Christ Episcopal Church, King and Queen Parish, Chaptico, MD
Sermon by Brother Joseph Brown, n/OHC
RCL – Advent 1 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Psalm 25: 1-9
1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13
Luke 21: 25-36
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Eternal One.
(adaptation from Ps 19: 14)
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Let us pray:
Christ was born. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Amen.
I added the first term to this well known memorial prayer. The liturgical period of Advent (which we start today) focuses on the beginning and on the end of this short memorial prayer; Christ was born, on the one hand, and Christ will come again, on the other.
The birth of Jesus is what we celebrate at Christmas. Yes, yes, despite all the hoopla around us; that still is what Christmas is about! The future return of Jesus is a hope we hold as Christians for all of humanity. It is often referred to as the Parousia, or the Second Coming. And both of these occurences, the birth of Christ and the Parousia, are transformative events.
Through the incarnation of God, we were made whole; we were healed; we were saved. The incarnation made us children of God by adoption.
Through the Parousia, we hope to further be redeemed. Let me tell you more about these two words I just used here: “Parousia” and “to be redeemed” or “Redemption”.
Parousia comes from the Greek language. In the antiquity, it referred to the appearance of a king or a queen and to their subsequent presence with the people on an official visit. So the hope of Parousia is for Jesus and all of humanity to be together again, in a very tangible way. Christ the King will visit and tarry with his people.
And in this being together again, we hope to receive our redemption from God. The words used in the original gospel for “redemption” are the ones that were used to indicate the change in status of a slave made into a free person.
We have to remember how much of a transformation this was at the time of the gospel being written. Slaves were seen as belongings rather than persons. In many ways, they were considered like cattle. In redeeming a slave, a person buying the slave’s freedom was turning the slave into a person, a free person.
So, despite all the awe-inspiring signs (dare I say, the distracting signs?), the important message in today’s apocalyptic passage is that God is coming back to dwell with us, with all of us.
And this novel reality will transform us beyond what we know and understand now; we will be redeemed into something new. It will be so new that it will feel like the end of the reality we know now.
What is promised in this Gospel is nothing less than an end to our current nature and a profound transformation.
Call that an end of the world if you want to, but don’t ask me what, when or how, I don’t know… Jesus himself cautions us that no one knows the time but our heavenly Father. All I can do about knowing the Parousia is marvel at how incredibly marvelous it will be!
So Advent opens our liturgical year with a period of four weeks of preparation for the celebration of the Incarnation; God once already came to live among us; as one of us.
But beyond Christmas, Advent aims at reminding us that our whole lives are a preparation for the return of Jesus amongst us.
The gospel text of today tries to convey this message in apocalyptic style. Remember that apocalypse means “unveiling, revelation of a truth”. The apocalyptic literary genre, used in many books throughout the bible, makes use of tremendous and frightening images to convey its message.
Often this language is used to help the current underdog. It depicts the come-uppance of the wicked at the hand of an unsurpassable power. That is a rhetorical temptation that many bible scribes were unable to resist in order to boost morale amongst the marginal, exploited and hurt audience they were writing for.
Our passage from the Gospel according to Luke is no different and it probably rang a tone of truth to Luke’s contemporaries while taking a jibe at roman power. Many of Jesus’ followers had experienced worldview-crushing events. Many of them still saw themselves as belonging to the Jewish tradition. And while hoping for Jesus’ return in their lifetime, they had witnessed the crushing defeat of a Jewish rebellion against the Roman empire, the dissemination of the Jews away from Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. The world in many ways may have felt like it was ending for them. They needed to hear that, in the midst of all this havoc, there was still hope.
And that’s what the apocalyptic genre delivers. It describes a world in the throes of terrible happenings while telling of an ultimately hopeful resolution. An apocalypse is the unveiling of a thrilling truth: a truth that leaves you quivering with excitement and anticipation.
Now excitement is something all of our media try to boost in us around what is called “the Holidays Season” but not in a hopeful sense. Christmas and the Parousia are events that have been highly stylized by our popular culture. It has become difficult for us Christians to disentangle ourselves from the media soundtrack on these two events. The Christmas soundtrack runs something like this; good, warm, happy, ho-ho-ho! The Second Coming soundtrack is more like that; awe-inspiring, bone-crushing and dangerous.
Now there is plenty in scripture to support such visions on Christmas and Parousia. In a couple of weeks or so, our lectionary will start to have the tone of a celebration in commemoration of Jesus’ birth.
For a couple of weeks now, we have had readings that refer to the Parousia or to the Second Coming. A casual listening to these readings can yield an alarmist and catastrophic sensation. And taken literally, parts of these readings may work on that level. But now you know to look deeper than just the signs, no matter how ominous they may be.
Jesus exhorts us in today’s Gospel to be watchful, to be vigilant in order to be ready for the transformation of Parousia. We are not told to rest on our laurels of self-righteous Christians. Yes we are saved; we are made whole by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And yet, that does not exempt us from the work of co-creating the Kingdom of God, here and now. God is here, God is with us. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus keeps telling us so throughout his ministry.
The hope of Parousia is that God’s presence will become universally evident and inescapable. That’s very good news indeed.
And as Saint Paul prayed for the Thessalonians, let us pray for ourselves and for the world:
“…may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
Amen.
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Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
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