A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent Year C

 

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations…  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 great power.  

 

Let’s face it:  the First Sunday of Advent is weird. Countless Americans –maybe some of you -- hit the Malls this weekend to do holiday shopping.  Muzak versions of Christmas Carols, no doubt, blared, at the crowds as wandering from store to store.  But walk into Church this Sunday and Christmas is conspicuous by its absence.  Instead, our prayers, hymns, and Scriptures are full of strange images:  the heavens dropping down from above;  signs in the sun, moon and stars, and Jesus riding back to earth on a cloud!

 

Not only do these images have nothing to do with Christmas, they are puzzling, if not down right problematic, to 21st century folk.  What are we to make of these strange images that speak of God showing up in dramatic, public ways that the whole world will see?  What are we to make of the promise that God will set right all that is wrong among the nations?  What are we to make of the claim that God is coming to reign is over all the earth? These apocalyptic texts – and many others like them in the Bible – paint a picture of a God who comes to  deal with the public, social and political problems of sinful humanity: violence, persecution, war, injustice, exile.

 

To make this stranger, this was all supposed to have happened already – within the lifetime of Jesus’ first disciples.  In the Gospel we heard Jesus say:   “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.”  An earlier version of the lectionary that assigns our readings found this claim so problematic that they left it out.

 

But we can’t simply leave out parts of our Scriptures, puzzling and problematic as we sometimes find them to be.  We have to listen for what God is trying to say to us through them in our time and place, different as it so often is from the world in which the texts were first written.  There is, in fact, a good chance that God will speak to us through the parts of Scripture we want to ignore-

precisely because they don’t fit easily with our pre-conceptions.  And these Scriptures for the First Sunday of Advent say something that we need to hear, but are often deaf to, because it so strange to us.  

 

We find these texts puzzling and problematic not, I think, only because of their imagery, odd as some of it is.   Nor are we chiefly troubled by their claim that Jesus’ return would happen right away.  Christians started coming to terms with that before the latest books of the New Testament were written.  

 

I submit that what we may find most problematic and puzzling about these texts – or miss entirely -- is that they picture God’s coming into the world primarily as a social and political event.  Texts like today’s speak of God coming to transform the world, not to save individual souls, and most of us are not used to thinking about religion that way. We don’t know what to make of the claim that Jesus’ Advent is not chiefly about dealing with our individual and personal needs, but about setting right the many wrongs of the public sphere of life.

You see, we live in a time when religion has become intensely individualized.  God becomes most important for us at times of birth and death, crisis and celebration in our individual lives.  We talk about our personal relationship with God and seek to develop our own spiritual lives.  

But we have little practice in looking at the public world -- as the Bible does -- as being the chief arena of God’s action, the place God comes to transform.  Christians have been so trained for centuries to see God’s connection to our personal lives that we are often blind to God’s passion for the public life that today’s Scriptures reveal. [1]

 

Now, I’m not saying that our individualized approach to faith is all wrong.  My individual spiritual life matters to me.  I want God’s help in the challenges I face each day and I believe God cares about what I do and how I live.  But our individualized focus makes it very hard for us to hear what today’s readings are trying to remind us of in their strange imagery of heavens, clouds, nations and kingdoms:  that God comes into the world to transform the public, social and political realities of humanity, to set to right what is wrong among the nations, to rule as King over all the earth.

 

I’ve no illusions that a single sermon – or even the several more on this theme I guarantee you will hear from me in years to come – can do much to change the individualized approach to Christian faith that we have all been immersed in from birth.  What I do offer is a spiritual exercise for us to engage in this Advent, and, I hope, beyond – an exercise whose purpose is to help us to see the public world as the arena of God’s Advent.  

 

I assume that almost all of us get some news every day – whether from the Internet, TV, radio, newspaper, or magazine.   If you don’t, you should – because God cares about this world, cares enough to have died for it.   From the news you see, hear, or read each day, choose one story – not a human interest story, but a story about the public world: the world of war and peace, justice, social policy, the environment, health care or plain old politics.  With decisions looming about strategy and troop levels in Afghanistan;  the health care debate in Congress;  the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen week after next;  a lame duck legislative session and a new governor-elect in NJ, there is more than enough to choose from!

 

Then, asking God’s help and using your imagination (one of God’s greatest gifts) try to picture what this piece of God’s world might look like, be like, when God’s Reign comes.  What is wrong that God would set right?  What would stay the same?  What would change?  And how would the people involved – quite possibly including us -- be called to live differently to get on board God’s program?  

 

Here’s an example of what I mean.  With World AIDS Day, December 1^st approaching, I heard a story on the radio about the treatment of AIDS among the millions of HIV positive people in Africa.  It started by talking about the concern some in this country had voiced about whether Africans could follow the complicated schedules involved in taking the so called “cocktail” of anti-retro-viral medications that have made AIDS survivable here in America.  The story then reported on several studies that showed that on average Africans were better than Americans in keeping to the necessary strict dosage regimen – when they could get the medicines.  It turns out that the major problem in treating AIDS in Africa is not whether people follow the medication schedule – it is whether people can afford the medication.

 

Some progress on this has begun:  In recent years, our government promised $15 billion for AIDS treatment in Africa, but much of that money has yet to get to where it actually can make a difference.  Some pharmaceutical companies have lowered the prices for drugs in Africa, but many people there still have to choose between buying food & buying life-saving medicine.  

 

What, I asked, would this all look like if the reign of God were come?  First of all, the assumption that Africans can’t figure out when to take their medicine would have been rejected as the racist nonsense it is.  Second, people of good will, non-governmental organizations, pharmaceutical companies, national governments, local health care workers and community leaders would find creative ways to get medicine to the people who need to live productive lives.  If I knew more about global development and health issues, I could hazard a few guesses on specifics of how that might happen – but getting all the details right isn’t the point.  What is crystal clear is that in God’s Reign, no one in Africa – or anywhere else in the world -- would die of AIDS because life-saving drugs were too expensive.

 

The point of such daily imaginings is not to try to solve all the world’s problems in our heads.  The point, rather, is each day to get us into the Biblical habit of seeing the world’s problems as matters that God is intensely passionate about;   to break us out of the privatized religion in which we have been raised so that we recognize the whole of human life, especially the public sphere, as the world God comes to transform.

 

When Christians learn to see the world that way, remarkable things happen:  the collapse of Communism 20 years ago in Eastern Europe, in which local churches played an important role;  the American civil rights moment, led by Christian clergy who understood that the God of the Exodus who led Israel from slavery still seeks to bring freedom in this world.  If we get in the habit of seeing the public world as world as the world God desires to rule, we just might become partners with God in making that Reign real in our own time and place.  And we just might find it all a bit less strange to walk into church on the First Sunday of Advent and hear these images of God’s coming in public, not private, terms; and less strange, as well, on that Day when God’s Reign will fully come, transforming the world forever.     

 

 

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

November 29^th, 2009