25th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 28 – Ted Hackett
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…
We are now just two weeks from Advent… And you can tell because our society is celebrating Christmas… At least in retail outlets…
Advent….the season of preparation is only two weeks away… Advent used to be an odd sort of thing and it still is, really… Because it is the end of one liturgical year and the beginning of the next one…
The Jewish sense of history went on a line…from creation to fulfillment with the coming of the Kingdom of God at the end… We still look for that in the big picture of history…
But the Church year can’t operate that way…we have to repeat the year over and over…till history is over… And as Yogi Berra famously said: “It ain’t over till its over!” So Advent celebrates both beginning and ending…
The end is final, last judgement… The new beginning is the Birth of Jesus
Around the fourth century Advent became more and more a penitential season…probably because the Church grew to become the religion of the Roman Empire and sin was more obvious
By the Middle Ages Advent was called “Little Lent” and was very penitential… Clergy often wore black during Advent… It was, after all… The End of the World!
And as also happened with Lent…there was “doom & gloom creep” the weeks before Advent became more and more gloomy… If you consider today’s readings… Zephania warns that the Day of the Lord…the day of judgment…is at hand. Paul tells us that the Day of the Lord is coming soon…like a thief in the night! The Gospel is also about Judgement…about the final accounting… And if you don’t do right by God…there’s no reward for you!
Modern Christians have a much more optimistic view of things… Advent is rarely thought of as a kind of “Little Lent”… It’s a time for parties and the experience of the joy and fun of Christmas … It’s a good time…and I for one love it!
But to make it even more complicated… Next Sunday…the Sunday before Advent… The New Lectionary marks the end of the Church Year with the up-beat feast of Christ the King… Instituted by the Pope in 1925 to remind secular Italians that Jesus was the real king… It was originally observed in October but in the 60’s it was moved to the end of the Church year…right before Advent… That way it says: “At the end of the world, Jesus will be King!”
O.K…I can go with that triumphant idea… I can go with the idea that in the end… Despite the awful slaughter of innocent people in the Middle East and in Ukraine… Christians proclaim the ultimate victory of God over sin, suffering and death!… Yes…even as we go down to the grave we make our song… Alleluia…ALLELUIA!
But if we get there too fast… If we get there without a deep sense of the sin of what we humans have done… Are doing… And will continue to do… Without knowing the terrible pain of the suffering… The hunger… the desolation… the hurting…
The sins we will continue to do… In spite of sickness… Of homelessness… Of loneliness… Of terror… Of watching your kids torn apart by bombs… Or shot by thugs in the street…
Unless we know these things… Unless we let our selves feel them… Unless we can hurt… And be angry for the victims…
Our Alleluias will be shallow… Our celebrations will be thoughtless… Our joy…which ought to be real… Will be tainted by selfishness…. Will be soiled by denial… Will only be ways to kid ourselves…
Jesus was born, we are told…in a manger… Stars and shepherds and wise men were there…rejoicing! But then… Then… He died in Agony… And before he rose, Transformed…
Before he rose… He died…he died… Abandoned like someone in Palestine…torn apart by a bomb… In lonely agony… Blown up by a mine in Ukraine… Murdered at a music festival in Israel…
Christianity is about a suffering God… A God who chooses to be a human… Chooses to know our pain… Chooses to die our death… Chooses to know our abandonment!
That’s why Advent…the season before the birth of the King of Peace… Was once observed in black! The only way to Easter is through the pain and desolation of Good Friday…
I don’t know what to do about Ukraine and Israel and Palestine… Or about homelessness and disease… Or about sin… But I know our dear Lord suffered as people are suffering All over the world… And God is weeping… And we have to take on some of that sorrow… Or the joy of the coming season will be hollow…
But by God’s grace… Knowing sin but hoping through it… Knowing the sin of this world… But daring to hope anyway… Daring to sing Alleluia in the midst of the pain and death…
That is our calling… That is part of our job as followers of Jesus… And that is also our gift! Our gift to an often hopeless world… Because it is Jesus’ gift to us!