Scripture:
Jeremiah 33:14-16, Psalm 25:1-10 I
Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke
21:25-36
Today is the First Sunday of Advent, and the first Sunday of
the church calendar. Advent, and
especially the first Sunday of Advent, is always a reminder that the church and
the world have different agendas, that calendar time – the Greek word is chronos – and God’s time – the Greek
word is kairos – are out of
sync. On one hand, in some ways the
church is ahead of the calendar – our year begins the first Sunday of Advent,
usually the last Sunday in November, while calendar year 2016 doesn’t start
until January 1, more than a month from now.
On the other hand, in some ways the world’s agenda pushes ahead of the
church’s agenda. Momentum for Christmas
sales has been building for some weeks now, and with the coming of the retail
calendar’s holiest day – Black Friday – it’s all Christmas, all the time, with
Christmas music across the dial on the radio and as background music at the
mall. But in the church, we don’t just
fast-forward to Christmas, but celebrate Advent – a time of waiting, a time of
anticipating, the coming of the promised Messiah. And so we do not begin Advent with Christmas
carols, but with the plaintive Advent hymns – O Come, O Come Emanuel –
requesting God to come and be with us.
We sing hymns of anticipation – “Watchman, Tell Us Of The Night”. We sing, believing that while God’s
fulfillment of our requests and anticipation do not come on our schedule, they will come at the right time, which is not
calendar time, not chronos time, but kairos time, God’s time.
And if Advent in general throws our sense of time out of
sync with the world, today’s Gospel reading will really do a number on us: “"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…..” This doesn’t sound anything
like “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Indeed, each year, the Gospel reading for the
first Sunday of Advent comes, not from the beginning of the Gospel, but toward
the end, when Jesus makes predictions of a time of dislocation and upheaval
soon to come – predictions that began with Jesus saying that the Jerusalem
Temple, glorious as it was in Jesus’ day, would be destroyed, with not one
stone left upon another…and these predictions were fulfilled, at least in part,
by the invasion of Jerusalem by Rome and destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem
in 70 AD. The destruction of the Temple,
the center of Jewish life, would have been far more wrenching than the
departure of a pastor or the closure of a church would be to us….because no
matter how beloved, there are always other pastors, and there are always other
churches. But for the Jews of that day,
the Temple was the focus of their religious life, the center of all that was
good and holy in their lives, the house where God was literally thought to
dwell – and Rome’s invasion of Jerusalem literally leveled all of that to the
ground. For them, it really was like the
sun, moon and stars falling from heaven, and utter darkness prevailing upon the
earth.
As we read this passage, with its graphic images of
destruction and fear and foreboding, I think we can relate. The world, the nation appears to be becoming
increasingly unglued. Here in Philadelphia, many were shocked by news footage
of a van of women and children setting upon a homeless veteran, hitting and
kicking him until he was taken to the hospital, where he died of his injuries. While the news media stoked fears of
terrorism in the United States by radical Muslims, a homegrown terrorist –
let’s call him what he is – one Robert Lewis Dear – white, male, and Christian,
attacked a Planned Parenthood site in Colorado, killing three people, including
a police officer, Garrett Swasey, age 44 and injuring nine others, including (if
I remember correctly) five police officers.
It’s disconcerting when the news media primes us to fear Arabs and
Muslims, and then we find terrorists that look like me, that look like many of
us, even though a recent survey of law enforcement agencies states that as
concerned as they are about violence from Islamist groups, they are more concerned about homegrown
terrorists - white supremacists – many of whom profess to be Christians.[i] And international tensions are high after
Turkey shot down a Russian plane….and these were just a few of this week’s news
stories. While we haven’t seen signs in
the sun, moon and stars, climate change is bringing the roar of the sea and
waves to places that never anticipated or intended to become beachfront
property…and absent rapid and radical change on the part of human beings and
human institutions such as corporations and the military, worse is to
follow. The possibilities for world war
and for the destruction of life on earth are surely enough to make people faint
with fear and foreboding, if we allow ourselves to be conscious of them. And
yet, it is at this exact moment that, according to Luke, Jesus said, “Now when
these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.”
