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The Rev. Carol Wedell
November 29, 2009
"Lucy," says Charlie Brown, "Do you think the world will come to an end in our time?" Lucy: "I try not to think about such things." "Well," says Charlie Brown, "Now that I've brought it to your attention, what do you think?" Lucy: "When things that I try not to think about are brought to my attention, I try not to think about them." I suspect that many of us may feel like Lucy, as we approach our gospel lesson for this first Sunday of Advent. There are plenty of things on our "to do" list to get ready for Christmas, but contemplating the end of time is usually not one of them!
Our Gospel reading is full of warnings which sound like the latest news reports. If we did not heed Jesus' warning, we might even be tempted to try to set a date for the so-called "end times" and the end of human history. The language is typical of the apocalyptic writings of Jesus' day and earlier: graphic, spectacular and attention-grabbing. We can hear warnings to be alert and to hold fast to faith. (With thanks to Stew Clark) But like Lucy, most of us are more comfortable with an Advent orientation that looks back toward a birth in Bethlehem rather than a future described in such startling terms. Instead of holding our heads up, in anticipation of Christ's coming, we are tempted to stick our heads in the sand! Yet Advent's face to the future also deserves our attention.
Let us take off our "Lucy" mentality, then, and be open to the Good News for us in Luke, the 21st chapter:
For many of us, the music of Advent and Christmas is one of our favorite parts of the season. Carols, hymns, and anthems evoke deep emotions for many of us. Our family sings one each night as our dinner grace. You'll notice that once again this year I am mixing Advent hymns, which focus specifically on our waiting for Jesus, along with beloved Christmas carols, that we so seldom get to sing. Each Sunday as we move closer to Christmas, we'll sing more and more carols - always many familiar ones, and often a new one that will tie together with the day's readings.
These four Sundays prior to Christmas, I want us to look at three distinct "Songs of Advent" that we find in Scripture. Running through and around the texts of Advent, we hear the melody of hope. Today I want to look at Luke's song of the future.
To be sure Advent invites us to look back to the time before Jesus, before his humble birth. We also look back to the previous Christmases we have experienced in our own lives: the family traditions, the favorite recipes, the special ornaments, the stories that are told and retold. But Advent also invites us to look forward to God's continuing activity in our lives. Advent is about God - a God who came into human history in Jesus Christ and who promises to continue entering history - yours, mine - and what still lies ahead, to the fulfillment promised to long ago
Both the reading from Jeremiah and the gospel reading offer hope when things appear hopeless. The prophet Jeremiah had witnessed the unfaithfulness of the people and the king. Babylon had laid siege to Jerusalem, with its destruction in sight. The world as he knew it was falling apart. Jeremiah himself had been thrown into prison. To put it mildly, things were not going well.
In our gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus, just prior to his own passion, predicts terrible times - distress among the nations, natural disaster, suffering and persecution. It's important to note, however, that the gospel of Luke was written after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, a time of enormous turmoil and uncertainty. So the people for whom Luke wrote already had personal experience with suffering. They knew full well that the world wasn't as God intended for it to be.
I doubt there are many of us here who cannot relate to the darkness that threatens to overcome us. Like our family, many of you have dealt with the darkness of grief or illness. Many of you are coping with major life transitions, or are filled with anxiety about your future or the future of your family. We are worried about the world our children live in, about the stress our adolescents and young adults face.
And if you are not personally living in the shadows, you only have to open the newspaper to see the state of affairs. Far too many in our community and nation are dealing with the challenge of unemployment or financial devastation. Our country is still actively engaged in war in two countries, and every day more fallen soldiers return in caskets. Too many are without adequate health care, without shelter, without food. Clearly, the world is not as it should be.
Listen to this cultural observation: "There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limits in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth?" Would you have guessed that this was written by Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago?! Clearly, our sense that the world is coming unglued is not unique to our generation. We are not the first Christians to look at the world around us and see cause for alarm. Like us, the first century Christians whom Luke had in mind when he recorded these words, were tempted to look around them and see a world where things seemed to be going from bad to worse. What is the world coming to when we need amber alerts to respond to kidnappings and filters to screen out offensive spam from the internet?
It's like a Dilbert comic strip from several years ago. Dilbert's pet, Dogbert, announces that he has developed a completely reusable newspaper, the last newspaper that people will ever have to buy. Dilbert looks at the headlines that read, "Pope denounces violence. Prices continue to rise. Unrest in the Middle East." They're the same headlines that were in the news 50 years ago. And we fear they'll be the same headlines forever.
It's about this time that one secular Christmas song says it pretty well. Until an online colleague reminded me, I had forgotten these lyrics from the musical Mame:
We need a little Christmas
Right this very minute.
It hasn't snowed a single flurry,
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry!
So climb down the chimney;
Put up the brightest string of lights I've ever seen.
Slice up the fruitcake;
It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.
