The First Sunday of Advent (Revised Common Lectionary, Year C)
November 29, 2009
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy
Listen Live!
Having trouble listening in?
If you can't see the buttons above to play the sermon, chances are you don't have Macromedia Flash installed. To download the components you need,
please visit: www.macromedia.com/downloads.
Apocalypse, from the Greek, apokálypsis, literally means “lifting the veil,” ostensibly to reveal something hidden, usually about the end of time.
Apocalyptic language, the sort of which Jesus speaks in today’s gospel,[1] as it presumes to describe an as yet to be experienced existential (verily, unearthly) state is, well, strange. These words about heavenly signs portending the terminus of human history strike our ears oddly, nonsensically. Not for the least of reasons being that most of us probably do not ascribe to an ancient Jewish view of history and cosmology – that there are two ages (this one with its consternatingly capricious mix of joy and sorrow, triumph and defeat, good and evil and the next one of God’s reign when love and justice shall stand forever sure) between which shall come the Day of the Lord filled with violent upheaval, being the cosmic birth pangs of the coming of that next, eternal age.
No, I don’t imagine that most (any?) of us believe this. Moreover, even if we did, I doubt seriously we would look forward to fainting in fear at the sight of darkened skies, the sound of tempestuous seas, the news of distressed and confused nations. Still more, even if this language did make sense, we probably wouldn’t like it. For beneath the words, beyond the imagery stands, lurks a transcendent god – distant and dispassionate, unreachable and unapproachable, ultimately unknowable, and perhaps unlikable. A god who, if sovereign creator, is the author of good and, apparently, from what we can observe, also allows evil. A god who, as we read the Job story, finally deigning to speak (to be responsible, response-able) in the face of that all too characteristic circumstance of bad things happening to good people, cannot muster any sympathy, only reminding a disconsolate humankind of its puniness.[2] A god who, given all that we know of life, in a word, hasn’t done all that well with this age. So, why trust what this same god intends for the next?
Perhaps we shouldn’t. But we are reading and reflecting on these words, the very existence of which, at the very least, suggests that they mattered, made sense to someone, somewhere, at some time. Who?
Jesus’ people. Those who, believing in a divine and dynamic arc of history, awaited with anticipation the coming Day of the Lord. And why wouldn’t they? Oppressed by the occupying Roman Empire – and previously by the Persians, then the Greeks – they were a dispirited and despairing people, their national life, the experience of Job writ large. A prophecy of the end of history would be considered glad tidings, a sign that their “redemption was drawing near,” the threshold to a blessed age of righteousness.
Perhaps, then, it is for those at any time whose lives are filled with emptiness, whose daily existence is laden with strife and suffering, for whom apocalyptic words are hardly strange, but the longed-for song of a promised new age. Perhaps this explains why those of any era who are (and perceive themselves as) victims of oppression respond so willingly to cries of revolution and the calls for action whether the voice be of a Gandhi, King, Mandela, or even Bin Laden.
But can this be the only truth? Is it only to those who live on the extreme margins for whom the extreme language of cosmic upheaval bears meaning? What about us – we who, for the most part, all told, live largely above the middle, knowing joy more than sorrow, triumph more than defeat, or, perhaps at worst, in nearly equal measures? We, though we may not know the extremes of oppression, still have our share of “the worries of this life.” Thus, Jesus speaks to us, too, urging us to “stand up,” “raise our heads,” “look,” “be on guard.” For what?
It is an irony that Advent, the season that inaugurates the new church year, begins with a story that heralds the end of time. But perhaps at the heart of this seeming illogicality rests a truth – that life, as long as there is breath and strength, is a continuous cycle of beginnings and endings, mornings and evenings, dawns and twilights, within which ever rests joy and sorrow, triumph and defeat, good and evil, and because of which Jesus calls us to be alert, not at the last day, but now. We are called to be active contemplatives, reading astutely the signs of the ebb and flow of life – that of the larger world around us and the movements within us – and then, to be contemplative actors, reacting prudently, responding faithfully.
What that may mean for any of us in the concrete circumstances of the living of our days, no one dare tell you. I will say this. Following Jesus, it is our calling to incarnate in our lives, our thoughts and intentions, our words and actions, love, unconditional benevolence to all, and justice, right and fair dealing with all. Our calling, then, is nothing less than to make immanent a transcendent God, to lift the veil that covers God’s face.
