Luke 21:25-31
Advent 1
December 2, 2012
First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville and Harmony
Presbyterian Church
The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry
Today
we begin a pilgrimage. Those four weeks
of expectation and anticipation for the birth of God recalled on Christmas
morning.
Today
we set the scene for our Advent journey as together we prepare to stand in awe
with shepherds in fields, hear together the trumpet blasts of the angels
announcing the coming of Messiah and journey, if only in imagination, back to
that night in Royal David’s City.
Today
we light the first candle, we share in the meal, we admire the Nave decked out
in its holiday finest and we look toward the holy silent night.
What
then does it mean that our gospel text today recalls the slaughter of
thousands? What does it have to do with
Christmas?
This
scene from Luke’s gospel comes not from the sentimental opening chapters with the
familiar characters and scenery from children’s nativity pageants, but from the
end of Jesus ministry.
By the
time Luke wrote his gospel account, a number of jarring world events had occurred
since the resurrection, but few rose to the level of the first revolt of the
Jewish people against Roman rule and the subsequent destruction of the temple
in Jerusalem.
If
you or I were sitting in Luke’s moment in time listening to this retelling of
Jesus’ apocalyptic vision, it would not be some abstract and antiquated way of
speaking about the future. Echoing in
the hollow empty quiet that followed the first revolt against Rome, Luke’s retelling
of Jesus’ words envelops us. They so
fully saturate the moment in history we share that even the sun, moon and
stars, those constant watchers of the day and the night, are not left
undisturbed by this remembrance of events so near in both time and place.
The
image of Roman roads lined with hundreds, even thousands, of crucified
neighbors, friends, and family remains stingingly fresh. The cries of children left alone in the ruins
of their homes, their parents never to return, echo in the streets. The rubble of the Temple, the sign of God’s
presence in our midst, stands as a visible reminder that the might in this
world rests not with the faithful of God’s house but with the powers and
principalities of the moment.
That
memory, that remembrance, that moment in history is what greets us this morning
as we begin our Advent pilgrimage.
What,
in the name of all that is holy and good, does the memory of such a dark moment
in history have to do with preparing for Christmas?
Perhaps
rather than asking how this troubling text can be appropriate for the beginning
of Advent, we should ask another question.
What text could be more appropriate?
What other than the memory of such a dark and desolate moment in the
history of God’s people could better illumine the sublime truth of this season
of expectation that though the world is in great darkness, God is Emmanuel-
with us?
That
is, after all, what he season of Advent is truly about; preparing us not for
the sentimental birth of a child but for the coming of God into the world.
The
name of the season, Advent, comes from the Latin word adventus or coming and more specifically the coming of God in
Christ Jesus. Over these four weeks we
prepare for the adventus of God into
a broken and sinful world.
That
notion of Advent as a season of preparation for Christmas doesn’t have much
purchase outside the church these days.
In fact, Christmas has ceased to be 12 days in late December and early
January and has instead become a nearly year-round cultural and marketing
behemoth.
This
summer when I was doing some work on the back deck at my house I noticed a rip
in one of my patio chair cushions.
Company was coming so I decided to run out the home store to get a
replacement or something to repair the tear.
Now it is important for me to note here that this was July 3rd,
right in the middle of last summer’s horrible heat wave and drought. I got to the store and before I was five
steps through the door I stopped in place stunned. I could not believe what I was seeing. The store’s employees were unboxing,
…any
guesses?
Christmas
trees! Artificial Christmas trees in
JULY!
Once
I regained my composure, I uttered a few words of disapproval under my breath
and went about my cushion buying but, I still cannot believe it. Christmas trees in JULY!
No
wonder we have lost a sense of Advent expectation, Christmas has jumped the
line to get ahead of not only Advent but Thanksgiving, Halloween and Labor Day!
Forget
the war on Christmas; let’s talk about this war on Advent!
Even
in a time when the season of Lent has begun to be recaptured by the church as a
season of spiritual discipline and preparation for Easter, the season of Advent
remains buried under a shiny veneer of Christmas cheer.
