"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 in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place,
stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
(Luke 21:25-28)
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when
Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his
brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias
ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of
God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the
region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins, as it is written in
the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out
in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every
valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the
crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh
shall see the salvation of God.'" (Luke 3:1-6)
As I read the passage from
Luke 21:25-28 (our Gospel reading for November 29, the first Sunday of Advent)
and considered its imagery – stars falling, people fainting, heaven shaking - I
couldn’t help remembering the chorus of a song by the group REM:
“It’s the end of
the world as we know it/It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the
end of the world as we know it/And I feel fine….”
We are now in Advent, that
season of hoping and waiting for God to break into our lives and into our
world. At church, we’re singing the
haunting, plaintive Advent hymns, such as “O Come, O Come Emanuel” and
“Watchman, Tell Us Of The Night.” Over
the next two Sundays, we’ll be reading about John the Baptist, who reminds
absolutely nobody of jolly old St. Nick.
But our beautiful Christmas banners are up as well, and the crèche will soon
be up as well, along with the singing reindeer head in the social hall
downstairs that I love and look forward to seeing and hearing every year. At the mall, commercial Christmas is in full
swing – retail’s holiest day of the year, Black Friday, has already come and
gone, and lights, Christmas trees, Christmas carols and mall Santa Clauses
provide the visual props and background music for the shopping that all the malls
and big box stores fervently hope we’ll do – for this season will make or break
their profit margins for the year. To
parody Luke’s words, “When these things begin to take place, look down into
your wallets, for retail’s redemption draweth nigh…..”
All of these images seem
non-threatening, business-as-usual. But don’t let that Babe in the manger fool
you! When we sing “O Come, O Come
Emanuel”, we are singing for God to come and be with us, for this is what
Emanuel means – God with us. We are
singing “O Come, O Come God With Us”.
And God indeed comes to be with us, not to bless us as we are or the
world as it is, but to change us and the world into the persons and world that
God wants us to be. (As the saying goes, “God loves us just as we are; God
loves us too much to let us stay that way.”) Indeed, when we sing “O Come O Come Emanuel”,
we are quite literally singing for “the end of the world as we know it” – and
the beginning of a world that’s much better, the world as God envisions it! Thanks
be to God!
Most of those in Jesus’ day
who welcomed the coming of the Messiah had no stake in the world as it they
knew it. They had, in effect, been
abandoned both by the Roman Empire and by the Temple religious establishment in
Jerusalem. They paid heavy taxes both to
Rome and to Jerusalem. While at least from
Rome they got some public services in return for their taxes, such as roads and
aqueducts, they also paid with their taxes for their own oppression by soldiers
and other lackeys of the Roman Empire.
While the Emperor Tiberius and Pontius Pilate and Philip and Lysanias and
Annas and Caiaphas (all named in the Luke 3:1-6 passage above) liked the world very
much just as it was, for ordinary people, “the end of the world as they knew
it” sounded like a wonderful idea, because the world as they knew it was mostly
a world of hurt. John the Baptist
proclaimed the coming of the One who would bring about “the end of the world as
they knew it.” Herod thought that the
end of the world as Herod knew it wasn’t such a good idea, and had John
executed….and later Annas and Caiaphas and the Temple religious establishment would
bully Pontius Pilate (himself a bully, a brutal, violent man, historians of the
period tell us) into doing the same with Jesus.
How about us? What does the coming of the Christ Child mean
to us? Are we ready for the end of the
world as we know it? If we’re heavily
invested in the world as it is – the super-rich getting super-richer and
everyone else getting super-poorer, environmental devastation on a cataclysmic,
global scale, seemingly unlimited government funding for weapons and prisons
but not for education and infrastructure and the care of the poor, and
coin-operated politicians delivering only more of the same (regardless of their
campaign promises) our answer is a very loud NO! And
that “NO!” sets us outside the will of God, unless and until we repent. But if we’re willing to listen, not to the
modern day equivalents of the Emperor Tiberius and Pontius Pilate and Philip
and Lysanias and Annas and Caiaphas (you can fill in the names of the President
(regardless of party), the leaders of Congress (regardless of party), and the televangelists
and other bought-and-paid-for religious hucksters who bless and support the
rich and powerful), but listen instead to the words of John the Baptist (whose
“baptism of repentance” meant disengaging from the power plays of his day in
order to tap into the real power available to God’s people) and especially listen
to the words of Jesus of Nazareth, we may be ready for something more,
something better, which Jesus called the Reign of God.
Make no mistake: the world
is changing, whether we’re on board with change or not. The endless, meaningless wars, the senseless
violence, the unconscionable greed, the dire ecological conditions and
predictions about which we read online or in the daily news are what Jesus
called “birth pangs” (Mark 13:8) – and we are going through them, together. And ultimately, the nature of what is being born
is in God’s hands, and therefore we have faith that eventually it will be good. But we as Christians can act as midwives,
helping our neighbors through the birth pangs, however prolonged, in hopes of
giving birth to a world that is more just, more peaceful, less violent….a world
more attuned to the will of God. Indeed,
John’s call (a restatement of Isaiah’s call) to “prepare the way of the Lord”
tells us that we are not to withdraw from the world and fold our hands, but be
active participants in welcoming the better world – the Reign of God - that God
promises.
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and
raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” “It’s the end of the world
as we know it……and we’ll be fine.” Another
– and a better – world is possible. Indeed, to quote Indian author Arundhati Roy,
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can
hear her breathing.” Thanks be to God!
A Blessed
Advent and Merry Christmas to all –
See you in
church –
Pastor
Dave
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