12/03/2023: First Sunday of Advent

Stay Alert! Be Woke!

Mark 13:24-37

Rev. Loren McGrail

Holmdel Community United Church of Christ

December 3, 2023

 

This is no time for a child to be born,
with the earth betrayed by war & hate
and a comet slashing the sky to warn
that time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
in a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
honor & truth were trampled to scorn—
yet here did the Savior make His home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
and by a comet the sky is torn —
yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
— Madeleine L’Engle, “The Risk of Birth”

This Sunday we will begin anew, and this year, the appointed Gospel is Mark. Mark is most probably the first gospel written, around 70 A.D., when the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. It is the shortest of the gospels and the most urgent.  So instead of angel choirs and shepherds, or baby coos, this first Sunday of Advent confronts us with the uncertainty and violence of human history-floods, the sun disappearing, earthquakes, “distress among the nations” that cause people to faint with fear.” The twentieth century Christian leaders who helped to create the lectionary were drawing comparisons between the in-breaking of God through the birth of Jesus, God-with-us, and other in-breakings of God that the future might hold.

 

In 2016, American author and social activist, Adrienne Maree Brown, wrote the following in reference to racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement: “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.” Dear Ones, I invite you to reflect how these times call us to not to escape or prepare to be raptured away but to practice being woke to what needs uncovering. Let’s hold each other tight and pull back the veil.

I would like to start by lifting the veil about the climate emergency we are in. Yes, we are in a deep emergency which includes the extinction of species and societal collapse due to changing temperatures and geographies as lakes dry up, icebergs and glaciers melt, and natural and human communities shift and migrate. And as you know 2023 was the hottest year in human history.

An emergency is akin to an apocalypse because both require us to leave the familiar or stable; both can bring about terrible loss and transformation. Both require our vigilance, our staying awake and alert. Both require faith and actions. Dear Ones, we must constrain global warming to 1.5 degrees or else.

We have made some progress, but we must end our dependence on fossil fuel. God who meets us when we are depleted or at the end of our rope, a climate change conference in Dubai, in the oil rich United Arab Emirates? Save us by lighting the fire of hope in each of us to do our part.

What kind of hope? The kind that is like an axe that can break down doors in an emergency like blocking a pipeline, passing legislation to invest in green and sustainable forms of energy, or holding a president to his promises. We need a hope that risks being vulnerable to the effects of loss and recognizes the uncertainty of the future and makes a commitment to try to participate in it anyway. Yes, this kind of hope. James Baldwin reminds us that “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” To hope like this, Dear Ones, means to accept despair as an emotion but not as an analysis. It is as climate activist and writer Rebeca Solnit says, “To recognize that what is unlikely is possible, just as what is not likely is not inevitable. To understand that difficult is not the same as impossible. To plan and accept that the unexpected often disrupts plans for the better and the worse.”

Dear Ones, our God who is limitless chooses limits: one womb, one backwater town, one Palestinian Jewish teenager, one carpenter, one bygone century, one brief life, one agonizing death. The truth is that this isn’t quite the salvation most of us long for; but it is the salvation he brings. Advent is our time to prepare for a Savior who will come in the night like a thief, be born in the night like a baby in a food trough.

So, here we are Dear Ones, exactly where we need to be wrestling with the fragility and unstableness of our world and the hiddenness of God. Here we are, waiting.  Here we are, preparing ourselves for the God who is coming. So let us hope fiercely and stay woke.  

I would like to end with the final stanzas from my Advent Poem for this First Sunday in Advent:

Christ the thief, come take away our fears and insecurities.

Prepare our hearts, our minds, our spirits

for your indwelling presence

your incarnation as a baby, a refugee,

our brother, our redeemer.

May we become uneasy and alive

Unafraid and able to hear angels announcing or

singing.

May we become your advent lights

of hope, peace, love, and joy.