First Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Day One
The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise.
In those days, in that time,
this is what they shall call her:
“The LORD our justice.”
Fascinating, how we can think of and even feel time in so many different ways – time coming, time going, time now, time long ago, time far off in the future, time and time again. Now is the time for such a time as this. In this moment we celebrate what feels timeless on the advent of the season of Advent, on day one. As in the days of the beginning, the Genesis, there will be creation, and God will find it good. In four weeks God will find it very good, as the human God-baby encounters earth, as God inhabits what he created, as time stops and eternity descends.
But before all this we notice, we slowly discover our place in the world as we have ourselves have created it …
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.
This is what the poet sees, as he encounters and struggles to embrace all of what Advent means for us today:
Oof. Sounds like climate change.
Sounds like troubled times coming upon us
like a storm, or a heat wave,
unseasonable disruption, unreasonably dark—
but a trouble we’ve brought on ourselves.
Wait. This is our introduction to Christmas?
Yes.
Cutting through our sweet carols
is the cry of the world,
and the cry is not an interruption,
but the reason.
God has come to be with us
in our self-made night.
Jesus says we will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world. We will choke on our own vomiting fear, he might have said. This world is filled with billions of souls, individual men and women made by God, who have no idea how to let God be God when everything around them is collapsing.
But there is this Advent, heralding the One who approaches, the baby.
In our evil, and the foreboding of evil,
among the signs of the gathering chaos,
the Hopeful One comes among us,
small and helpless, fragile,
requiring our mercy,
evoking our love,
nursing us with courage.
Jesus doesn’t mince words. We must not let our hearts become drowsy with carousing and drunken sleep, or let our minds dwell on the anxieties of our daily life on this catastrophe we still call earth. Do not let that day catch you by surprise, he warns, like a trap. Because that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth, not in imagination, not just those around the corner or across the sea. There will be no pretending, no escape.
Not in some easy dreamland
but here in this thickening, sickening darkness,
under the thumb of Herod,
whose soldiers are already strapping on their boots,
comes the Tender One,
whose very being defies the chaos,
terrifies the Emperor,
stirs the people of God …
and brings dawn to the night-blind world. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Jesus commands us to stand up straight when we see “these signs,” and raise our heads. Redemption is at hand. Every part of our contrived civilization is about to be made natural and new, and we too along with it.
It is time to stand before the Son of Man.
(Jeremiah 33, Psalm 25, 1 Thessalonians 3-4, Psalm 85, Luke 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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