The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: Luke 21:25-36
Happy New Year, everyone! No really, it’s the start of the new church year when we move from the long stretch of Ordinary Time into a season of preparation and anticipation. We begin a new lectionary year, our three-year schedule of the biblical readings we hear on Sundays, diving into a different gospel each year. Year A we read Matthew, Year B we read Mark, and Year C—the year we’re starting today—we focus on Luke. The gospel of John is divided up throughout these three years on various Sundays and feast days.
It makes sense that we start our new year with Advent, which derives from the Latin adventus, which means “coming” or “arrival.” This is the time in our liturgical calendar when we get intentional about marking every week leading up to the coming of Jesus into the world, lighting candles, one by one, each week bringing just a little more light.
I had never really experienced Advent as a Church season before I went to seminary. I only associated the word with the little chocolates hidden behind cardboard doors in the Advent calendar my mom got for my sister and me every year. I guess that fostered a little of the spirit of the season: this sense of anticipation of getting to open the little door for the day and eat my chocolate. And the door for Christmas Day was the biggest door, which meant the biggest chocolate marking when Jesus arrived.
So as a kid I only understood the weeks leading up to Christmas as marked by little chocolates, and Christmas songs overtaking the radio, and houses lit up with lights, and more and more presents slowly gathering under the tree, There was anticipation and preparation, alright, but more for what was in those wrapped gifts that I’d get to tear open on Christmas morning.
But then I got to seminary. I was a full-time student who lived on campus with a community of people all seeking to go into formal ministry of some sort. We were all so deeply immersed in the work of making meaning—of the Bible, of the sacraments, of mission and vocation. And, of course, of the liturgical calendar.
Which meant that we weren’t focusing on the loud joy and bright light that was all around us off the hill—yes, my seminary was in the Berkeley Hills. There was no red and green, just purple or dark blue. No Christmas carols but O Come O Come Emmanuel or Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. We were focusing on the quiet and darkness of the womb.
That’s what Advent is, really: a womb. Literally in one sense. This is the time that Mary is big with child, unable to see her own feet, waddling from place to place, worried about the dangers of the birthing bed.
But waiting for baby Jesus to arrive is just one aspect of Advent. Our gospel today gives us another aspect:
Jesus said, "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.
You may have heard that today and thought, well this doesn’t sound very festive. I’m decorating my Christmas tree today. I don’t want to hear about fear and foreboding. But Jesus speaks here of yet another kind of womb.
Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth-century abbot and theologian, described three Advents, three arrivals. The first, of course, is the Incarnation, which we’ve already mentioned: Jesus coming into the world, into our skin, into our suffering, into our mortality. In his solidarity with our earthly experience, we find hope.
As for the second Advent, well I think poet T.S. Eliot says it best in Little Gidding:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
It’s fitting that the first gospel reading on the first Sunday of the new church year is Jesus’ final teaching to the disciples before he goes to his human end—which proves to be only the beginning.
You see, sometimes we’re waddling along, backs aching, bladders shouting, unable to see our feet, but somehow in complete denial that new life is growing in us. Unable to see these as the signs of that new life about to burst forth. We think the pain, the suffering, the fear and foreboding is all there is. We can’t see that the moment is pregnant with unimaginable possibilities.
And by we, I mean this world—and on the scale Jesus is talking about: distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. Now I’m not one to usually take the Bible literally, but this verse conjures climate change to me. And of course there are also wars, genocide, famine.
Now I’m not saying that there’s anything innately good or hopeful about any of these calamities. I’m saying that Jesus said that in the midst of these calamities, we will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.
But why is Jesus waiting? we ask. When does he plan on coming back like he promised to mend and heal this world and show us a more abundant way of being?
That’s where the third Advent comes in. German theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote in his book Theology of Hope, “I am trying to present Christian hope no longer as such an ‘opium of the beyond’ but rather as the divine power that makes us alive in this world.”
The third Advent comes between the Incarnation and the Second Coming, and it is the everyday arrival of Jesus, the divine power that makes us alive in this world.
Jesus says it a little differently: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
This third Advent isn’t us waiting for Jesus, it’s Jesus waiting for us.
Stand up, raise your heads, be on guard, be alert. All these imperatives are found in today’s gospel. I’m already here, Jesus says, but do you even see me?
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
The womb surrounds us always. In all the suffering, in all the need we see in this world. Because however meaningless pain and suffering are, they also present each of us with an opportunity to respond.
Jesus, the divine power that makes us alive in this world, waits to arrive in our every interaction, our every choice. Jesus coming to us through the least of these, and Jesus coming through us in how we care for them. And let’s not forget, there are moments in each of your lives when you are the least of these, when you hope that someone sees Jesus in you and responds with their own revelation of Jesus—with love.
So this Advent, I invite you to make a little space in the bustle and brightness of the holiday season for the quiet and darkness of the womb. To not only await and anticipate the arrival of Jesus on Christmas Day or on some promised but unknown day in the future, but to stand up and raise your heads to look for the arrival of Jesus wherever you are, in whoever you encounter.
Let him be born through you again and again and again. Amen.
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