First Sunday in Advent

First Sunday in Advent

Jeremiah 33:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

The end is coming. The end times began the day Jesus walked out of his tomb. With the resurrection from the dead, Jesus pointed to a different end than people were expecting. As we look at the “end of time” narratives in Luke and the other gospel accounts, we are taken by the fact that they all look bleak. Luke records the ominous “signs” in the sun, the moon, and the stars. He records “distress among nations, and roaring of the sea and the waves. Luke pictures people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming. He depicts the “powers of the heavens” being shaken and then the descending “Son of Man” on the clouds with power and glory. In the midst of these catastrophic events Jesus announces, “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near. Advent brings us to the point of standing on the edge of time and peering out as over a cliff to glimpse the future. Jesus begins our adventure into the future with the promise of what God has stretched before the people of God. It is a future of redemption. However, redemption does not come without a price. In the case of the sin of world, the price was great. It was the price of Jesus’ death on the cross. The price that we pay is the human life lived in the world where the cross – the act of dying – is a process for us. The cross that we have been invited to pick up is a process of daily dying to our sinful humanity and being raised to new life with Jesus. That baptismal process does not stop until the day that we are laid in our graves. It means that we often observe the catastrophic signs that Jesus talked about unfolding every day. Little by little, everything around us is perishing.

Observe Jesus’ warning for life in a perishing world. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. Please note that Jesus did not say clean up your act to get ready. His warning consisted in not being so caught up in the catastrophe that we fail to see what lies over the edge of the cliff. Redemption is that is hard to see, not the catastrophe. Worry and dissipation over life can be one of the greatest catastrophic magnets pulling us away from the central issue – God. Jesus’ warning is a focus meant to bring our eyes back to the God behind all of the happenings.

Jesus maintained a single focus – the cross. Nothing could divert him from the journey that he was taking that led him to Jerusalem and to the cross. Peter tried at Caesarea Philippi. Peter could not accept the prediction that Jesus was going to die. “God forbid that this should happen to you.” It was painful for Jesus but he turned back from his denial to face the road ahead. Jesus could do that, because with every painful reminder that the cross was ahead of him, there was also the reminder that his journey was his purpose in coming and it was in God’s hands, and it would lead out of death into resurrection. She remain focused upon God and the future as the strength to remain on the path that led to the cross.

God offers us the same plan. Look to the future hope, the resurrection, the final consummation of God’s plan and it will guide you and strengthen you to make the journey that is not in vain. The plan and the journey are all heading in the right direction, and God has provided the strength to follow it to the end.