Our reading from Mark’s gospel two weeks ago sounded very
similar – it was a parallel passage to the one read today from Luke’s gospel –
and it included the words, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” And so it is.
We are living in a time of transition, when much of what is familiar and
comforting to us is passing away, and something new is being born. And those of you who are mothers know that
birth is neither predictable nor painless.
And so we are in the midst of the birth pangs of change, and for many,
the pain is excruciating. We’re used to
the map of the world looking a certain way, and due to climate change and
rising sea levels, it almost certainly will not look the same in the
future…residents of long-inhabited islands are finding the sea lapping at their
door fronts, and even here in America we’re seeing flooding of a kind we hadn’t
seen in the past. Remember Hurricane
Sandy in 2012 – I dragged my fat, aging carcass up to New York for a day or two
to help with cleanup efforts organized by Occupy Sandy – basically volunteers
from across the country coming in and organizing residents to help one another,
because government and Red Cross efforts were completely inadequate…and I well
remember the devastation I saw…and three years later, many residents are still
dealing with the aftereffects. We’re
used to the flow of our lives looking a certain way, organized around work and
school and church schedules - and they may not in the future.
And as
much as we may try to stave it off, life in the church is changing as well;
religious writer Phyllis Tickle has written, looking back on church history,
that every 500 years or so, the worldwide church has a giant rummage sale, as
long established forms of worship and church organization are set aside and new
ones emerge. Around the year 400 it was
Constantine converting to Christianity and the church becoming accepted – some
would say coopted by – the state – and going through a process of
standardization, by adopting the creeds – the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed
- that we still use today. Around 1100
it was the split between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Western
Roman Catholic churches. Around 1500, the Reformation. And another 500 or so years later, we’re
going through another giant rummage sale.
It doesn’t mean that the core of our faith will change, but the way we
express it very well may. Many churches
across the country, Protestant and Catholic, are closing, and we’ve seen this
even in our own neighborhood with the closure of All Saints and Bridesburg
Baptist. And yet many younger people
have a deep faith and spirituality and are yearning for ways to express it.
What will the church of the future look like?
Will we go back to house churches, of the kind that nurtured the faith
of the earliest believers? Will worship
take place online? I think it’s safe to
say that many of the denominational structures and hierarchies will either
change or go by the wayside….and what new forms of church governance may
emerge, one can only guess. The faith
will go on, but the ways we express it may not look like what we grew up
with.
All this is deeply unsettling, but our Saviour tells us,
“when you see these things, stand up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.” When
everyone around us is fainting and falling and generally freaking out, our
faith tells us to stand up and to look up, to look to God.
For one my age, who was not around at the time, it’s
interesting to look back on some of the pivotal moments in world history or in
American history – say, the time of Hitler’s reign in Germany or the McCarthy
era, when paranoia over the “red menace” of communism destroyed so many careers
and lives, or the civil rights movement in our own country – times when the
actions of individuals and churches could really make a difference in either
letting lives be destroyed or saving them, letting injustice continue or
standing up for justice, and wondering what we would have done had we lived in
those tumultuous times. Would I have sheltered Jews in Hitler’s Germany, or
turned them in? Would I have named names
and turned in my neighbors on suspicion of being godless commies, or refused to
testify? Would I have marched with those
advocating for civil rights, or been among the crowds attacking them?
Well, we
need not wonder, because we are again living in such a pivotal moment, when
“business as usual” will not be sufficient, when our faith will be tested,
whether our faith is made of gold or of fool’s gold. It may not be people holding a weapon to our
heads and asking if we are a Christian…..I think it will more likely be members
of unpopular and hated groups asking us for help and refuge and sanctuary, as
Jews asked Christians in Germany during the Nazi era, and forcing a decision on
us whether to go with what our neighbors want, and say no, or to do the
difficult but Christian thing and help.
“When we see these things, stand up and lift your heads, for your
redemption is drawing nigh.”
I’ll close with Paul’s prayer for the church at
Thessalonica, also living in tumultuous times:
“And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another
and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your
hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the
coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
May it be so among us. Amen.
[i] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html?_r=0
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