OK, it doesn't get any more secular or cheesy than that. But do you remember the next verse?
For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder,
Need a little Christmas now.
It's true isn't it? We do need some of the hope of Christmas to peer through the darkness. We too wait for that same miracle, that same hope. We wait for the light of that first Advent candle to cut through the darkness and remind us that God's promise is sure: we are not alone. And just when things look to be their worst, just when the news seems only to be bad, the promise of hope appears. Luke tells us that we simply have to wake up and be alert to its coming. Glimmers of light are already here, if we will look up and pay attention.
Both of our readings are set in a context where the darkness of the world was readily apparent. And it is precisely in the midst of that darkness, that the light of hope emerges. Jeremiah declares, "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made....a righteous Branch will spring up...and he shall execute justice and righteousness...Jerusalem will live in safety." In Luke we read, "Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
In other words, instead of focusing on the darkness, on our worries and fears, God calls us to live expectantly in hope. We are called to stand amidst all of the chaos and confusion with our heads up, looking for the future God has in store for us. Keep your heads up and look for the new thing that God is doing. This Advent I am holding on for dear life to the reassurance that God intends to make the world right again. Jeremiah's "little book of consolation" is comforting: "The days are surely coming when I will fulfill the promise I made."
During his 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela refused to let despair have the last word. He held his head up, looking forward to God's future. In his autobiography he writes, I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep spirits strong even when the body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving depravation. Your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty. I always knew that some day I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man. I am fundamentally an optimist. Part of being an optimist is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward.
Mandela understood that Christian hope continues to move into the future toward the light of Christ. Christian hope is not hope in general, not synonymous with all the little hopes for which wait; for a white Christmas and presents under the tree. Christian hope is the hope given flesh and blood, shape and substance in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians can offer a hopeful alternative by being willing to live a life that believes that God is at work, yet without denying that pain and grief, hardship and turmoil, tragedy and death are part of life.
To sing the Advent song of the future is to sing of that hope: that God's promises are true. Ultimately, God is in charge. The God of history goes with us into the future. Scripture continually affirm, as it does in our readings today that God works through darkness to kindle light. The tomb of death becomes the birth place of new life. So even when we are weighed down with grief or with worry, we also sing a song of hope. God is with us, showing us in Jesus how to live in this darkness: waiting, alert and active, prepared for the time when God's reign will come in its fullness.
And friends, there are glimmers of hope if we have eyes to see. Even while acknowledging our circumstances, we hear "the joy that calls to us like music from tomorrow." (The Christian Century, Nov. 17 09, p. 21). The song of the future is a song of hope. Can you hear it? Perhaps a frightening disease has gone into remission. Maybe an adolescent or young adult has begun to shape values of compassion and respect replacing self-centeredness and sarcasm.
What we can never forget is that the singing of that song of the future, that song of hope, is not a passive activity. We can't quietly hum it to ourselves. Rather, we are called to keep our heads up and our eyes open. As Leonard Beechy says in The Christian Century, "They are a summons to a larger life in a world immune to the holy and incapable of imagining possibilities outside itself."(November 17, 2009, p. 21)
Friends, who will sing that song if not us? Jesus is clear that we are the ones who are called to sing God's song of hope, no matter what is going on in the world around us. We stand in stark contrast to a culture which suggests that hope is found under the Christmas tree or in stock portfolios (even with the market on the rise.) Advent is not a time of idleness. It is a passionate and active waiting. As Diana Butler Bass has written, Hope is a verb. It is active, ever-living, restless. It needs to be nurtured, taught, envisioned, shared. Hope for healing; hope for community; hope for global brother- and sisterhood; hope for transformation; hope for a world where neighbors do unto others; hope for a future of grace, mercy, and love.
(http://blog.sojo.net/2009/09/09/hope-is-a-verb/
To sing the song of hope is to prepare. Do you have guests coming for Christmas? I know the preparations that will be occurring in our household! To be sure, God is in control and Jesus is coming. And we are the ones who need to be waiting with serving hands, not twiddling thumbs. The Advent song of the future is heard when Christians care more for the needs of others, and less for what's on their Christmas list. Are we singing on behalf of the homeless, the victims of domestic or sexual abuse or hate crimes? We sing a song of hope when we feed the hungry, care for the sick, living as those who actively show God's love with every action and every word.
Dom Helder Camara, the great bishop from Brazil writes:
The spirit is breathing.
All those with eyes to see,
Women and men with ears for hearing
detect a coming dawn;
a reason to go on.
They seem small, these signs of dawn,
perhaps ridiculous.
All those with eyes to see,
women and men with ears for hearing
uncover in the night
a certain gleam of light;
they see the reason to go on.
While darkness and devastation continue to surround us, so does God's love and a promise that in the end, God's reign will persist, a song of hope that never ends. Will you sing it?
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