Advent 1C. 28 November 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Jeremiah 33:14-16 [Jerusalem] will be called [the Holy One] is our righteousness.
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. Someone has testified somewhere.
Luke 21:25-36 Raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.
O startling God, grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.
Good morning! Happy Advent! It’s the Church’s New Year and the beginning of a season characterized by re-awakening, of waking up to re-examine our collective systems, our institutions. Advent calls for corporate, collective reflection, and repentance. It’s like an annual check-up for our communal systems. It’s a season of waking up even more to reports of sin, chaos, and devastation among the nations confused and disturbed by the roaring sea, the waves, and the shaking, agitated heavens. Fortunately, that’s just what our Gospel reading addresses this morning.
For Christians staying close to the scriptures, the season of Advent is not about decorating and shopping for a holly, jolly festival, but about remaining faithful in the midst of so much sorrow, deprivation, terror, and death. The powers of heaven certainly are being shaken, and I would argue that this scenario is as true now as it was at the end of the first century, as true as it is in every age. In Luke, Jesus says, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Of course, two generations had already passed away between when Jesus reportedly uttered those words and when the Gospel-writer we call Luke wrote them down for his community. That and the analogy of the fig tree are what lead me to believe that end times happen frequently.
But before I go further into the Gospel lesson for today, I want to say something about the three verses from Jeremiah that are lifted out of a much-larger narrative about the restoration of Jerusalem and the healing of its leadership and citizenship. Jeremiah’s chief complaints are that religious observances are insincere, that the people are not trusting in the Holy One, and that social injustice is rampant. When we just hear the three verses read, many of us have ears tuned to hear “a righteous Branch to spring up for David,” and we think, oh, that’s Jesus! It seems intentionally misleading to drop these verses from Jeremiah into a church service for the first Sunday of Advent. While Jesus did do many deeds of justice and righteousness in the land, and he certainly shared the prophet Jeremiah’s complaints, the city of Jerusalem did not live into its name in Jesus’ time, a name which means peace and well-being. It is not known as “The Lord is our righteousness,” as in, the God of Israel is our right-relationship. The Jewish Publication Society translates this as, “The Lord is our vindicator.” Vindicator means the one who shows that the city should not be blamed for crimes or mistakes, or the one who shows that those who have been criticized or doubted are actually correct. The city will be called that because there will be healing and joy following deprivation and sorrow. These verses follow instructions to invest in property in a desolate place because the Holy One is working with power and grace, loving and forgiving people in order to transform the society; and the people are being called to get on board. I think of another city with an aspirational name that is under-realized: Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.
Both 1 Thessalonians and the Gospel of Luke are about living through very challenging times. Both expect an apocalypse (a revelation), and so should we. The late Fred Craddock wrote about eschatological (end-times) thinking as: [1]
Vital to faithful conduct and to hope which resists cynicism. There will be an end to life as it now is, an end that comes as both judgment and redemption…to chase away the demons of dulling dissipation and cheer us with the news not only that today is a gift of God but also that tomorrow we stand in the presence of the Son of [Humanity].
I want you to notice something about the verse that says, “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” The phrase is in quotes because it’s a reference to the wisdom and apocalyptic literature of the Hebrew Bible: Daniel, Joel, Isaiah, the Psalms, Zephaniah. Who is the they that will see this strange vision? For a long time I heard they as a general, impersonal way of saying people; but the grammatical referent for they is the powers of the heavens. It’s the powers of the heavens that will see, through the fog, that the Son of Humankind is coming with power and great glory.[2] The powers of the heavens will see the Son of Humankind, the peasant of peasants, coming again (and again) to redeem the world.
