Stunned by Advent

PROPERS:          ADVENT 1, YEAR B    

TEXT:                ISAIAH 64:1-9; MARK 13:24-37                  

PREACHED AT ST. ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2023.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The apocalyptic vision of the season indicates that the foundations of creation will be shaken by the inbreaking of God.

 

            The symbols of the season warm out hearts.  The Advent wreath we lit this morning.  The lights in the city. The decorated trees in our homes. The beautifully-wrapped packages under our trees.

 

            They tell us that a special season is here.

 

            And then there are the biblical lessons – if we choose to hear them.

 

            Earthquakes… fire… stars falling from the sky… smoke… dark gloom.

 

            It’s enough to cast a pall over the beauty of the season.

 

            We hear it in the reading from Isaiah today: O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—

 

            And if we expect to hear words of comfort from Mark’s gospel, instead we get this: Jesus said, “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

 

            Not exactly what we wanted to hear.  Merry Christmas.

 

            But, for us and for those thousands of years ago, it is the vision of the inbreaking of God into this world.  It is an apocalyptic vision.

 

            Too often, we think of apocalypse in term of end times – the end of the world.  We think in terms of War of the Worlds, Independence Day, or The Day After. Everything comes crashing down around us. Humanity breathes its last.

 

            But the truth is much more comforting.  Apocalypse means hidden things are revealed. Truth comes to light.  As St. Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians: Now we see in a glass darkly.  But then we shall see face-to-face.

 

            The apocalyptic vision of the scripture is that through God’s movement every illusion, all obstructions, everything that is false will be stripped away.  And we will see the truth in all its glory.

 

            So, how does this apply to Christmas?

 

            It is so much more powerful than a small baby in a manger.

 

            It is that, yes.  But it is the beauty of God entering into the world as one of us. It is the message that the ground of our being (as a prominent theologian described it) has entered into history and into the lost and broken world around us.

 

            And what shakes the foundations?  What causes earthquakes, fires, tempests, smoke, and destruction?  It is the truth which that baby brings, and which he will share during his short time in flesh among us.

 

            The truth that Jesus brought and preached challenges the world as it is. It is truly apocalyptic – it reveals God’s hidden truth.  And the world is not the same.

 

            That message, that hope, is greater than all the tinsel, lights, foil, and foliage we may display.