December 1, 2024 – The First Sunday of Advent

The Rev. Mary Davis

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Amen.

Today’s passage from Luke might surprise you for this first Sunday in Advent. I’m sure it didn’t take you long to discern that the church’s season of Advent is not created by the folks at Hallmark. There are no flirty fireside chats, magical snowfalls or dreamy couple getaways. Instead, we find cosmic catastrophe, fear and foreboding. It seems as if there’s peril at every turn. And yet, Jesus’ sentiment throughout calls for alertness and prayer, not fear. “Be alert at all times,” verse 36 reads, the hope being that all of Jesus’ followers will trust in God’s salvation and have confidence in God’s complete redemption of the world.

Jesus comes to create a new world order, one that turns present society’s order upside down . . . a world where hope can be found even in that which appears to be unredeemable. That’s what makes today’s reading “apocalyptic.” You see, in Greek, apocalypse means “an uncovering, or an unveiling.” And Jesus is pulling back, uncovering the blanket of despair which would ordinarily come from these non-Hallmark places of rubble, pain and grief. Instead, Jesus transforms these places into places of hope and new life.

One of the tools the church has for entering into this apocalyptic unveiling during Advent – a tool which is almost exclusively reserved for our season of Lent and especially for the days of Holy Week – is the Stations of the Cross. [I know . . . walk with me here . . . you’ve probably never heard the Stations of the Cross referenced during Advent!] For those who may not know, the stations narrate the 14 “stops” or stations – key moments – from the time Jesus was condemned to death to the time he was laid in the tomb. And one of my favorite modern theologians, Irishman Padraig O’Tuama, a Catholic, shares how for 10 years, every single day – yes, every day, including the days of Advent, he meditated on the Stations of the Cross. And he noted emphatically, that there are 14 stops, NOT 15. There is no station which acknowledges the empty tomb or Jesus’ resurrection. The idea, he says, is to find hope where there appears to be only hopelessness. To find courage where there seems only despair. To find strength where there seems only weakness. Admittedly, he says, “There’s no pretense that Jesus’ abduction, torture, and murder are anything BUT abduction, torture and murder. But even in those places, we can still discover some kind of hope. The hope of protest. The hope of truthtelling. The hope of gesture. The hope of generosity.”

In the same way, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is pointing us to the fact that when the world is crumbling, the apocalyptic God is still at work pulling back the blanket of darkness for the good and redemption of all creation!

This made me think of a time, years ago, when a friend of mine’s father died far too young from cancer. I went with her to the funeral and then to the burial at the church cemetery afterward. After the ashes had been placed into the grave and the final words of commendation were spoken, everyone else returned to the church parish hall for lunch. But my friend did not follow the crowd. She stood there looking at the grave where she had placed her father’s ashes, and she just couldn’t bring herself to leave. So I stayed too. After a while, she realized that what was keeping her there was that she couldn’t bring herself to leave until the grave had been filled in. So we looked around. But there was nothing there to help fill in that hole. No shovel. No trowel. Nothing but two sets of hands, willing to get dirty. So together, we took handful after handful of dirt from the mound beside the grave and started to fill it in. Now, make no mistake about it. This was a complete time of devastation for my friend, saying goodbye to her way-too-young and beloved father. And yet the two of us together turned that moment of utter grief into an expression – an action – of faith and hope. The dirt on our hands, even the mud caked beneath our finger nails, told the truth that death was very real, but it also was an act of faith to walk alongside each other, to embody encouragement, and to trust in the hope of life everlasting which is central to our tradition.

Now, just like everyone else here, my life too has had more than its fair share of pain and suffering. And during those times, as a priest, often times people will say to me, “Oh, it must be your faith in God that gets you through.” This is hard for me to hear because I know my response ought to be a resounding “Yes!” My faith in God should be what gets me through. But it’s not. At least not in THAT way. You see, faith, described in this type of statement is a noun. It’s the type of faith that says, “I believe this, this, and this.” I believe in God, the creator of heaven and earth. Or I believe in the resurrection from the dead and life everlasting. The Faith of our creeds. But this is definitely NOT the faith which sustains me through difficult times.

Rather, it’s faith as a VERB, as an act of gathering, as an act of giving, as an act of serving others, as an act of loving those who are different, as an act of protest . . . as an act of getting my hands ‘dirty’ with your hands – THAT is the faith which saves me. That is the faith which enables me, and enables us, to keep putting one foot in front of the other when the world around us looks too dark, too scary, too jagged to go on. This is the faith that Jesus is saying protects, secures, and sustains us all.

The gist of today’s Gospel is that there’s always the promise of hope in a world that is riddled with uncertainty, injustice, conflict, pain and fear. And no matter how chaotic our world may be, Jesus promises his return will bring about lasting salvation, justice, redemption, and healing. This small flickering light on our Advent wreath, which grows and grows each week until Christmas, changes everything. Jesus changes everything. So do not despair when your hands are caked with dirt (literally or figuratively), or your heart trembles from the sights and sounds of the earth in distress. The arrival of Jesus among us—whenever and however it happens—is a word of profound hope. So pay attention to the apocalypse right before our very eyes this Advent. It’s an unveiling of God’s saving, redeeming, and life-giving Grace. Amen.

Year B  –  The First Sunday of Advent   –   December 1, 2024   –  The Rev. Mary Davis