First Sunday in Advent, Year A:
Isaiah 2.1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13.11-14; Matthew 24.36-44
It’s hard not to be affected by this time of the year, for good or for ill. You’ve probably all heard it said around Halloween and All Saints that “the veil is thin,” and I think that same thinness persists throughout Advent.
At Halloween the idea of the veil being thin suggests that we’re in touch with numinous things: that all around us we perceive the presence of a world beyond us. But we put away Halloween and All Saints, and set our faces toward Thanksgiving, when “the holidays” truly begin. Our world is still full of a world beyond us – a world of yesterdays, of recollection and longing and interpretation – and a world of tomorrows – of dreams and prayers and anticipation. The veil is still thin here, but not only the veil. We actually become thinner people, more aware of everything that is happening around us.
Because when you come so close to numinous things, when all of the scaffolding you move around in falls away, you find yourself living side by side with memories and deep wishes and high hopes. That also means that you share space with regret and disappointment. We all walk around with a great sense of anticipation throughout November and December because this season brings to light the most important things: family, friendship, and generosity. But this season also casts high beams on brokenness, loneliness, and the cruel disparities between people that we see all around. A thin veil hides very little, least of all what is stirring in our hearts. The world revealed to us in the light of Advent is a world full of time: of the past and of the future, of waiting and of watching. As Advent begins, it becomes clear that what the last month has been about, and what will be cast into bold relief from this point forward, is nothing less than our greatest desires. Advent is about the veil effacing, whispering away, and us seeing clearly things as they really are; and, by extension, feeling acutely the press of everything that we want most.
That sense of intense longing and heightened anticipation is so present in our reading from Romans this morning. The apostle Paul writes to a group of Christians living in first-century Rome, who are coping with problems common to many of the people Paul knew: Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are trying to live together in peace, and are trying to learn how to be something new in an old world. The Roman church does not know what to do about civil authority; it does not know what to do about the Jewish Law; its members, frankly, do not know what to do about one another. But they have heard about a man named Jesus who was believed to be the Son of God, and who was executed as a criminal, and something about the telling of his story – something about how it sounds to them, how they can imagine it, how they see it manifest in the lives of those who bring it to them – has made them fall in love. The more they pray, the more they hear Scripture read and expounded upon, the more they come together to bless bread and eat, bless wine and drink, the more they can see: the more light they are given to recognize things for what they truly are. When they see good, they know it for good; and when they see evil, they know it for evil. They can’t reject one another because they see in each other the presence of Christ and they know it to be good. This is hard. But too, they are increasingly uncomfortable in the city that has been home to them: the arena, the slave markets, the wars, sometimes their own families … and this is devastating. They are suddenly on foreign territory. What they want, more than anything, is to know how to make sense of where they have been and of where they are going; to make sense of who they are and of who they want to be. The Romans want to know how to find some peace.
And Paul is so inspired. He sees so clearly and he is so passionate, you can imagine him leaning forward and clasping his hands together as he dictates this letter to his scribe, saying, “wake up! You know what time it is! Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone and the day is near!” Now, if you know that the early Christians thought that Jesus might come again in their own lifetime, it’s easy to hear in his words a message about patience: “Just hang in there – you know what time it is! It’s almost time for Jesus to come back, to save you by taking you away, and to grant you peace-by-escape.”
But Paul is actually taking a page from Jesus when he encourages the Romans to wake up and live in the daylight. We have just heard a part of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus talks about the temple falling down, about his disciples facing persecution, and about his return to earth. And no matter what we might make of this, Jesus is ultimately fuzzy on the details. “About the day and the hour, no one knows,” he says of what we call his second coming. He compares its advent to being alive at the time of Noah. The point, though, is not that people then were so evil that they couldn’t see that large cumulonimbus cloud about to break open; the point is that nobody could have known about the flood if they wanted to. It came as a surprise. Jesus is telling his disciples, “don’t sit around and speculate about what this is going to look like or when it is going to happen. I have given you a mission and a ministry. Keep awake, therefore, and go about your business. Be disciples and not soothsayers. Quiet yourselves about the future, and put your energy into what it means to walk with me in the present.”
Paul has his own way of describing that walk: “put on Christ.” Wear Christ like your clothes, like “armor of light.” And he, too, is pushing his friends to live now. To be courageous despite the fact that they are seeing and feeling so much, and to rely on Jesus for their strength. Jesus spoke about a second coming, another Advent, and Paul would have agreed that such an event could happen at any time, but both of them knew that God’s kingdom was already happening. What was revealed to the Romans as they grew closer and closer to God, as they put on Christ in prayer, and worship, and in community with one another was that Jesus never left. That God is here now, and that God’s Spirit cries out in each one of us, louder and louder as the veil gets thinner and thinner. The more we see the world for what it is, the more we feel the powerful and sometimes disturbing presence of God. When we long for damaged relationships to be healed, for all people to be loved, to be full, to be safe; when we long for all that lives to share a season of unbroken joy, we feel the pain of seeing too clearly. We may wish to draw back from what is real, to whisk the veil back across our faces and to snuff out the light. But when we see, with Paul, how present grace is to us – how salvation, healing, wholeness is poised to break into all the world and overcome what is dark with all that is light – we know that it is grace enough just to see. And all that we could ever want to see, more and more fully, at this time and all others, is the peace of Christ, all in all.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Nov. 28, 2010 at 8:00am and 11:00am
