden in a deep shadow. The Accuser is going to come in the form of those who seem to benefit from the Signs of Armageddon, the storms and the (rising) seas; the wars and rumors of war; the distress.
It is crazy out there, the world. Windy and I used to argue about if the world is really worse off now or it just seems it due to our very human myopia, always thinking most about now. I don’t know. Climate change is real, and we’ve never seen human impact this big before; but an ascending theory about the fall of Rome is that the soils and forests of central Italy were stripped bare and the capital could no longer support itself. I don’t know, but I do know it is crazy out there, and in reading Jeremiah and Luke, we can see that it was crazy out there back then, too. And it is crazy in here, in our own heads and hearts, in threadbare emotional lives, precarious financial lives, in physical health that comes and goes. We can be sure that it was the same back in the days of Jeremiah and in the days of Luke.
It IS crazy out there, it IS crazy in here. For all of us. Always. And if it isn’t, rest assured that we’ll make it crazy. It is the nature of things, the true nature of things. Jesus is this nature. His life was crazy. He lived that life fully, experiencing the completeness of being human. In that completeness of life, his fully Divine nature shone forth and the Word, like His words, will not, did not pass away.
As Christians we are called by Jesus Christ to live on a knife’s edge. We are required to live completely as Jesus did. To love recklessly, forgive regularly, pray religiously. How does Micah say it: to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God? We are called to do this in the face of a world that is, was and will ever be, crazy. And to add to it, we see this world through the eyes of the flawed, sinful, pretty crazy people we are. We have to love the world and everything in it and do all we can spread that love and compassion in everything we touch AND we can not get weighed down by it, we can not get all wrapped up in the drama of it all, for at any time it might just stop. The Parousia, the End is Near, always. We cannot sweat the small stuff, or the large stuff. We have to live lightly, in body and soul knowing that it is all so transient.
That is the lesson of Christ, and particularly at Advent, this season of preparation and waiting. We have to open ourselves to love with all our hearts, all our minds and all our souls AND we have to live lightly, not getting bogged down or tangled up. That is tough stuff. It is really hard, opening ourselves widely knowing that all of it is just temporary.
Now, we all do this, to some extent, already. We get dogs, who always die, but we love them. We fall in love with someone, assured of heartbreak for someone, but that doesn’t stop us. The trials and tribulations of children… we raise them to leave us. Or we should; raise them to leave us full of love and confidence. We do love and live as Christ teaches us in parts of our lives, we need to go all the way.
The amazing thing is that this prophesy of Christ’s, like all good prophesies, is self fulfilling. When he talks of these things taking place, the signs, and us standing before the Son of Man, he is not talking about some singular chain of events. No certain wars or specific disasters or plagues are THE SIGN. Like the Evil One in that Seventh Day Adventist article, it is more complex than that. It is more complex in that it is always happening, these signs, they are everywhere, and always. The craziness in the world and in our lives are THE SIGNS that the end is near. The end is not that the Light goes out, that IT ALL STOPS. It is not that dramatic. The end is you standing before the Son of Man, standing before God fully, having the veils pulled away and knowing that God is always with you. When you know this, the world ceases to be the world that it seems and becomes the world that it Is. In the light of Christ this world becomes the Kingdom of God. It is at hand, always, right now, right here. It always has been. And we find it living on that knife’s edge; loving fully and not being entrapped by it. It is not that the world changes by living this way, on the knife’s edge, but we change, and changed in this way, we can change the world. Maybe it is the only way to change the world.
Luke writes, “…when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” These things are taking place. Look around. Read the papers; look at your life. Stand up. Raise your heads. Love your dog or cat well, or get one and practice. Love your wife, your partner, your children, completely. Practice living in the Kingdom of God. Be alert, your redemption, and the Kingdom of God, is drawing near. It is Advent. He is coming, soon. AMEN
|