Luke 21:25-36
“There will be signs in the suns, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” (vs. 25)
Not exactly words we want to hear 23 days before Christmas! We come this first Sunday of Advent hoping to catch an early glimpse of the baby Jesus, or perhaps the faint sounds of angel song. Instead, the sky shakes, rattle and rolls with earthquakes and promises of doom. Why does the new church year begin with the end of everything?
Well, it begins this way partly because, if you remember, the season of Advent isn’t just about remembering and celebrating Jesus’ birth – the miracle of the mystery of God contained in a small child. The season of Advent is also a time when the Church remembers and claims Jesus’ promise that he will come again and God’s realm of peace and justice will be fully established here on earth, and the world as we know it will be restored to a beauty and glory beyond our imagining. Yes, I know there is an alternate view held by many faithful readers of the Bible that Jesus’ return will totally destroy this world. But that’s the stuff for another sermon, another time.
There is a second reason, however, that Advent begins with these disconcerting words of apocalypse, these signs of trauma and transformation. And that is because, right from the beginning, the Church claims that Jesus acknowledges our deepest fears and takes them seriously. Jesus embraces all our worries about existence, our fears of dying and death; and, from the beginning, he lovingly reminds us: “Even in the midst of your profoundest anxiety, pay attention to the signs of hope and healing all around you. If you look, you can find me in the many guises in which I now go about.” It’s as if these words of distress and disorientation are an invitation calculated to shock us out of the complacency of normal life and routine so that you and I can enter more mindfully into our present landscape; so that we can perceive more clearly how God is present even now, loving and healing us and our world.
For that is really what apocalypse means at its root: revelation. And the season of Advent we begin today is a time for us to sharpen our vision. A time to practice apocalypse by being more observant, by doing those things that keep us grounded in God and that will stir up our courage.
“What,” you are no doubt thinking, “are we being asked to do more things when we are already feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the season with all its expectations both outwardly imposed and self inflicted?”
No, I am not asking you to do more things, as much as I am inviting you or reminding you of ways we all can live into this season faithfully in order that we may align our hopes and dreams with the longing and dreaming of God. I truly believe you and I can hasten the time of peace and wholeness that Jesus desires for the entire world by the quiet ways we live our lives. Advent calls us to recommit ourselves to this intentional, holy practice.
The first way I want to suggest that you and I can practice apocalypse is to rethink how we view and use time. Yes, we are busy and if your ‘to-do’ list is like mine, we despair of getting it all done by whatever arbitrary date we’ve set. So the first thing we need to ask ourselves is – are we busy with busyness that really isn’t fruitfulness but is instead a cover for our fear? Are we afraid of the stillness, afraid of what might come up in the silence if we stopped?
If we are busy, we can stay unconscious, afraid of not being in control, afraid of being dependent, afraid of not knowing what will happen. But Jesus knows our fears. And he is paying attention to them. And he reminds us that all time is a gift, and not really ours to manage.
What if, in this season, we practiced waiting patiently and not anxiously? What if we took time to just sit, doing nothing but resting in the stillness? I pray that we each in the next four weeks could let go of something on our ‘to-do’ lists and take time every day to pause, to step out of the chains of busyness and the chains of having to justify ourselves and be able to enter into the mystery of listening and waiting on God.
A second way I invite us to practice apocalypse is to make room and space in our hearts for revelation. How can God transform us if there is too much clutter and distraction within our minds and hearts? In the words of author and preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, “God is looking for a nursery, but we are inside the study with the door closed.” And maybe even with the door locked. How can we reflect on and honor what we are noticing and perceiving if we don’t first let go of those things to which we cling so tightly believing they are the source of life, and not God? Where and how do we need to make space for the Spirit to birth new life within?
The last way I want to suggest we can practice apocalypse is to encourage prolepsis. That’s a fancy theological term from the Greek that describes wonderfully subversive, life-giving behavior. Prolepsis means acting as if what we expect to happen has already happened. To say it another way, prolepsis is to trust and live in the world as if peace is real and shared, and healing and wholeness already reign over all the earth.
Yes, prolepsis requires the strenuous work of imagination, but you and I are blessed with that in abundance. And what more hopeful and life-giving activity can there be than to go through our days bearing witness to all the signs of new birth, blessing and transformation around us, rather than to give in to negativity and fear.
Lest you think prolepsis is impossible, let me tell you of a study published several years ago in the New Yorker magazine. Children from the slums and ghettos of New York City whose only experience of home was a dirty tenement: cold, bare, frequently gutted by fire and infested with trash, cockroaches and rats were given crayons and paper and asked to draw a house. Invariably what they drew was a picture alive with color, a house with light shining in the windows, a yard full of flowers, a door that was inviting. Despite their experience otherwise, they could dream and draw a brighter world.
If the children can envision and create a brighter world; how about us? May our delight this season be to practice apocalypse; to rest in the mystery and stillness, to make room for birth and new life, and to let our imagination run wild, living as if it were so.
Amen.
(The idea for the title came from the writings of Jan Richardson, A Painted Prayerbook.org)