Nearness

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC November 28, 2021, Advent 1.

Text:  Luke 21:25-36

“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.” // Perhaps it seems strange to begin an Advent series on “Good Tidings” with these apocalyptic words. Where is the good news here? 

We will get to that. But first, I want to remind all of us that our text today is part of a longer passage in Luke 21 of apocalyptic writing. Apocalyptic is a specific genre within the Bible. The word “apocalypse” is derived from a Greek word meaning to “uncover, disclose, or reveal” something—an unveiling. Apocalyptic writing tends to focus on “end of the age” or “end times” and is often thought of as “doom and gloom”—understandable, I guess, based on what we receive in our text today… “distress…fear, and forboding.” At its most basic, however, apocalyptic is meant to wake us up, to remind us that things will change, that something is going to happen, that something—or someone—is drawing near. 

And so it makes some sense that we’d be given a text like today’s at the beginning of the season of Advent, the annual time of preparation for the coming of Christ. The word “Advent” derives from the Latin adventus, which means “coming,” “arrival,” “approach,” or “appearance.” The emphasis at this time of year is often on what has already occurred, the coming of Christ in baby Jesus who grew up and showed us what God’s love and justice look like in human flesh. But on the first Sunday of Advent, we’re reminded that there is another promise yet to be fully realized: the coming of Christ into the world in a new way that embraces all peoples and all of creation, the fulfillment of our prayer that the Kin-dom appear in all the earth as in heaven. 

In the years following Jesus’s death, some early Christian communities, living under tremendous persecution and the despair caused by events like the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, expected the world as they knew it to end at any moment, they expected Christ to come again with cataclysmic flashes of lightning and all the rest. Yet, as time passed and the injustice and oppression of the world continued, that expectation began to fade. Christians had to learn how to wait, how to not give up on the whole thing, how to remain a people of hopeful expectation in the tension between the historical events of Jesus’ life and the desire that God’s realm be fulfilled on earth. 

This is the tension we find in our text today from Luke. We, like the earliest Christian communities live in the in-between time, wondering “How much longer, for crying out loud?!” But really the emphasis in our scripture is less about providing a timetable of events and more about what to do, how to be, every day. We are encouraged to remain awake and alert to what is happening around us, to pay attention to what is happening in the created order, to pay attention to the fear and distress among the nations, and, as we do so, not to allow ourselves to get dragged down into the worries of this life (Lk 34) but to remember that in moments of turmoil, danger, and upheaval, God draws especially near. The implication of the text in its context is that we are to keep the faith in the midst of fear and exhaustion and worry—and that means not just thinking faithy things, but concretely responding to what’s going on in and around us in ways that align with the Kin-dom of God, that embody the words of Jesus. You know, doing justice, practicing hesed (lovingkindness or unearned love), and walking humbly with God… 

The call of Jesus is for us to be a people of active faith and hopeful expectation in the time in between the reality of a difficult now and the hopeful vision of the promised Kin-dom c