Advent peace amid Christmas chaos

Sermon for the first Sunday in Advent, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: Luke 21:25-36

Welcome to the new Church year, year C for scripture reading, where we will read the Gospel of Luke for most of it. We gather on the First Sunday of Advent, starting the Christmas season with a rather un-Adventish, un-Christmassy reading. Foreboding and fainting and distress do not sound like the cheer or the anticipation we experience in the Christmas season, and this reading sounds a bit like the doom-and-gloom passage we heard in Mark two weeks ago. It is also reminiscent of something I read recently, that goes like this: “I do not wish to force any one to believe as I do; neither will I permit anyone to deny me the right to believe that the last day is near at hand. These words and signs of Christ compel me to believe that such is the case. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth?” While it sounds just like the complaints we have heard recently, this was actually Martin Luther writing in the early 1500’s, 500 years ago. Our modern problems aren’t even that new. What a downer.

It’s easy to get caught up in the negativity that we have been bombarded with over the past month and forget about the meaning of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It’s easy to forget about the preparation for Christmas, because the most visible part of it is the same year after year - Black Friday, Christmas season sales, parties, and food. And there are also Christmas trees with lights, and decorations to put up. Between the preparations and this opening Gospel reading for Advent, it is jarring to confront the humble birth of Jesus. Even the image of Jesus coming down on a cloud in the reading doesn’t fit the serenity of the barn where the infant Jesus is held in Mary’s arms. It is a contradiction that doesn’t sit too well with us because it intrudes on the joy of the season, but then isn’t the image of the infant Jesus next to the image of our savior on a cross an even more uncomfortable contradiction? In this moment of discomfort brought on by these images and the current national sentiment, the calm scene of mother and newborn child, watched over by the father, is a refuge for us. This refuge is not an escape from discomfort, but a place where we can safely deal with it and understand it, a place where we will not be overwhelmed by it.

Throughout Luke, we will hear Jesus say that the kingdom of God is near, and this reading is the first hint. This brings up yet another paradox, because when we think about the kingdom, we think of peace, and light, and joy, and fulfillment, all things that we reach out for and hope to grab onto. That is not always our experience as Jesus points out and as Martin Luther complains about. But when things appear to be falling apart, that is our cue to stand up and look for the kingdom, because it is untouched by that calamity. The kingdom rises above it all, and we will see it when we bless the meek, love the forgotten, and hold onto hope. When we look around at the social discontent and political chaos we are experiencing, when we are surrounded by personal strife in our lives, we can gaze at the manger scene and find the peace that Jesus was born into, because it rises above all of those hard parts of life. The manger and the moment of Jesus’ birth is a refuge for us as we figure out how to move around the hard parts and find the kingdom beyond them.

In the reading, Jesus cautions the disciples to watch out for dissipation and drunkenness, in other words, aimlessness and futile actions. He cautions about the worries of life that, along with no purpose and futility, distract them from seeking the kingdom of God. This is not like the foolish maids who missed their one chance to enter the kingdom from a lack of preparedness. This is Jesus saying don’t follow the things that distract from finding the kingdom as it breaks through the noise of daily life, time after time. The kingdom is always near, but you may not recognize it because you are looking for something that resembles the distractions, and not, as Jesus suggests, the signs of the kingdom. To see the coming kingdom, we have to look at the world and ourselves differently through Jesus’ eyes, not our eyes. We have to put away the complaining and the easy inaction for the more difficult task of finding Jesus in others, and stand before that presence with purpose and focus and commitment. Learning to look for the kingdom takes time and patience, and Advent is a good time to start since we are already looking for signs of Christmas.  

The first step toward this new way of looking for the kingdom can be looking at Christmas a little differently. We are used to seeing it as our savior coming into the world, God incarnate among us, but we could also see it as the birth or rebirth of our ability to find it. That new ability is being able to find the kingdom in the middle of a lot of things that pull us away from it or promises that it will be better that are never fulfilled. It is an ability to know that the kingdom is near and that we can find it, even when it is hidden. It is the hope that we can and will build it so that it spreads throughout our homes, community, and nation. We enter a time of quiet preparation for the mystery that unfolds at Jesus’ birth. We contemplate how he, both human and divine, sinless and perfect, brings the kingdom so close to us that we can reach out and touch it when we know where to find it.

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