Lectionary Reflection — First Sunday of Advent (Year C)
9How can we thank God enough for you, given all the joy we have because of you before our God? 10Night and day, we pray more than ever to see all of you in person and to complete whatever you still need for your faith. 11Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus guide us on our way back to you. 12May the Lord cause you to increase and enrich your love for each other and for everyone in the same way as we also love you. 13May the love cause your hearts to be strengthened, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his people. Amen.
Other readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16; Psalm 25.1-10; Luke 21.25-36
Collect:
All-Loving God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus the Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the Life of the Ages; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Advent.
The time of preparation for Christmas — the birth of Jesus, the coming of “God with us.”
In our day and age, Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. But in the times of the ancient Celtic Church, Advent started 40 days before Christmas on 15 November (and in some streams of Christianity this practice continues today).2 Celtic scholar and teacher, David Cole, wrote, “The Celtic church referred to the period of Advent as the ‘lesser Lent’ and believed that the [40 day] period of preparation was important, just like the preparation of Lent leading up to Easter.”3
So, if we use 15 November as the beginning of Advent, then today is actually the third Sunday of Advent! But that’ll just confuse everyone of us who don’t follow the ancient calendar.4 Since most of my readers come from the stream of Christianity that views the beginning of Advent on the fourth Sunday before Christmas …
Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent everyone!
If I can be honest here, Advent is a confusing time for me. While I get that it should be a time of preparation for the coming of the Christ child, I don’t get the whole preparation for the “Second Coming” of Christ bit. Let me explain.
You see, for me the “Second Coming” (if one wants to call it that) can refer to a couple of different things — the Fall of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE or the “coming” of Christ at the “supposed” end of time.5 In either scenario, there is no preparation time for people today.
Before the Fall of Jerusalem and the Temple, Jesus gave his followers clear signs to watch out for. From the Gospel Lesson today, Jesus told his followers —
“Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31In the same way, when you see these things happening, you know that God’s kingdom is near. 32I assure you that this generation won’t pass away until everything has happened. 33Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away.”
Here we see that the signs Jesus mentions in the paragraphs above this quote were for the followers of his generation — the people of his time, not ours. Jesus used the word “you” 5 times above and over 30 times throughout the whole passage. The people Jesus had in mind were clearly his disciples; he was speaking directly to them and not to us. So people today don’t need to prepare for the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple because it’s already happened.
Concerning the “supposed” end of time framework — how does one prepare for that? How does one prepare for the end of the world, especially when Jesus said that “nobody knows when that day or hour will come” (Matthew 24.36)?6 Do we follow the example of the “prepper” community and hoard weapons and rations? Do we sharpen our survival skills with the intent of keeping ourselves and our families alive during the coming apocalypse or a zombie attack? If so, is that really how Christ wants us to live? If so, how does that conform with the Gospel imperative of serving others self-sacrificially?
Since neither of these scenarios work (for me, at least), how does one then celebrate Advent? How does one prepare for the coming of “God with us”? I think our New Testament Lesson today speaks to this question.
Paul, writing to the followers of Jesus in Thessalonica, asked Christ to, “increase and enrich [their] love for each other and for everyone” in the same way that Paul and his companions loved them. He asked that “love cause [their] hearts to be strengthened” and for them “to be blameless in holiness” before God.
The response, then, to how does one prepare for the coming of “God with us” is love. We ask God to “increase and enrich” our love for “each other and for everyone.” For God comes in the face of the Other — whether human or non-human. God comes to us in the face of the earth and all of her elements. God comes to us, not only in the face of our “fur-babies,” but also in the face of all creatures, great and small. And, most certainly, God comes to us in the face of humanity — girls and boys, women and men, gay or straight, native born, immigrants, or asylum seekers, “Red, brown, yellow, black and white,” we’re all precious in God’s sight. And every one of us is the image of “God with us” in the world.
Love, my friends.
Love is how we prepare for the coming of “God with us.”
~~~
In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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1. Scripture quotations marked (CEB) are taken from The Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible.
3. Cole, D., (2018). Celtic Advent: 40 Days of Devotions to Christmas [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com. David is a fellow contributor on the Celtic Bible Commentary series. You can get the first book, The Winged Man: The Good News According to Matthew, here.
4. This is one of the things that confuses people looking at the Church today. Part of the Church follows the “modern” calendar while another part of the Church follows the “ancient” calendar. And both parts call themselves the “true” Church! No matter how serious we may take this issue (and many others), it’s quite silly for people on the outside. When the Church can’t even unite on which calendar to use, how can we be expected to take seriously other more pressing issues or our time?
5. And I say “supposed” here because no one knows if time will ever end (although the second law of thermodynamics supports the idea that nothing lasts forever)! But, the Bible sure doesn’t speak to it. In fact, there’s a paradox in scripture — Compare: Psalm 78.69; 104.5; Ecclesiastes 1.4 with Psalm 102.25-26; Luke 21.33; Revelation 21.1. Certainly, I interpret some of these passages differently than most, but the paradox still remains — the Bible speaks to the earth lasting “forever” and to its destruction.
6. That is, if Jesus was even talking about the “end of the world” when he uttered those words. As some of you know, I don’t think he was.
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