First Sunday of Advent!

And crazily enough I was preaching again! It was undoubtedly an honor but I cannot deny a bit nerve-wracking. 

The lectionary can be found here: 

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CAdv1_RCL.html

Good morning everyone, Welcome to Advent! I feel as if every sermon on the first Sunday of this season has to begin in a certain fashion so before I throw myself into things let me acknowledge the proper form. “My goodness. Another Advent! Another Christmas season! Where did the year go! It felt like we just did this!” And yet, I am perhaps being a shade too glib. Where did the year go? How do we once again find ourselves facing another Christmas, another new year. As we reset our church calendars and enter this season of waiting it is hard not to wonder, both with joy and longing, at the ever plodding passage of time. 

In my mind, it is one of the great strengths of the liturgical year that we collectively experience Jesus’s life and work from birth to death to resurrection and glory all within a calendar year. Through the familiarity born of repetition we are given an opportunity every year to discover anew Christ’s mission for us. And it is worth noting, briefly, that Pentecost, the celebration of God the Spirit at work in the world, is the most prolonged of liturgical seasons. Jesus’s birth and death and resurrection, while important, are nothing more than singular events in a very long year; feasts made possible by a long growing season.

But now all of that changes! Now we are once again made potently aware of the transition before us. Now we find ourselves beginning again, awaiting the birth of Jesus that “holy infant so tender and mild”.

So what the heck is going on with today’s gospel passage? We find ourselves skipping right over the entirety of the Jesus story, infancy and adulthood, and are faced instead with the chaotic prophecy of Jesus’s Second Coming; no heavenly babe but “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” This is where the repetition of the liturgical year begins to work upon us, where the familiarity of the story Christ’s human birth is to open our hearts to the promise of his heavenly return. Yes, we are awaiting the baby wrapped in swaddling cloth; we are preparing to celebrate the birth of God in human form. But we are also waiting--still waiting--for Christ’s second coming, an event that promises to be significantly more “action packed” than his humble birth two millennia ago. As our reading from Luke is quick to inform us, things won’t be so idyllic the next time around. In the verses directly preceding today’s passage we are told quite plainly: “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people...” 

If we are to be truly prepared for Christ’s return we must stay vigilant and watchful. “Be alert at all times.” It would seem that Advent is a reminder of the necessity of proper preparation. As John the Baptist declares in Matthew’s gospel: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” This is not a light spring cleaning; this is no trifling New Year’s resolution. This is God demanding the total reformation of our lives, our unending devotion to Him and His Justice.

So what do we do? How do we reconcile Christ born and Christ returned? Is there room in our collective faith for both infant and judge? The contradiction seems perhaps too great to overcome. 

For me, part of the process of joining these two seemingly conflicted narratives lies in today’s passage from the prophet Jeremiah. Our reading comes from the middle chapters of Jeremiah that are often referred to as the “Little Book of Comfort”--brief glimpses of hope in otherwise harrowing predictions of Jerusalem’s impending destruction and the Babylonian captivity that is to follow. It is here that Jeremiah is reminding all of Judah that despite the sorrows to come, despite the imminent demolition of their life and worship, God will not forget them. That God’s love is bigger than the promised land or even the temple. That with God there is always hope.

As Christians we believe in a God of Love--a God most easily personified in the form of the infant Christ--but we also believe in a God of Justice. Throughout the Old Testament we are reminded that God’s desire for justice weighs stronger than the physical comfort of his chosen people; the Babylonian exile was in direct response to inequities that had taken root in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Being God’s people does not come without requirement and it is in those requirements that we see God’s love acting through us. It is in care for the most vulnerable that we see God; in seeking God’s justice that we find love. The two cannot separated.

So we find ourselves hoping for Christ’s arrival both as babe and as judge for it is in Christ’s return that we will finally have justice and in Christ’s birth that we are reminded of what that will take. It is easy to quake in fear at the thought of standing before the Son of Man, to presume that all our sins will damn us before the word “go”. And yet it is equally easy to presume that our every fault will be forgiven because of God’s love, love that has not changed or diminished through millennia of human failing. Both must be right; God’s love is guaranteed but that has to mean something, that has to pull something out of us. If we accept that we are loved--and love God in return--we also must accept a love of God’s justice.

This is why the Pentecost season is the longest--we can’t wait for Jesus the whole year, we have to, with the help of the Holy Spirit, do something. So as we begin a new year in our collective faith journey let us strive to remember exactly what we are preparing for. And as we wait for the coming of God’s kingdom let never cease building it on earth. “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”