William
Muel, former professor at Yale Divinity School recalls going to his child’s
Christmas pageant at school one year.
Following
that logic that is found only in school pageants, the teachers cast the
production according to the number of available costumes for each role. If you have eleven wise man costumes, why
not have eleven wise men?
When
the lights dimmed, out came Joseph followed by the three virgins Mary. Then came the angels Gabriel; 20 or so little
girls in diaphanous white gowns supporting enormous gauze wings. An equal number of little boys, the
shepherds, came out in their coats of many colors with their shepherd’s crooks
of many sizes.
To ensure
that this large cast would fit in the limited space provided by the school
stage, the teacher had ingeniously marked the stage with chalk to indicate
where to stand; circles for the angels and crosses for the shepherds. It was a good idea, except for the fact that
she had marked their stations when they were dressed in their street clothes. By the time the angels were in their places,
their flowing gowns covered the marks for the shepherds. After a few moments of shoving and pushing
and generally treating angels as they had never been treated before, one of the
little shepherds had enough, put his hands on his hips and declared, “these damn
angels are fouling up the whole show.
They’ve covered up all the crosses.”
They’ve
covered up all the crosses.
How
easily we do that when we get swept up in the tide of Christmas! We let the holly and the ivy, the tinsel and
the lights cover up the crosses or at least decorate them away.
I
think that is part of why Christmas has begun to creep into July and I have no
doubt that next year I will be able to buy a Christmas tree on my birthday in
mid-June. As long as we are distracted
by the decorations and the holiday spirit; as long as we can brighten things up
with images of Santa and Rudolph; as long as there is all the stuff, we can
keep the cross hidden in the background.
That is certainly tempting and it is made
easier year after year by our friends at Wal-Mart and Macys and Garden Ridge
and Hobby Lobby and all the other purveyors of the stuff. It is certainly easier to throw on some
tinsel and pretend that the sorry truths of this world do not even exist.
But
that is not Advent.
God
did not come into the world to make it safe for holiday cheer.
God
did not come into the world to save the holly and the ivy.
God
did not come into the world to create an illusion of Santa’s workshop to
distract us from the ills of this world.
God
came into the world to cure the ills of the world; to save the world; to redeem
the world.
If
you want to know the true meaning of Christmas, don’t turn to It’s a Wonderful
Life, look instead to the cross of Christ.
Not because it is somehow a remedy to overdoing the sentiment or the
holly-jolly of Christmas, but because in the cross of Christ we are reminded of
just what it is we have to celebrate.
In the
cross of Christ, the love of God for the world is summed up and the brokenness
of the world is made whole.
When
in our passage from Luke today, Jesus said, “there will be signs in the sun,
moon and stars…The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing
people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world…,” he
adds, “…your redemption is near.”
The
events and realities that shake the foundation of our being; that shake even
the stalwart watchers of day and of night are not the last word. In the wake of every human event, in the wake
of every human tragedy, in the wake of everything is the redemption of the people
of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That
is what awaits us at the end of this Advent journey. There is no reason to put a glossy coat of
Christmas over the realities of the world; to let the angels cover up the
crosses. We who begin this Advent
journey do so knowing that at the end of this pilgrimage is redemption.
Now
that is a reason for holiday cheer! When
we understand the miracle of Christmas in the context of the darkness of the
world, the twinkling lights of the tree shine brighter, the holly and the ivy
seem greener, the good cheer and Merry Christmases become tidings of great
joy.
The
trouble is not that we have too much holiday cheer but that we too easily
forget what it is we have to celebrate.
That
even in the midst of times such as these, the redemption of God in Christ Jesus
will come and the God of promise will indeed be with us. What better reason can there be to deck the
halls and share joy and good cheer!
Friends,
may the coming days and weeks of holy expectation fill your hearts and your
lives with the joy of the redemption known only in Christ Jesus and may we each
and every one keep in sight the cross of Christ and with it the promise that is
the coming of Emmanuel; God with us.
Come,
Lord Jesus. Amen.
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