“Luke’s
Advent and Ours”
Luke
21:25-36
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
November29,
2009
Advent
1
I was something of a church geek when I
was a teenager. I belonged to
a large downtown church in
As much as I was into church, there
were questions even then for which I never could find answers that satisfied.
One of the things that did not make sense to me was the church’s annual
explanation of Advent as “preparing for the birth of the baby Jesus.”
How could we year after year get ready for something that already had
happened, that already belonged to history?
It seemed contrived to me, fake, false and therefore lacking in meaning
and relevance. Perhaps I am a little
slow, but it would be decades, really, before I came to an understanding of
Advent, and Christmas for that matter, that is meaning-full and that is what I
want to tell you about today.
Earlier this week I was on the website
of a church with which I have had some loose connection and the interim
pastor’s column in the newsletter read very much like I had been taught during
my youth:
Planet earth has been invaded! Story
tellers and science fiction writers have woven innumerable stories about alien
creatures coming to earth, enslaving us, pillaging our resources, or destroying
all life. The War of the Worlds was
narrated on the CBS radio system on Halloween in 1938 by Orson Welles.
The first two thirds of the 60 minute broadcast was presented as a series
of simulated news bulletins that suggested to many listeners that an actual war
was in progress. All across
the country listeners sat in mortal terror that the world was about to be
destroyed. Our national obsession
over UFOs includes the concern and fear about an alien invasion. In
many minds the aliens are malevolent and monstrous.
But there is a different invasion story that is quite factual. It
is the story of Christmas, when the eternal Son of God came to planet earth.
In this story, Jesus Christ invades planet earth to save rather than to
destroy it; to bring peace and not war; to secure life rather than end it; to
defeat evil rather than spread it. We
are entering the season of Advent. Advent
means the arrival or coming into being. At
Christmas we celebrate Jesus’ first advent ... born in a manger, the very son
of God in human form.
Is
that really it? Is that what we
celebrate at Christmas, really…the successful invasion of planet earth via the
furtive birth of a baby a long time ago? If
so, then why have preachers long railed against the rampant consumerism of the
season? If Christmas is the
celebration of an important birthday, why is buying gifts for people we love not
a more honest response than working up some faux spirituality around something
that happened more than two thousand years in the past?
The
birth of Jesus got wrapped by the gospel writers in the mythic garb of divine
nativity after his exceptional life became so consequential.
His life became consequential because he was so wide open and receptive
to the Christ of God. It was the
Christ – the overarching divine reality who exists eternally – who animated
Jesus’ life to such an extent that people exclaimed that Jesus was the Son of
God. John was clear about it even as
the church has been confused, as when John wrote at the beginning of his gospel
– “In the beginning was the Word, the
Logos, the Divine Wisdom, the Christ, and the Christ was with God, and the
Christ was God. The Christ was in
the beginning with God.” Then,
in time, John says, Jesus embodied the Christ in his life.
That is what is so important about Jesus…that he welcomed the Christ of
God to be born in him and to grow in him and thus he lived a Christo-centric
life, life with the Christ of God at the center, life befitting the character,
creativity, and compassion of God.
If
you still doubting whether this is so, that the Christ preceded Jesus, that the
Christ is more than Jesus, then
check out the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews in the Bible where it says
of Moses, Old Testament Moses, before-the-time-of-Jesus
Moses:
By faith Moses, when he was grown
up, refused to be called a son of
Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the
people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
Moses con-
sidered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than
all the
treasures of
Why am I making so much of this?
Because, if we think that Jesus and the Christ are one and the same,
that, Christ is Jesus’ last name, then we would be right to focus Christmas on
Jesus exclusively and to make it a celebration of a significant historical event
much as we mark the birthdays of other pivotal personages like George
Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King.
But when we see that Jesus is a human vessel bearing the eternal Christ
in his life and that we are invited to do the same then Christmas becomes
immediately and powerfully, experientially and existentially relevant in our own
lives. That
is the significance of Christmas – that we
welcome the birth and growth of the Christ of God in
us. The work of Advent then, a
season of spiritual pregnancy, is to prepare not so much for the birth of the
baby Jesus since that already has happened but for the birth of the Christ in us
in new and deeper ways – to clear out and get rid of what needs to go in order
to make room in our lives for the Christ of God, to get the nursery of our
hearts and the manger of our minds ready for the coming of the Christ in us. Think of Advent
as spiritual pre-natal care.
Alfred Delp was a Jesuit priest who was
killed by the Nazis during World War II for his work in rescuing the Jews.
While in prison awaiting his execution, Delp wrote a series of spiritual
reflections that were smuggled out. Among
them was one on the meaning of Advent in which Delp wrote:
Advent is the time for rousing.
We are shaken to the very depths so that
we may wake up to the truth of ourselves.
The primary condition for a
fruitful advent is renunciation and surrender.
We must let go of all our
mistaken dreams, our conceited poses and arrogant gestures, all the
pretenses
by which we hope to deceive ourselves and others.
If we fail to do this, stark
reality may take hold of us and rouse us forcibly in a way that will
entail
both anxiety and suffering.
Luke’s Advent account that we read
earlier in our worship today sounds on first hearing like a warning of a coming
apocalypse in the world, like the foretelling of cataclysm and calamity, like a
rousing. “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.
People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the
world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see the ‘Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and
great glory. Now when these things
begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is
drawing near.”
But what if Luke is writing poetically
and metaphorically about the signs of inner upheaval and unrest, cataclysm and
calamity, that characterize so much of our lives?
What if Luke is inviting us to take note of the inner signs in our lives
that it is time to move more deeply into God, to live out of a deeper experience
of the divine design for our lives, to live, as
Heed the signs, Luke says, that your
life needs in it the looming, loving presence of the Christ of God, the same
Christ who was in Jesus. Use these
Advent weeks to prepare for the Christ to be born in you, or born again in you,
so that, like the sprouting leaves on Luke’s fig trees, your life, too, may
bear the fruit of God’s kingdom, so that your life may be like the ripening of
summer.
I do not know what you need to clear
out and clear away in order to make more room for the Christ in your life.
I do not know all of the preparations you need to make.
But you know them, or will, as you engage the work of Advent.
Some of the things may be immediately obvious.
But some of what needs to go may be good things, things you have
cherished and loved for a time but that no longer serve your highest good or the
good of those around you.
These liturgical seasons – like
Advent, like Christmas – are not just church puffery and ritual but are a
means of grace by which, if we enter into them honestly and doggedly, will
minister Christ to us and the peace that passes all understanding.
If we were at Chautauqua, I would tap a
gavel three times and declare to you that “Advent,
2009, is begun.”
“Prepare
the way, O
Amen.
Copyright
© 2009 First Presbyterian Church