Luke
21:25-36
I’d like to think that Advent begins
with the voices of the prophet Isaiah and of John the Baptist declaring,
“In
the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a
highway for our God!”
[Isaiah 40:3]
For good or for ill,
however, many people hear a totally different voice. Oh, the message is the same as Isaiah’s:
“What
shall I cry?
All
people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower
of the field.
The
grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows
upon it;
surely
the people are grass.” [Isaiah
40:6-7]
The voice that speaks
and the words it uses are different, though.
You may find them familiar yourself:
That is, of course,
from the beginning of A Charlie Brown
Christmas.
Charlie Brown isn’t the only one to
have a generalized sense of fear and dread.
Long before Charles Schulz, Jesus had said,
“There
will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress
among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will
faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers
of the heavens will be shaken.” [Luke 21:25-26]
As much as I would
like to tell you a simple, “Fear not!”, I have to note that these are Jesus’
words. He’s the one who said to watch
out for times and seasons when things may seem to be going drastically awry
because they really are going wrong.
W.H. Auden wrote a poem about how a sense of dread overcame him one day,
sitting in a bar in New York. It starts:
“I sit in one of the
dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes
expire
Of a low dishonest
decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the
bright
And darkened lands of
the earth,
Obsessing our private
lives;
The unmentionable odour
of death
Offends the September
night.”
The title is “September
1, 1939”. That was the day that Hitler
invaded Poland.
You might want to ask yourself what keeps you awake at
night when you think of the state of the world.
Is it AIDS or ebola? Climate change? Terrorists getting hold of powerful
weapons? Perhaps it’s something more
personal, like a health issue or job security or a troubled relationship. Maybe you’re not worried so much for
yourself, but someone you love is in trouble and you cannot figure out what’s
going on or how to help them. If you
linger too long all the things that can and do go wrong in the world, it can
become paralyzing and you can become like a deer in the headlights. (By the way, the chance of hitting a deer is
one of the things that gets me.) This
past week I heard Terry Gross comment that “Rumination is introspection’s evil
twin.”
Jesus said that it’s wise to be aware of these things,
not to erase uncomfortable realities from your mind by getting drunk or killing
your brain cells any other way. If the
world is a dangerous place, you want to keep your wits about you. At the same time, he says not to worry about
things in the way that would tie you up with fear.
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not
weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and
that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” [Luke 21:34-35]
Instead, what you want to keep in mind is that beyond
each time of trouble, whether it is personal trials and hardships or whether it
is trouble on a world or even cosmic scale, God has something better in mind
that lies on the other side of it. If
you keep your eyes open, there are always going to be signs of that as well –
small, perhaps, but real signs that the God who made all things makes all
things new. Jesus said,
“Look at the fig tree
and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for
yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see
these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” [Luke 21:29-31]
Somebody walking into my house one Saturday in
the middle of December might find the entry hall with the doormat pushed up
against the wall or knocked to the middle of the floor. They might find a toolbox sitting there,
open, with a few items scattered all over the place. This is not normal. They might take a couple more steps and see
that the dining room chairs have been shoved aside and look into the living
room and see another chair and an end table out of place, sitting right in the
middle of the room where they do not belong.
They might say, “Something is wrong here. What is broken? What’s the matter?” And then, taking a step or two more,
cautiously and carefully, they will see the far corner of the living room and
realize that it’s all so chaotic because I’m putting up my Christmas tree.
A small piece of advice: it’s probably
best to stay out of my way and quiet until the lights are all on the tree. But after that, feel free to help out with
the ornaments.
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