Luke’s lesson for us is that, in every age, people faint from fear and foreboding of the calamities they see and experience coming upon the world. Luke’s question for us is, “How do you remain faithful when horrific things are happening?” Rather than looking for the Son of Man coming in the fog, Jesus is instructing his followers to look at the fig tree and all the trees. This is something we can do: rather than fainting from fear and foreboding when chaos and devastation are all around, stand tall and raise up your heads. In other words, this is not the time to keep your heads down, hide out, get small, play it safe, crouch, and try not to be noticed. Jesus warns his followers to be on guard that we aren’t caught in the trap of self-indulgent excess, careless and wasteful expenditures (what dissipation means); in numb and unsteady lurching, passed out (what drunkenness means); or in paralyzing fear that keeps us from living and loving. The phrase the worries of this life is not a garden-variety anxiety that Prozac might mitigate. It was an expression Luke used to refer to accumulating wealth for oneself when the appropriate use of material resources is to support the community and those who are under-resourced.[3]
What are the signs that show you that the Realm of God is near? What do you look for when you see everything coming undone? How do you remember that the Realm of God is near: your redemption, the revaluation of your dignity is drawing near? That’s best done in community. The opportunity to get close to God is never closer than in the middle of devastation. Lovingkindness is never more important, never more valuable than when the world is being turned upside down and inside out. Loving kindness is how we get ready to stand before the Son of Humankind. In Jesus’ instruction to pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Humankind, you is plural, not singular. Pray that you all–Emmanuel Church, The Episcopal Church, The City of Boston, New Englanders, Americans, you nations–have the strength. In Advent, perhaps more than any other time in the church year, the Church’s focus is to better provide comfort for those who are most afflicted. Our focus in Advent is properly on large-scale repentance and preparation, clearing the barriers, and making the path direct between people and the shalom of God.
Jesus tells his hearers what to do when (whenever) it seems like the world is getting turned upside down. When confusion and fear are colluding to reduce us to passivity and despair, knocking the wind right out of us, we are not to squander our energy, engage in avoidance, create distance, or indulge our appetites for personal security. We are to stand up, raise our heads, and know that redemption, revaluation of our dignity is near. We are to look at what is right in front of us right now. You know, the Biblical idea of end times is not about being transported from a doomed world into never-never land. Rather, it is about the end of injustice and poverty, of war and violence, of hunger and oppression. It is about transforming our communities and our institutions into bodies of well-being, of peace, so that every city can be called, “The Holy One is our righteousness.” [4]
In her new book, The Awakened Brain, Columbia University professor and psychologist Lisa Miller writes about spirituality and the human quest for an inspired life. [5] She explores the impoverishment that happens in peoples’ lives when we are unaware of, or disconnected from, a spiritual life. Spiritual practices and experiences create feelings of awe, cultivate awareness of being buoyed by something bigger than ourselves, realizations that we are not alone. She says, “When we awaken, we see life as a sacred journey. We don’t control it, we navigate it….We’re in dialogue with this vital magnificent life that’s never what we mail ordered.” She explains that we can learn to acknowledge what she calls “a golden thread”, which guides us forward through our losses and failures, our disappointments and devastations. Awakened awareness opens us up to possibility in the future: that we’re going to meet people who will be meaningful to us, that we’re going to discover ways of being we don’t even know yet.
Jesus seems to be saying that in the midst of the devastation, in the descending cloud of unknowing, in the fog of fear and grief, the Human One is coming. Pick your heads up, look for, and see the signs of hope, which are right in plain sight, right now: small and seemingly insignificant, as if you were noticing little leaves sprouting out of buds on the branches – tiny, tiny, hopeful signs of growth, change, new life. Notice the nearness of Love right now. Pick up your head and look for a helper if you need help. If you don’t need help, it’s even more important to pick up your head, so you can see who else needs help. Look for the chance to be the nearness of Love for the person closest to you.
Christian hope, according to Jurgen Moltman, is not an “opium of the beyond;” rather, it is, “The divine power that makes us alive in this world.” It’s not a hope that things will return to the way that they were, that the past will be different, or even that a bad thing will never happen in the future. It’s hope that right now Love can redeem what seems dead, shameful, worthless, wasted, or hopeless in us and through us, in here and out there. Advent is a season of reckoning and a season of hope that right now Love can do that. Wake up and see that right now Love is making a way where there is no way. Wake up and see that Love is very near, and we all can help close the distance.
[1] Fred B. Craddock, quoted in Bible Workbench 14:1.
[2] Thanks to Andrew Perriman’s 11/18/2013 blog post, https://www.postost.net/commentary/who-or-what-will-see-son-man-coming-clouds-where, which cites David Neville, A Peaceable Hope: Contesting Violent Eschatology in New Testament Narratives (Ada MI: Baker Academic, 2013).
[3] Ronald J. Allen and Clark M. Williamson, Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), pp. 169-170.
[4] Marcus Borg and John D. Crossan, The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’s Birth (New York: HarperOne, 2007), p. 240.
[5] Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life (New York: Random House, 2021).