Advent Week 1

Psalm: Psalm 25:1-10

Old Testament: Jeremiah 33:14-16

Gospel: Luke 21:25-36

Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and in some way you were able to take a secular holiday and turn it into something a little more sacred. Ultimately, all our gratitude must flow to God as the creator and sustainer of all life. With Thanksgiving over, all of America now moves onto the “Holiday Season.” But I think we all know that in the retail world the holiday season has moved up to anything after Halloween. And so we have 2 full months of frenzied activity where everywhere we look there is a barrage of messages to buy, consume and find happiness in the things we have or in being able to buy a better car than our neighbors. It is in the midst of this culture, far removed from anything Christian, that the church celebrates Advent.

Advent is a time of waiting and expectation. It is also a time of sorrow and lament. It is a time when we recognize that the world can be dark and sinful. We find ourselves, much like the Jews did after the last prophet Malachi, waiting and wondering when the world will be made right. But in the midst of the sorrow and the waiting, Advent is also a time of hope. We have hope that Christ will return. We have hope even today because he left the Holy Spirit to be with us in his absence. Quite honestly, it is appropriate that we begin the Advent season with hope because sometimes that is all we have. The Church has been waiting for almost 2,000 years for Christ’s return. That is a long time by human standards! That is 2,000 years of famine, war and sickness. Yet the message of the Gospels is that this life is not all there is. Nor is what we see in this life all there is. God is with us in the pain and the hurt, even if we can’t see him. By his Spirit, he is redeeming and comforting us in pain. And ultimately, there is hope in the Resurrection and Christ’s return.

Advent is a time that tries to incorporate all of these varying themes. But for this first week, we focus on the theme of hope. Hope implies a longing for something that is not yet realized. Or to say it another way, we don’t hope for things we don’t want or already have. I have already mentioned Malachi as the last prophet in the Old Testament and the Jewish people knew what it meant to hope and wait for the Messiah. 400 years passed between Malachi and Jesus and most Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. That means they have been waiting for almost 2,400 years for the Messiah to come. But our scripture reading today contains the promise and the basis for that hope that has been fulfilled for us Christians. Jeremiah 33:14-16 looks forward to time when all would be made right. Jeremiah prophesied at a time when nothing was going right for the people of God. Israel had fallen a few generations earlier, the last king was about to be disposed, Jerusalem would soon fall and the Temple destroyed and the Promised Land would be essentially lost by the Jews. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. All markers of what it meant to be a Jew and the people of God would be taken away by the time Jeremiah’s ministry was over. But Jeremiah still writes about a time when a righteous branch of David would rule over a united Israel and Judah. This coming king would be everything the previous line of David had failed to be. He would restore Israel to its rightful place in the world and its rightful place in relation to the Lord. Jeremiah also uses a play on words when he says that the coming king's name will be, “The Lord is our righteousness.” The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, who Jeremiah counseled, meant “My righteousness is Yahweh.” Zedekiah failed to live up to his name, but the Messiah who would come would fully embody his name and be the righteous king the people of God needed.

The hope of the Jews was realized in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, despite many Jews failing to recognize him. Jesus came and lived in obedience to the Father, not only unifying Israel and Judah, but also bringing all peoples and nations into the people of God. In our reading from Luke 21, Jesus talks about the place we now find ourselves in. Much like the Jews 400 years before Christ came, we are waiting again. We are waiting for the coming King to make everything right. Jesus was faithful to come the first time, in a time and manner that no one expected, and he will be faithful to come again. Maybe even in a time and manner that no one is expecting yet again.

During this season of Advent, may we learn to practice the discipline of waiting. May we recognize that in waiting we can learn a little bit about ourselves and God. Waiting is a fact of life; there is no way to avoid it. but we take that time to reflect on who God is, and the hope we have in Christ today in this life and the hope we have of his return. Finally, let us learn to hope in anticipation of what God can do and is already doing in preparation for his return.

Grace and Peace.