Scriptures
Jeremiah 33:14–16 & Luke 21:25–36
Manuscript
“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
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I adore Advent.
It’s not the thrill of Christmas shopping that gets me, or the familiar carols on the radio. It’s not even the spirit of giving or the decorations outside or the mountains of snow—though all of those things can be lovely.
No, for me, it’s the quiet. The hushed tones, the minor keys, the candlelight. That feeling of staying up a little extra to wait for a glimpse of wonder.
There’s a mystery taking place. You can feel it in the air. And the hustle and bustle of the season is almost enough to make you forget:
The God of heaven and earth is drawing near.
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Today, we hear two promises that the end is nigh.
Which seems like a strange way to open the Advent season. Happy New Year, the end is nigh. But for all the talk of the end of the world, that’s not really the end these texts are talking about.
Sure, it might feel like the end of the world sometimes. Babylon might be on your doorstep, and your prophets might be exiled, or even killed. The seas might be rising, and storms might be getting stronger day by day. The rich might be getting richer, and the poor getting poorer, and it might feel like there’s no way to stop the cycle.
Even the sun, moon, and stars might seem to go off course—and you would be far from alone if you felt overwhelmed and afraid and distressed. So do all who live to see such times.
But the promise of the Advent season—the promise of Christ, and the promise of creation; the promise of Jeremiah, and the promise of Revelation—is that what feels like the end of the world is never the end of God’s story.
And the promise today is that the end of the end is nigh.
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“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Jeremiah prophesies that the exile will come to an end. The royal line will be reforged. The people will be reunited, and life will begin again.
And in Jesus’ time the promise is that Rome will fall, and the wars will end. A faith outside the Temple will be born when the walls fall, and life will begin again.
Though generations may pass before the end, though even heaven and earth may pass away, still life will begin again.
So often, we are tempted to think only in terms of ourselves. We often make decisions based on how they affect only us, or our immediate circle. We meet needs with short-term solutions before long-term. We plan in terms of a single lifetime.
But it need not be that way. In fact, in uncertain times, it needs to not be that way. We need each other.
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This week is the week of hope for Advent. And I find that hope is often misunderstood.
We want to skip to the end, to know for a fact that it will all turn out alright, to know that we will make it through, we will recover, we will survive.
And if we don’t, or it takes too long, or we lose people on the way, we can start to lose that kind of hope, too.
But the kind of hope that lasts isn’t about ignoring what’s right in front of us. Hope isn’t about denying that pain and violence and injustice and destruction are real. Hope doesn’t come from shutting our eyes and plugging our ears and waiting for the world to change without us.
It’s one of the things I find so beautiful about these apocalyptic texts like we hear in Luke today.
Hope is the willingness to face the world as it is, and the determined belief that we always still have the chance to change it. What is is not what has to be. We have power, together, to make this world a better place, day after day.
And God is always coming to help us.
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I find myself each Advent thinking back to that scene from Lord of the Rings, where Frodo sits wistfully remembering a simpler time in his life, wishing that he had never found the Ring, that he had never had to set out on this journey, and that the end of the world had not happened in his lifetime.
And Gandalf turns to him and says, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
A few chapters before today’s snippet of Jeremiah, the prophet reports one of God’s most famous promises: “I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
It’s printed on plaques and crossstiched on pillows. It’s in email signatures and on greeting cards. It makes the rounds of Facebook every couple months.
And almost always, it’s presented without context, and often interpreted as if the goal is to ignore the reality in front of you in favour of the knowledge that this season will eventually end.
And don’t get me wrong—it will. That’s part of the promise, too.
But this promise from God follows explicit instructions to the people not to ignore the reality in front of them.
They’ve just been taken from their homes and sent to exile, and God tells them not to sit and wait for the end of this end, but to commit to the life in front of them. To build houses in Babylon, to marry the people of Babylon, to raise their children, to invest in their communities, and to find good in the midst of this pain.
Because not only will life always begin again, at the end of this end—there is also some life to be found here and now. God is coming, and God is present here and now.
This is the paradox of Advent. We look forward to a birth that has already taken place. And so we have a God who can be here, who can come in a new way, even though God is already here, and so that Jesus can walk among us and promise to return, even though the Holy Spirit is always with us. So that the Kingdom of God which is always already here can be fulfilled.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, the beginning and the end. In the midst of uncertain times, on the days when it feels like the world is ending and there is no hope left, God is always here, life is always here—and God is coming to bring new life.
All we have to do, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
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So take your time this season. Quiet your mind and slow your heart. Pause from the busyness of the season to light a candle. A single candle, the first of the year, the first light of the season, the first light of hope, that beacon that shines through the darkness, so that the shadows cannot overwhelm it.
Watch, and pray, and let the light of Christ infuse you, fill you, warm you in this cold, so that you shine as a beacon of hope in a hurting world, so that you go forth from this place to be the presence of Christ in this world, to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with the God who is coming, and who is already here.
“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.