There is a great deal of irony surrounding the message of the First Sunday in Advent. It catches us this year in a particular difficult mood as a nation.
If we look at the intractable political situation in Washington or try to keep up with the ups and downs of the Presidential nominating process that by its very nature is ramming all kinds of changing expectations into our collective conscience. Riots are occurring once again in Tarrir Square in Cairo, Egypt and civil war in Syria Then there is occupy Wall Street or Occupy Cedar Rapids, which has lots of people involved and lots of people confused. There is intermittent conflict with law enforcement and scenes of tear gas and pepper spraying, which we have not seen in our country for a long time. Americans and their allies are still losing their lives in protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – and some of our good friends among the nations seem like enemies in places such as Pakistan.
The whole situation at Penn State is too much to imagine; add to it the other revelations that have come out about other incidents of predatory sexual abuse including in local primary schools where some awful activities have been revealed. These are difficult stories to hear.
Things fall apart – our families, many of us are spread across the nation or the world and we feel dislocated and sometimes worried. The Center cannot hold… all of us are feeling the uncertainty of the economics of our time. Some worry about pensions being safe, others worry about having a job or finding one. We are working harder than ever as a nation but don’t seem to catch up.
After Thanksgiving we are suddenly supposed to be in the Christmas Spirit – the lights begin appearing and trees are festooned once again with ornaments. The irony which I mentioned about Advent is not only that supposed spirit of Christmas is so very different than the spirit of uncertainty that is part of our national mood these days – it is also very different from the mood invoked by Advent Scriptures. Today if we had read the suggested Gospel reading from Mark we would have heard, “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory” (Mark 13:24–27).
Somewhere amidst the visions of sugar plums and mistletoe comes words such as these:
“Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13: 6-8)
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats is a poem that in many ways may capture those feelings that are swirling around us these days:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats, with his intense images, picks up on the language of Mark but also captures in his verse the issue that is at the center of our uncertainty: Things fall apart – the center does not hold. We feel cut loose and in many ways, we have lost our point of grounding. No amount of Black Friday sales successes or renditions of the Twelve Days of Christmas are going to help us to find the center again.
I often say that the Scriptures are a living document because they reflect back to us who we are, and what we need as people of faith at any given moment of our lives. They are not just words for back then – they are words for now. Let’s look at what the Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians:
The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives. Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. (1 Corinthians 1:6,7)
The Apostle Paul was certain, his writing reveals, that the second coming was going to happen in his lifetime. One of the reasons his evangelical efforts were so energized and his preaching seemed so urgent was this conviction that he had that the end of days was coming and that all those who had been baptized into the faith of Jesus Christ would be able to face that cataclysm with confidence and without fear.
Paul felt strongly that when one came to accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ and was baptized, that they entered into a unified single embodiment of Christ on Earth through the church where all who believed were welcomed and all became integral to the whole. The church reflects in its unity of purpose and teaching a kind of love that has come into the world only through the grace of God and through the presence of Jesus Christ. Grace and love were given as sheer grace, beyond our expectation, our deserving, or our imagining, as someone has said, "Though we may anticipate them and even expect them they always come as a surprise. There’s always more to God’s grace and love than we understand." Ready and waiting – are we ready?
Paul echoes the words of Isaiah 63 here – words written centuries before the birth of Christ, but filled with the kind of promise that is also part of the Advent message:
“Surely they are my people,
children who will not deal falsely;”
and he became their savior
in all their distress.
It was no messenger or angel
but his presence that saved them;
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isaiah 63:8, 9 NRSV)
We did not know how to love before – but now we know love, Paul says. Something eternal happened in the birth of Jesus Christ, which though obscured by the circumstances of suffering – as Paul’s people were suffering in their day or as we suffer the weight of uncertainty and witness the extremes of inhumanity and human pain that are so much a part of the everyday headlines in our time – something in the birth of Jesus gives us the stamina to face the unknown and the courage to face the known.
Through Christ we dare to look at the stranger, the immigrant, as a person, not a problem. Through Christ we see hunger as a difficulty to be conquered not as burden to be tolerated by anyone. Understood through the medium of love, violence is not a tool by which we seek to be empowered, but a weakness from which we seek to be freed through the power of peace. The now of Jesus’ presence gives us the strength to endure the “not yet” of today’s tumultuous world with an understanding that there are wonderful, life sustaining alternatives to be sought and found.
“Every time I think of you—and I think of you often!—I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by Jesus. There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge. The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives. Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all!” (1 Corinthians 1: 6, 7 The Message)
In his poem, The Second Coming, Yeats captures the irony of Advent in another profound way. After he describes the extent of disconnection of tumultuous times, he suggests that God is still in control as his half lion/half man beast makes its inevitable way into our consciousness.
The Irony is this, we know that the rough beast that “slouches” toward Bethlehem is no monster, it is a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. In God’s way, the maelstrom of events which circle us are not addressed in kind – but are countered by the rebirth of innocence in the person of Jesus Christ in the manger… by the rebirth of love. That is how Paul can say, “We are Ready – Ready and Waiting.”
The God who transforms our lives through our baptism into the faith of Jesus Christ has equipped us to love. That love is the center that holds. Love exercised – love of neighbor, love of stranger, love of enemy, love of God – has the power to transform our aching world.
Ready and Waiting! Our ironic world is filled with pain – but also filled with the gifts of life and all its possibilities. Love equips us to see the full gamut of our multi-faceted reality. It is the lens that turns beast into babe. Love allows you view the world and all its ironies with hope. Through the grace of God in Christ’s love you are ready! That is the ultimate gift already given. Thanksgiving is not over – Advent has begun. Amen
