First Sunday in Advent

Year A: Matthew 24:36-44

Year B: Mark 13:24-37

Year C: Luke 21:25-36

Isn’t it lovely that we get to re-enter “the story” year after year. It’s the same beautiful story and yet, different and fresh each time we encounter it. Life happens. The  world changes and we either change with it or against it. The universe expands and so, hopefully, do our perspectives. Each year we may see things differently. We may grow into new insights. The story comes to us again now, right on time.

The passages for this week have often been used to promote some theologies that developed years after Jesus walked the earth. Theologies that attempted to make sense of words that are challenging. Theologies that attempted to bring certainty to an understanding of God, the One who holds endless mystery. Some of these theologies were birthed out of reaction, and often overreaction, to a perceived wrong in the Church. 

 I share my reflections on these passages in the hope that they will encourage you to consider your own impressions of the texts. The object of the sacred texts is not to give us certainty but to call us to engagement with our mind, heart, and body, and to remind us we are a part of something amazing and loving and eternal. We are a part of an age old story and one not yet finished. While to some, the passages for this week point to the end of the world as we know it, I see them preparing us once again for the newness of life. For the Christ child. And, away we go!

These words were written after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, which was in the year 70 c.e.. Everything the faithful understood about God had been tied up in that temple, in that place. How could they be faithful followers of God if there was no central place to worship and to practice the rituals. It was a time of upheaval and uncertainty, and I’m sure, fear. So, these words served as both a comfort and an exhortation that the life of faith is bigger than any one place or time. 

In this text Jesus is preparing his followers for loss, for life without him. He knows they will experience great pain and fear so he is calling forth strength for their journey. They thought he was the anointed one who would reestablish the nation of Israel; the one to bring them back into power; to free them from the oppression of the Roman Empire. And now he will be leaving them? WTH?! When is all this going to be over? When do we win? When will things get better?  All valid questions and concerns. I’ve had those same questions, haven’t you?

Jesus doesn’t give them, or us, certainty. Not in the way we want it. And he doesn’t sugar coat the difficulty of the journey ahead. But, he does give them words to instill the immediacy and importance of their purpose. Sometimes knowing that someone else sees strength in us, gives us the birth of confidence we need to believe we might be stronger than we thought possible. 

Jesus tells the disciples to be awake and alert.  He is telling them, and us, to pay attention to the way we are living. Are we living with intention, or being carried along by the worries of the moment? We are being called to prioritize what is important. What is lasting. I’m convicted through these passages of how much time I waste being caught up in momentary worries and distractions. The amount of doomscrolling I do! How often I have lost sight of the gift of each day and each person in my life.

As Jesus seeks to give them strength for what is ahead we are also reminded of the eternally arriving presence of the Christ. The disciples will not be left comfortless in their grief. 

Even in the absence, the Presence remains.

Maybe you have felt this before when you have lost a loved one. In their absence is a palpable presence.  At first, and for the longest of times, it is excruciating because it is not “the” presence you had. It can make you feel lost and can bring about such an acute loneliness with it that it feels unbearable. Through bearing the unbearable, over time, this excruciating presence of absence can assimilate into your life so that you carry the person with you as you move forward day by day. It can move from pain to purpose. And, there is a promise that there will be more to this presence in the future. Some day. Some how. Reunion? Restoration? Resurrection?

I think that is why at funerals and memorial services we need to hear it’s not the end. That this is not all there is to their story. To our story. We seek passages in the scriptures that give this feeling some grounding credibility. While, on this side of eternity, there are no empirical facts to tell us how this all works out, if we are able to persevere in the process of grief, choosing to trust that God is with us, we may just begin to live from the heart once again, alive and awake.  And this can bring strength for our present and hope for our future. 

If we are to take Jesus seriously, we are to spend our days considering what is important to God; to see the God given spark in each and every human. To see God’s majesty in creation. And to care for one another. To value what God values. The disciples and we are being called to live our lives in service to the prayer of Jesus, may it be on earth as it is in heaven. We are to be living vessels of peace and reconciliation in a world that desperately needs healing.

So, Jesus tells his disciples to stay awake and to remain alert. This is not the end of the story. And he doesn’t want them to miss a thing. 

 New life is coming!

May we all be reminded this week that we are always and daily called to be awake to the Presence that created us, redeems us, and sustains us with a relentless love that will never let us go. 

Something to chew on….offered with love.