1 Advent, Yr C (2024) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
1 Advent, Year C (2024) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Psalm 25: 1-9 St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Luke 21:25-36
In the name of the one, holy, and living God:
who enlightens our darkness
and offers us the hope of eternal life. Amen.
For what do you hope?
For what do you hope?
Today is the first day of Advent.
It is a season of waiting.
It is a season of preparation and anticipation:
for birth…
and for re-birth.
Advent comes to us as a pinhole of light in the midst of darkness,
beginning with the lighting of a single candle on the Advent wreath.
The scriptural bookends of this Season are: “In those days”
“In those days” begins the Gospel of Luke on Christmas Eve,
pointing us back to a specific day and time in history….
“In those days
a decree went out from Emperor Augustus
that all the world should be registered” (Luke 2:1).
On a specific day and time in our past God became human…
Jesus was born.
But…
on this first Sunday of Advent,
Jeremiah turns his vision not backwards toward a specific day and time
but points ahead toward a future time,
“In those days and at that time….”
“In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David;
and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” (Jer 33:15)
During Jeremiah’s day the Israelites are living in captivity,
banished from their homes.
So, here he is speaking to an exiled and crushed people,
offering them hope for their future…
in those days and at that time, he says….
A hope,
such as we may also have,
for justice and righteousness.
Gary Charles says this of today’s Scripture readings:
“[They] are dug from the harsh soil of human struggle
and the littered landscape of dashed dreams.
“The are told from the vista where sin still reigns supreme
and hope
has gone on vacation.”
(Feasting on the Word, p. 3, First Sunday of Advent)
The harsh soil of human struggle
and the littered landscape of dashed dreams.
For what do you hope?
As I have lamented injustices in the world,
I have been told more than once
that there is not a particular way the world is supposed to be.
“But, yes, there is,”
was my immediate response.
Yes, there is.
Maybe not in the sense of the way that “I, Karen”
want to world to function in every detail
but in the sense of a world inhabited by justice and mercy
and compassion and peace.
Is this not the Gospel we preach…
the Good News of God in Christ
who has come to inaugurate such a kindom?
And is this not the vision of the Kingdom of God to which Jeremiah refers:
“He shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of a time
when people will faint from fear and foreboding
from what is happening in the world as the natural world begins to roar
and there is distress among the nations.
Jesus points to a time
when people are overwhelmed with a sense of the loss of control.
So, Jesus,
just like Jeremiah,
speaks to an exiled and crushed people.
As we hear this gospel,
perhaps we are asking ourselves:
are these those times?
Devastating floods and wildfires, wars, melting ice caps, mass shootings…
it certainly seems like Jesus was talking about these times!
Gratefully, we have today’s Psalmist to ground us in God and offer us hope:
The Psalmist says:
“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you;
let me not be humiliated,
nor let my enemies triumph over me….
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
in you have I trusted all the day long….
Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions;
remember me according to your love.” (Psalm 25:1, 4, 6)
For what do you hope?
Advent is not a comfortable Season;
it is an unpredictable and unsteady time,
a time when we wait with longing for redemption, both personal and communal.
Advent is also a season that counteracts impermanence with promise.
During the season of Advent time is contorted
where we look both behind and ahead at the same time.
We celebrate that the Light has shined in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
We wait for the Christ to be born,
who we know has already been born,
and who we know continues to be born in us each day.
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will fulfill the promise I made….” (Jer 33:14)
Just as the prophet Jeremiah provided hope for an exiled people,
these texts raise up for us the importance of waiting,
anticipating and trusting in a promised future
that may at times seem very removed from our current circumstances.
We are called upon, in our waiting,
not only to name the sufferings and injustices of the world
but to lean into God’s promise of a new creation….
to engage our imaginations in hopeful expectation of God’s reign of
justice and righteousness.
Barbara Brown Taylor says:
“The promise may not be fully in hand.
It may still be on the way,
but to live reverently, deliberately and fully awake –
that is what it means to live in the promise,
where the wait itself is as rich as its end.” (Gospel Medicine, p. 41)
Faith, then, is living into our reality by virtue of God’s promise.
Jesus says, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly.”
It is oh, so easy to get weighed down with the worries of this life.
But Jesus calls us to be secure in the promise of what is to come
while living in the “not yet.”
Jesus calls us to live in hope.
Theologian Jurgen Moltmann defined hope as:
“the divine power
that makes us alive
in this world.”
For what do you hope?
How does the Divine power make you alive in this world?
In a few moments we will gather at Table to share in a meal.
We stand with hands open and outstretched,
in hopeful anticipation of God’s redeeming Grace for ourselves and for the world.
As we go forth from this place,
let us be bearers of the Good News that God is on the way...
indeed, that God is already here,
fulfilling in our midst God’s promise of a new creation.
Amen.
