A sermon based on Luke 21: 25 -36 for Advent 1, year C
In last Sunday’s gospel story, Jesus told Pilate, “I was born and entered the world so that I could witness to the truth. Everyone who cares for truth, who has any feeling for the truth, recognizes my voice.” (John 18:37, The Message). We look to Jesus; we set ourselves at his feet; and we learn to hear the truth and to tell the truth about our lives. This is the work God is doing through us: the most significant impact the Church can make in a culture drowning in lies is to tell the truth. The work of the Church is to be a zone of truth-telling.
This morning’s gospel story begins by telling the truth about our world. It was written 2000 years ago but, when you heard it, did you say, “That could be describing our time”?
“It will seem like all hell has broken loose — sun, moon, stars, earth, sea — all creation — in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic; the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom; the powers-that-be quaking.” (The Message)
Storms and first, earthquakes and pandemics; alarming rates of mental health issues; warnings of economic woes as supply chains strain and break and inflation amplifies the troubles of those who are poor. Turmoil on all fronts. The world coming unglued.
Where do you find the courage and the hope you need to live creatively in the midst of all that bad news? In Advent, the first thing the Church does is talk about it. The Church talks about both the bad news and the hope that we hold. The Church talks about it even though, in doing so, it is swimming against the tide.
Most people are well into the Christmas season already. Our culture’s hope for the Christmas season is that all will be “merry and bright”. Talk about trouble, fear and foreboding, confusion and the threat of doom seems out of place. The closer we get to Christmas, the more pressure there is to push the mute button on the bad news.
Yet, the Church insists: the only path to hope runs through telling the truth about the way things are. If you want to live creatively in a time such as this, you begin by facing honestly the trouble we are in.
The truth is — being a human being is hard. Suffering is part of the journey. Life is sometimes going to take you to difficult, painful, even terrifying places.
You can react to that suffering in any number of ways. You can try to ignore it — just not let the pain and the hurt enter too deeply into your consciousness. The only problem is that it doesn’t work in the long run. It is like trying to hold a beach ball under the water. It is going to pop up to the surface at some point.
You can take your suffering out on someone else, which just means that both of you end up in pain.
You can get angry about whatever it is you are suffering. You can shout, “It’s not fair!” or “I don’t deserve this!” or “I can’t take it anymore!”. Sometimes that helps, doesn’t it?
Still, any of those paths won’t take you much further on your journey through your suffering. Do you know what the scriptures do with our suffering? Once they face it head on and tell as much of the truth about it as they can, they set the suffering before God. They turn our suffering into prayer.
Do you read or pray the Psalms? I often recommend to people that they develop a practice of praying through the psalms. Pray one a day. Or, pray the psalms for 15 minutes a day, however many psalms that takes you through. And then write your own prayers out of that. “Pray your way through the psalms, over and over,” I say.
I don’t know how many people take my very good advice. Not many, I suspect. Praying the psalms isn’t easy. They don’t feel like the prayers we are used to praying. The majority of them are full of talk about enemies and troubles and hurt and suffering. They lay all of that out before God with more honesty than most of us can muster. Nevertheless, I stand by my advice. Pray your way through the psalms.
You see, as we learn to pray our suffering that truthfully, God meet us there — in the depths where our suffering has taken us. Sometimes the presence of God comes as a quiet knowing that you are being held firmly in strong arms that will not let you fall. Or, at least, however deep you fall, God is deeper still.
Sometimes that presence comes as a gift of strength and courage beyond your own. You find that you can do what needs to be done; you can face what needs to be faced, or at least, hold on until the fog lifts and you can take the next step that you need to take.
Sometimes God’s presence comes with healing power; with great mercy that binds up the wounds and sets you on your feet again.
All these are experiences that people have had as they lay their troubles out before God and wait for God to answer.
However, it also needs to be said that there can be long stretches when you have prayed as honestly and as deeply as you can and you do not feel God present with you. You do not feel that the gifts of strength or courage or mercy or healing are being given to you.
That, too, is part of the journey of faith. In those times, I have found it helpful to remember: we walk most of the Way by faith and not be sight. To walk by faith is to hold onto God’s promises even when there is much evidence to the contrary. To walk by faith is to decide to face and live through your suffering, trusting:
that Jesus the truth about God;
that our God is relentless in not letting anything in heaven or on earth come between you and God’s great love for you;
that our God is vigorously at work in your life and in the world to save us, to free us, to overcome the power of death and to bring us life abundant.
To walk by faith is to live in the midst of trouble and chaos and still to lift our heads, scanning the horizons for signs that help is on its way, that the kingdom of God is already near at hand and is making new life and new possibilities where we can only see things falling apart.
There is a sacred mystery to your life. There will be times of joy and delight, of beauty and wonder, of love.
There will also be times of sorrow and suffering, of lost and hurt and injustice. Sometimes you will feel God’s Spirit present with you, loving you guiding you, strengthening you. Sometimes the only assurance you will have of God being with you is that great yearning in your heart for God, the anguished cry of your soul. Sometimes the only sense you will have of God’s work will be the suffering. Even those times are holy for, in your suffering, you are participating in Christ’s own suffering for the world.
Even then, God’s promises are sure: nothing is more powerful than Christ’s good and holy work in your life. Let these promises carry you. Christ’s words are the anchor that will hold you fast. So, stand tall with your heads held high, for the Son of Man is coming with great power and glory. Your salvation is, indeed, near at hand. Thanks be to God.
Christine Jerrett 