Signs of Things to Come

As Advent begins, all around us we can feel the weather become cold and the holiday excitement begin to build.  But then, we come to these readings for our first Sunday in Advent.  This is not the expected [sing]  “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style….”  Instead, this is something very different.  These passages are calling us to something very different than our culture or world calls us to.  We expected beginning stories of the baby Jesus, and instead we find the adult Jesus at the end of his ministry calling us to remain awake and vigilant and be attentive to God. We expected stories of a babe in swaddling clothes, but instead we get stories of the end of times.  We expect the beginning, but we get the end.  What is happening?

Will you pray with me?  “God of beginnings and ends and all of the in-between times, help us find hope and love and the good news in these passages.  And help us prepare in Advent for the coming of Jesus. Amen.”

Today we begin the new church year with the season of Advent.  Today we mark the new beginning of a new liturgical year and church cycle.  And we are greeted by readings from Jeremiah and Luke that scream about the end times—not a time when Jesus came in a stable, but instead, a time when Jesus will come in glory and the world will shake and all things will be made anew.  Beginnings and endings and the eternal cycle of life. 

Jeremiah tells us of a coming time when God’s promises will be fulfilled.  To what promises does Jeremiah refer?  There is really only one main promise in the entire Bible.  God loves us unconditionally.  No matter what.  God promises that to us.  And no matter what happens, whether signs in the sun and moon and stars and distress among the nations, God loves us.  Fear and foreboding may beset the earth, but fear not, for God is with us.

            No matter who you are, and no matter where you are on life’s journey, we can all see something of the roaring of the Sandy sea, people fainting from fear of election returns and the powers of the heavens being shaken with missiles.  War clouds are gathering in the Mid East, global famine is expanding in desert Africa, millions are dying of tuberculosis and AIDS worldwide.  Sea levels are rising, and monster storms in the Northern Hemisphere and enormous earthquakes in Southeast Asia are shaking us all.    And what does Jesus say in Luke about all of this?  When you see these things coming, stand up and raise your heads, for your redemption is coming near.  When the world falls apart, hold fast to the promise of God, and that promise is this: God loves us unconditionally.   Nothing can take the love of God away from us.  Nothing.  So stand up and raise your head!  Our redemption is coming near because of what God has done.  God is near to us, even in global cataclysm and disaster.  God is our Rock and our salvation.  And God’s promised love has a name: the Lord is our righteousness.  Don’t be distracted by the chaos of the world.  Cleave to God, who promises unconditional love to God’s people, because God is always with us, righteousness is right here with us, Emmanuel.

            In the midst of this warning of cataclysm, Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree.  Just as winter leads to spring and brown sticks lead to buds and new life and growth, so the signs of things to come will lead to heaven and earth passing away, but God’s love will remain forever.  I walked through the forest along the Mill River yesterday.  The canopy of trees was dead and bare and appeared lifeless.  But we all have fig-tree hope that spring will come, that the storms and lifelessness will pass—even destruction and death and despair will pass: we have a confident hope that spring will come. 

            But nothing is guaranteed for us.  The world around us can descend into chaos in the blink of an eye, in the beat of a heart, in the squeal of tires or slip on the ice.  Our hope is not a thin watery hope of a perfect life, but a robust deep hope that our loving God is with us through every travail and trouble and joy and celebration.  We celebrate God-with-us always.  Not a sometimes-with-us God, but an always-with-us God.   When our lives are whole and wonderful, God is with us.  And in the fractured times of our lives we can also have confidence that the spring of God’s love will hold us in warm embrace, and that the leaves of love will bloom from the barren branches of the chaos of our lives.  Our lives are hopeful and fruitful fig trees; barren at times, but at times full of hope in full bloom.  We live a faith and confidence that the cycle of God’s abundance will continue, and that spring and warmth will follow the cold and unfruitful days.  And the parable of the fig tree holds a wonderful surprise: fig trees bloom and fruit twice each year.  That’s right.  Living in central California taught me that early harvest and late harvest figs are in store for all God’s children who hold fast to God’s promises.  We are twice-blessed fig trees.

So in the church new year, what would it mean for us to start all over, to wait and watch and wonder and rejoice that God is with us and that God loves us unconditionally, no matter what?  In our new year, let us cleave to the hope that despondency and despair are swept away, like the coming chaos.  And into this world, an advent of new hope, new love, new confidence.  Not confidence in the old things, but in the new things from above.  God’s love.  Christ’s presence.  All represented here by our communion meal that sacramentally remembers God’s eternal everlasting love for us.  When the world looks the most bleak, God’s table of grace and love always remains.  When we think that the end is surely come, God’s love remains steadfast.  Here at this table we remember Jesus’ saying that God’s love will conquer all, even death.  The impossible is possible with God.  Where there is no human hope, God’s love buds and leafs into the world, offering hope, love, joy, peace and grace where there was nothing before.

We are a people of the promise of God.  God promises to love us, no matter what.  This table is bread and juice reminding us that Jesus’ flesh and blood found hope in God’s promise of love.  And here, our flesh and blood also find hope in God’s promised unconditional love.  All things have passed away, behold, the new comes.  This is Advent.  This is the table of God’s everlasting always-coming always-here grace.  Come to this table of Gods’ eternal everlasting ever-present Promise.  All things will pass away but this: This is the sign of things to come, sisters and brothers. God’s love is everlasting.    Amen.