_edited.png)
Advent 2C - Dec 8, 2024
Rev Sarah Colvin
You can find this week's readings here.
Theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in his book The Irony of American History, that “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.” For most of us, I think this is spot on. Let us hold this in mind as we look at our readings. “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.”
Each year, we turn a corner. We start the Church liturgical year in Advent, leading into Christmas. There is a quiet and hushed theme of Advent. Some sort of watchfulness in the night, to be sure that we focus on the coming of Christ and not on the secular hype of the Christmas season, that you may have noticed began with Christmas decorations around Halloween. You may also have noticed that the lectionary readings play on having a sense of readiness, a readiness for the second coming. This week we have the Philippians readings, which is similar to the 1st Thessalonians reading last week, where Paul prays that his community (and therefore you) will be found to ready blameless before Christ, at the second coming.
What exactly is the lectionary doing? In this case, the early Christians had some wisdom in that there used to be three penitential seasons. One of these we still truly have as Lent, the time before Easter. Advent was a penitential season and used to be longer (more like Lent). This is why some Advent wreaths have a rose-colored candle—we needed a break from the really long penitential season to let some joy in. There was a third penitential season, that has just entirely disappeared; it fell in the early part of the season after Pentecost. Now I say that Advent WAS a penitential season, and it has changed from what it was to a more watchful time, but there is still some element of getting our hearts ready for the second coming of Christ so that we will be ready for the celebration of the first coming.
Why would I possibly say they were wise to have Advent as a penitential season? Western Christianity doesn’t often think much about repentance, it’s just not our thing and instead many people think it is something onerous. However, to be right with God though, this is actually a thing of joy. The Greek concept, based on the Hebrew, has something to do with letting something go: ---something that makes your heart heavy, something that bugs you, something that isn’t sitting right, a misdeed in a relationship with a friend, foe or family. All these things can and do get in the way of our relationship with God. You can think of them as occupying psychic or emotional space that lets our thoughts turn from God. And I promise to not break into song like Elsa in Frozen, but for all of these.. Let it Go, let it go. It doesn’t matter if it’s something you did, or you didn’t do, or something done to you, get it out of your life, your vision, quit carrying it, put it down, so that it doesn’t get in the way of your interactions with God. How else can we approach God as children, unless we are unencumbered?
And so, to return the Niebuhr quote: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.” What I love about this, is that it actually has little to do with what you or any person can actually achieve in a lifetime. What this alludes to is that the work of God is so much larger than what we as individual people accomplish. We are part of a larger arc of what God is accomplishing in the world. It is the same song that Zechariah sings at the birth of his child John. It is a miracle that he and his equally old wife Elizabeth bore a son, but his song is of the larger arc of God’s work of salvation. The crying voice of John in the wilderness, calling all to repent and turn to God, is all part of God’s larger work of salvation.
And so, when we do come to the end of lives, there is a hope that we recognize that the good we have done in the world is part of a larger good, something so much larger. And that we are able to stand before God, because and only because God looks upon us through the lens of Christ, and therefore through Christ we are found blameless, righteous. This is not so much that we are unworthy without Christ, but that there is a relief in humility, a relief that even as we are called to prepare, that it does not all depend on us. Because we don’t know the big picture, does not mean that something larger isn’t driving it. As much as we are called in Advent preparation, still we are released from obligation of thinking that we are to do something all by ourselves, instead our work is part of a larger work. Lastly, it is because we are blessed with the promise that in God’s graciousness, that we are looked at through the loving eyes of Christ, and then found blameless; ---- this is the stuff of hope. All that is gracious and true is of God, and this relationship we have with the Almighty is indeed the stuff of hope.
Image credit: Bruegel, Pieter, 1564-1638. Saint John the Baptist Preaching to the Masses in the Wilderness, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56030 [retrieved December 22, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_John_the_Baptist_Preaching_to_the_Masses_in_the_Wilderness_oil_on_oak_panel_by_Pieter_Brueghel_the_Younger.jpg.
Comments