Advent begins today. For those who may not know, Advent is what church folk call a liturgical season, meaning a stretch of time when the liturgy focuses one of the fundamental themes of Christian belief.
We signal this new season by the colors we use for the vestments and the cloths that hang from the altar and the pulpit: blue for Advent, or purple. Solemn deep colors, inviting reflection.
Advent isn’t a very long liturgical season. It’s only four weeks, from now to the Sunday morning before Christmas. We’ll count off the weeks by lighting an additional candle in the advent wreath for each of the four Sundays.
Notice that, in Anglican liturgical tradition, it isn’t Christmas yet! We’ll get to Christmas, of course. The liturgical Christmas season begins on Christmas Eve, and lasts for the twelve days that follow. Then we celebrate, the twelve days of Christmas. But now, spiritually and ethically, we prepare. We take this time for reflection.
Although it is not long, Advent goes deep. Advent offers precious time to reflect on the values we serve and the choices that shape our future. Advent’s Scriptural theme is: wake up and see what is coming! prepare for the future!
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 with power and great glory. That day will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth… Pray that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, so that when the Son of Man returns you will be able to stand before him.
These warnings spoken by Jesus in the gospel of Luke are part of a literary narrative that is actually all about hope. These lines were written in a time of rapid historical event, when, in fact, the Roman authorities suppressed a Jerusalem-based Jewish insurgency by destroying first the Jerusalem Temple, then, the city itself.
Some Christianists use this literature to construct a fantasy of the Second Coming of Christ as an imminent rapture, in which the born-again will be taken up into the sky out of harm’s way as the world ends, while all the rest will suffer horribly. Nice God! Not only is this a twisted idea of God, and a distortion of the whole meaning of the Bible, but it has underwritten disastrous know-nothing ecological policies in this administration. We have to realize that Jesus’ words are not meant to inspire fear or to terrify people into submission! Exactly the opposite. They are given to reassure a suffering community that, even though the world they knew is ended, they need not give up hope, for their God has a plan for the future and is with them in their struggle.
I thought about these words as I walked in the Concord woods yesterday, the sun bright and the air brisk and clear. Walking in those woods is a tonic; gets the blood moving and clears the head and puts worries in perspective. My companion dog, a 13 year old one-eyed Brittany, intoxicated by the scents of the wild, bounds along the trails like a pup. The natural world frees us from self-absorption and into a wider awareness of living connection to all beings. Not only on idyllic walks in the open country but everywhere, in the city as well as the wilderness, the natural world is the matrix of our existence. Without a right relation to the natural world, we cannot be whole or holy.
Some Christians claim that we are separate from nature, that we are made to live apart from this world. The old Lutheran theology in some of the cantata texts tend heavily that way. Certainly you can take that dualistic notion from some isolated passages of Scripture, including the apocalyptic literature you hear during Advent about the end of the world. But if you gain a sense of the whole of the Bible and its overarching vision, you will see that this world is exactly where we meet God.
In truth, the deepest beliefs of Christianity contradict dualism. The Incarnation, for example, and the Resurrection—both are symbols that anchor the fulfillment of human existence as spirit-in-flesh. Anglican tradition is definitively incarnational. (Think of the priest John Donne’s metaphysical poetry, worldly and sacred.) You cannot be whole without body and soul.
Given our foundational belief that life on earth is the ultimate blessing, this Advent, as we read the signs in the sun and moon, in the rivers and lakes and seas, in the crazy weather patterns and the melting of glaciers everywhere, we perceive a renewed summons to awaken from our nation’s political-based denial. Now is the time to face the future that even now is breaking in, and to take action.
Whatever Jesus’ warning meant in the first century, let it serve now to call our attention to the vulnerability of the natural world. Let Jesus summon us now to examine our way of living, and to change what we can so that the world may live.
Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth is an essential Advent meditation. You may have seen it on the big screen, or now you can see it at home on DVD. It is an accessible digest of the science of global warming. There is no scientific disagreement about global warming. The so-called debate is misinformation put out for political purpose. The reality is that the patterns of production and consumption in modern civilization are creating changes in the earth’s atmosphere. Unless we change these patterns they will result in world-wide catastrophe for humanity and all other living beings.
The polar icecaps are melting; the great glaciers are disappearing. Air temperatures and sea temperatures are getting hotter; patterns of rain and drought are impairing whole regions’ capacity to sustain life.
In the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, climate change will degrade all life on earth.
Because the problem is so big, we are apt to become trapped between the poles of denial or despair. But we can’t afford the luxury of psychological retreat. It is deeply unethical to let this happen.
As Gore says, too many people go straight from denial to despair without doing anything to make a difference.
We in the US cause at least a third of the world’s global warming. By our patterns of production and consumption, each of us is a cause of global warming. Therefore each of us can do something to change it.
There are many things we can do as individuals and as a community that keeps faith with the world. We’ve heard the list. Now is the time to redouble our efforts:
We are a part of a great interdependent whole. We are like instrumentalists who play individual parts in the symphony of the earth, but now we are way off key. In Advent are summoned to reflect on the values we serve and the choices that shape our common future. Advent’s theme is: wake up and see what is coming! prepare for the time to come!
Jesus speaks of himself mysteriously as the son of man. Allow that title to expand in your imagination. Imagine, if you will, the son of man as humanity itself, evolved precisely to live in the matrix of this earth, human beings fully alive to the divine life they share.
Imagine the son of man as your own child, or grandchild. Gore points out that future generations will ask ‘What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had the chance?’ Resolve to live in such a way that you could face him or her and say ‘My dear, I did all that could be done to make the world ready for you.’
But should the task threaten to overwhelm you or drive out hope, remember the profound promise of faith embedded in those ancient Biblical texts: never lose heart; renew your strength, and persevere. For your God is near; the very breath of life is divine; the world to come is to be a kingdom of grace.
Therefore repent, change what must be changed, so that the earth and all that abide therein may live abundantly in a world without end.