Readings – Luke 21. 25-36, Jeremiah 33. 14-16 and 1 Thessalonians 3. 9-13
Today is the first Sunday of the liturgical calendar and we now enter Year C of the three year liturgical cycle. You will now notice that our Gospel reading for most Sundays will be from the Gospel according to Luke. The liturgical calendar begins with the Advent season. The season was originally a penitential season and was also known as ‘December Fast’ which lasted till the Christmas eve. This is one reason we find a lot of fish in the markets around Christmas, here in Prague, because meats were off the list of foods permitted during fast.
Over the course of four Sundays before Christmas we will focus on wait, peace, joy and behold as we enter into time of celebration of Christ’s birth.
Now coming to this first Sunday of Advent we are reminded and encouraged to ‘WAIT’. On everyday basis we wait for many things. We wait for a bus or tram because we expect it to arrive, even though we cannot see it coming but we hope it will come. The period of Advent fills us with the same hope for the Second Coming of Christ which will bring all God’s plans for the world to completion. As we wait in hope for the Second Coming of Jesus, we are conscious of the fact that God is present with us while we wait for the fulfilment of God’s plans.
The readings today are about the end of history, before we move in later weeks, to prepare for the coming of the baby Jesus and the dawn of a new age.
The words of Jesus in the Gospel today express the mood of this early part of the Advent season,
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
whatever worries we may occasionally harbor about nuclear or environment holocaust, most of us express little day-to-day concern about the end of the world and even less about Jesus’ second coming. In this respect, we may feel that we live at a great distance from what Luke writes. In particular, it is clear that Luke’s community is also wrestling with the question of time or, more accurately, timing. The question at hand is when the promised return of Jesus and consummation of history will occur.
At the same time, we are also acquainted with the challenges presented by waiting for an event that seems ‘late in coming’. We may be waiting for an event on a national or global scale like economic recovery, the final terms and conditions of Brexit, an end to war in many parts of the world, or collective international efforts to reduce pollution, Or we may be waiting for an event on a personal level like the results of medical reports, a letter for employment confirmation, or the safe return of a loved one from a tour of duty. Whatever is the case, we know the challenge of waiting, the stress of waiting and the anxiety of waiting. During this ‘wait’ we must remember, we must accept that the problems or the fractures in this fallen world and if any exists in our lives are too radical to be healed by human efforts alone. Advent is the time to acknowledge the depths of our plight — our estrangement from God and to recognise the need of God for deliverance.
The background of today’s Epistle reading is that Paul and his colleagues were anxious about the little church in Thessalonica . Whether the church was still in existence? Were the Christians faithful in spite of hardships? What problems were they facing? So Paul sent Timothy to Thessalonica to assist the emerging congregation there—and to report back to Paul regarding the situation there (3:1). He said, “For this cause I also, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, sent Timothy that I might know your faith, for fear that by any means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor would have been in vain” (3:5).
Travel was slow, and considerable time would pass before Paul would finally receive Timothy’s report. This must have been a time of anxiousness for Paul but then Timothy arrived with good news. Paul writes,
“When Timothy came just now to us from you, and brought us glad news of your faith and love, and that you have good memories of us always, longing to see us, even as we also long to see you; for this cause, brothers and sisters, we were comforted over you in all our distress and affliction through your faith. For now we live, if you stand fast in the Lord” (3:6-8).
In this context, Luke offers us a perspective that, while it will not remove our waiting, it may affect its character. According to Luke, we are in between the two great poles of God’s intervention in the world: the coming of Christ in the flesh and his triumph over death AND the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time. This “in-between time,” though filled with tension and for some, many questions, but for us it is characterized by hope secured in Christ. We are therefore free to struggle, to wait, to work, to witness — indeed to live and die — with hope because we know the end of the story.
On this first Sunday of Advent, we read the prophecy from the book of Jeremiah of a “righteous Branch” springing up for David in a messianic light.
We see in chapter 33, Jeremiah speaks of the restoration, the restoration of normal, everyday life and the coming restoration. He writes in Verses 10 and 11, There will come a time in the land of Judah when “there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride” (33:10-11).
And now, in this passage, Jeremiah speaks of the restoration not simply of daily life (as momentous as that is), but also of one of the chief signs of God’s favour, the restoration of the Davidic line that is fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. A righteous Branch will sprout from the line of David. A similar image is found in Isaiah 11:1–“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The image is one of hope and unexpected joy: new life springing up from what looks like a dead stump. Jeremiah’s prophecy offers hope to the people in exile: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (33:14). All might seem lost, but God still is faithful. The house of David might be cut down, but God is able to bring life out of death. A branch will sprout. And in Jesus we see the fulfilment of this prophecy – the descendant of David who will “execute justice and righteousness in the land” is the one for whom we wait this Advent season and His salvation encompasses the whole world.
From Abraham to God’s people today, history is full of examples of those who believed in God’s promise of a better future and found the challenges of the present not only endurable, but hopeful. We, too, amid the very real setbacks, disappointments, or worries of this life, can “stand up and raise [our] heads” because we have heard Jesus’ promise that our “redemption draws near.” It means that we are ready to recognise God’s deliverance when it comes, and to respond courageously. Advent summons us to be a people who wait — vigilant and expectant — for the deliverance of God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
