Jeremiah 33:14-16 | 1 Thessalonians 3:12—4:2 | Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Grant your faithful, we pray, Almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming so that, gathered at his right hand, we may be worthy to possess the Heavenly Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

This season of Advent always begins with a somber reminder.  I went back and looked at the other cycles of readings for this particular Sunday, and it struck me that they all have this one clear sign: this is the time to pay attention. This is the time to stop being unconscious.  This is the time to become more aware of what this work of God within us is all about, and it’s very frightening and wonderful at the same time. And I’m going to try to see if I can capture it for you this morning in this homily.

I like to look at all three gospels of this three-cycle liturgy of the word that we have, and today’s reading is clear.  You just heard it, but it’s very much about this — well, let’s go back to what Jesus was saying and why he was saying it. What was the context of this kind of statement? It was toward the end of his ministry. He realized that the choices that were being made by the religious leaders and by so many of the people were going to lead to a kind of catastrophe, a kind of destruction of the things that they really longed for. He realized that soon Jerusalem would fall, the temple would be destroyed and tremendous suffering would occur, so he was making reference to all these things that were happening. They would be even more powerfully devastating to people than they realized, and here’s the mystery that I want so much to get in touch with this morning in this homily, and that is, as he was saying that all these things that you trust in, all these things that you find security in, when they all begin to dissolve and all begin to prove themselves not to be there for you, not to give you a sense of well-being, when they’re all ripped away from you, be attentive, because your redemption is happening.  Your redemption is happening.  

The First Sunday cycle, Cycle A, is very similar. We see that  Noah has been called by an angel to be ready for something that is coming, and he begins to build an ark. And maybe he told many people around him what was happening, but in any case, the theme is the same.  People are marrying and buying new property and doing all of these things when imminent destruction is coming, and nobody’s paying attention. And there’s Noah, perhaps saying things that nobody’s listening to, but again, the idea is that you should have been vigilant.  You should have paid attention to what was coming, and since you didn’t, the flood overwhelmed you, and you were destroyed.  

Then the next cycle, Cycle B, is the story of a man who is in charge of the gate, the entrance to the house, and his job is to always open for the master when the master comes.  And yet the warning is to be careful. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fail to pay attention to the knock, to the call, to whatever the master might use to ask you to open the door, but if you’re not paying attention, if you’re not attentive, you’re going to miss the coming of the master into the home, which is an image of Christ coming into us.  

Then this story, the story of destruction coming, all of those things, when things are going badly, when things are falling apart, when nothing is working, nothing is supporting you, nothing is sustaining you, pay attention, because your redemption is near at hand. What is redemption? It’s being freed, being freed. The promise that we heard about in the first reading, in the book of Jeremiah, reminds us that from the beginning, when God called Abraham, the whole idea was God entering into the lives of the people he created and wanting to take them on a journey, and the journey would ultimately lead them to a place of fullness, wholeness, oneness and freedom from everything that robs them of a life that God has called upon them to live. Tragedy, disappointment, losing things — none of that is what we would like to have in our lives, but the most interesting thing is that, when we experience loss like that, when things do not work the way we expect them to, when we’re challenged to look again at what gives us a sense of our value, it’s clear to see that Jesus is coming to reveal to us a very, very essential work that we’re all engaged in. And yet we often, in the words of the Scriptures today —I love the message — have such a contemporary statement from Jesus.  It seems to me, when he’s talking to the Israelites, he could be talking to any one of us.  Stop being so anxious about all the things that you have to do in order to take care of your life.  

I think about my life.  It’s not that complicated, yet I can spend an enormous amount of my time on the things I’m called to take care of — my house, my insurance, my groceries, whatever. Then there’s your health.  Then there’s this problem and that problem and a family problem, and you can become so wrapped up in just taking care of what’s on your plate for today that you’re not paying attention to much more than what’s right there. He said, “Be careful of that.”  If it’s not the anxieties of the world that keep you preoccupied, it’s often that you just don’t want to have any anxiety, so you go in the direction of being unconscious, which can result from any kind of addiction we have that takes our mind away from things, whether it’s three really nice cocktails at the end of the day or whether it’s being immersed in a television series, which I love, or whatever doesn’t make us think.  

So what should we be thinking about?  What is it this Advent calls us to?  When you think about it, the theme of these Sundays, these four Sundays of Advent, is trying to set us in a disposition to be open and receptive to another liturgical year, which is the retelling of the story, the story of creation, the story of God’s working with his people, the story of a Messiah coming, the story of Messiah’s loss of everything that he longed for and his mysterious death, which doesn’t make any sense in a way. If he were God’s son, why would God allow him to go through such a painful death? We go through that story again and again and again, as if it’s not the story itself because we could probably repeat it easily, summarize it, but it’s what entering into the story is like when you realize it’s your story and my story.  It’s not just a story.  It’s something we are supposed to be living, and the older you get and the more you let go of and the more life takes things away from you and you’re peeling things off yourself that tend to give you a sense of your value. People complain about getting older, and there are some things about it, certainly, that are very difficult. But anybody who doesn’t see it as a blessing misses the whole point because what God is doing is finally stripping away, for a lot of us, all the things that preoccupy us, that keep us anxious; all the things that we necessarily cling to that give us a sense of our value, our beauty, our worth.  We have to let go of one after another after another, and what he’s saying to us is, “When you do that, your redemption is near at hand.  Your freedom is coming, your freedom.”  

How many things do you need in your life to give you a sense of being at peace, at ease?  How many situations in your life have to go a certain way, the way you would like them to go, in order for you to have a calm, peaceful center?  If you’re like me, you have a long list of those things, and it is only when I lose one dramatically, when I’m in a situation without the thing that I feel I absolutely must have in order to make it, I think I'm going to die. But when that thing is taken away and I realize I’m still making it, I’m still okay — I thought it would destroy me, but then it doesn’t.  In fact, the irony and the mystery are that, when we let go of things that we’re clinging to for our own value and our own strength and our own well-being, when we allow those things to die or allow them not to be there and we survive, we find this mysterious process of being able to stand erect and feel strong and feel a kind of inner core of stability that we never knew we had because we thought we had to depend on all these other things — all these other things that would give me a sense of my value, my importance, my worth.  

So I know, if you’re like me, you’re getting ready for Christmas. It’s Advent. We think of all the wonderful things that we would like to do for each other at Christmas. I’ve already had conversations with my family. “What do y’all want?” They ask me what I want. We’re going to share presents. It’s going to be beautiful, and this baby is born in a manger. It’s all so seemingly sweet, but who would have realized, when the story began, what would happen to that Messiah, what would happen to that child?  Who would believe that, after 30 years of preparation, growing in age and wisdom, this figure, this incredibly interesting figure would find himself in a position that we see him in today in the gospel when he is there and he is surrounded by all these people who are his enemies? And the enemies are his religion, the religion he came to change, to balance, and to awaken to its deepest treasures and there they are.  The very ones that he came to change and to give his life for them, they’re the ones who are destroying him. How bizarre is that?  How confusing to a human — and Jesus was fully human — when he realizes that the Father has given him a job, and the job is not going so well, and the job is ultimately going to turn out to be a failure in the way one might consider success. And yet that is what he is teaching us.  That’s the core of his teaching.  How do you let go of everything and then have more? How do you become the victim of something so horrendous as being misunderstood and mocked and spit upon and crucified and laughed at? How do you embrace that in order to become this resurrected Christ who has such strength, such power, such conviction in what he says that it changed the lives of the disciples who had already listened to Jesus as a God/man? Then there is this mysterious transformation of the humanity of Jesus, which is a sign that we too go through this kind of human evolution into greater consciousness, greater awareness of who we really are.  

I know it might seem strange to talk about Jesus becoming more — more divine when on this earth we considered him divine, but just look at his humanity. Jesus is like you and me.  He lost it.  He got angry.  He was sad.  He didn’t want to die.  He was afraid of his death.  All those things are there in his humanity, and then after he gave in to all those things and let everything be ripped away from him and still realized that this is the way it’s written, this is the way it has to be — these terrible things have to happen, and they’re not terrible. They’re terrible in the sense of horrific maybe, but not terrible in the sense of not having value. They have enormous value.  What a difference in a human being who recognizes the importance of suffering, recognizes the importance of going through something that is ripping something away from us that we feel we cannot live without, and it’s ripped and ripped and ripped until it’s not there at all. And then we find life. That’s the great mystery. That’s the thing that this God of ours is longing for us to see, to feel and to know.  

I look at the world today.  The world is a very strange place.  We’ve all experienced evil in a way that I never thought we would ever experience it — people engaged in a religious war against human beings who seem to have everything that religion is asking them to possess in terms of a life, a communal life of love and peace and understanding. Then this evil comes along and says, “Wherever you celebrate your freedom, whether it is in a restaurant or at a place where you enjoy music or a place where you compete in sports and things, in those places, we want to destroy you. We want to destroy that.” What a strange twist to what God wants, but I’m not saying, in any way, shape or form that this evil is good.  I’m not. It’s evil. It’s wrong, but what is it doing to us? What is it doing to our sensibilities? What is it reminding us of?  What is it calling us to?  Whenever I see evil, when it’s raging, raw and destructive, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, but when you put it in a more subtle context of criticism, doubt, fear, shame, anger — all those destructive ways in which we tend to treat ourselves and each other — it doesn’t seem so bad, but it’s the same thing.  Evil is always there to try to rob us of something until we realize it can’t rob us of the thing that is most precious to us; it can’t rob us of who we really are in God — loved and protected — that we are creatures like him, and no matter which tragedies surround us, no matter what evil tries to do to us, it’s almost as if evil understood more of the mystery of the way it can become a source of deepening our convictions and our awareness that we are indestructible, that who we really are deep inside of us cannot be destroyed no matter what they do to us — if it knew that it created that within us, it probably would back off, but it’s not that wise.  God destroyed evil, but not by taking it away yet somehow using it, in some mysterious way, to bring about growth and change. That takes such awareness, such consciousness, such sensitivity, but that’s what the Messiah has come to bring to us. That’s what Christmas is about, someone coming to fulfill a promise that God made 5,000 years ago to Abraham, and now he’s making it continually to every generation that comes along. And every generation is engaged in this mysterious process of dying and rising, losing and gaining and somehow finding an amazing peace.

Father, you sent your Son into the world to awaken us.  Make us conscious of the process that you’ve called us into.  It’s one that is difficult for our minds to grasp, but somehow our hearts know that the more we trust in you, the more that we know that you alone are the source of everything for us.  We are willing to let go of the things that we cling to too tightly.  We ask you to bless us with this message of hope, and we ask this in Jesus’ name.  Amen.