Advent 1 Sermon for November 28, 2021: Hope Draws Near

In the season of Advent, we prepare to celebrate the coming of Christ at Christmas, even as we anticipate Christ’s final return in the future. As we wait, we are called to pay attention, to trust, and to have hope, knowing God has secured our future. 

The readings for this first Sunday in Advent (Year C) are 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Psalm 25:1-10, and Luke 21:25-36, and I found helpful Audrey West’s commentary at Working Preacher. Here’s the sermon for November 28, 2021.

Grace to you and peace from the One who was, who is, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Well, happy new year, dear church. Welcome to Advent.

I have some mixed feelings about this season. On the one hand, I’m happy to be done with the Sundays after Pentecost, the green season.

One of the questions on the confirmation worship notes asks about the liturgical color, and at some point just about every year, someone asks me if it’s a trick question and it’s just always green.

Well, we’re done with the green for a while, and we move on to blue. I love the symbolism of the blue paraments. Blue represents the twilight before the dawn, the color of the sky right before the sun rises. Advent is the moment of anticipation before God’s light is born into the world at Christmas. I love that image.

But Advent’s not just about getting ready for Jesus’ birth; it’s also about preparing for Jesus’ second coming, getting ready for the end of the world. And that’s where I have mixed feelings about this season.

Every year we get ready, we hear these promises about Jesus coming back soon, and what changes? I don’t know. Waiting is hard.

Last year on this first week of Advent, I asked what makes a season of waiting special when it seems like all we’re doing is waiting. I assumed that by Advent this year, the pandemic would be pretty much over, and really, this year is very different than last year.

Last year we weren’t having worship services in-person at all in December. In 2021, we’ve gotten vaccines, and now booster shots available, and even elementary kids can now get vaccinated.

And yet, it still feels like we’re living in an in-between time. Somehow science turned into political posturing and not enough people have gotten vaccinated. I’ve done more funerals for people who died of covid this fall than last year. Now there are reports of a new variant, and there’s fear, but not enough data to know what effect it might have. Again.

Yet again, it feels like we’re in a liminal space, waiting. And if it wasn’t the pandemic, it’d be something else. Waiting for what will happen to family members with chronic diseases. Waiting for retirement. Waiting for a new school year.

Waiting on a cosmic level for the redemption of the world, for the second coming, Christ’s return. And we have no idea how long our waiting will be.

One of the fascinating things about how our tradition marks Advent is that our Gospel readings for the next four weeks move backwards through the story. This week, we have the adult Jesus in the week before he will be killed talking about the end of the world.

Then we’ll hear about John the baptist, prophesying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the adult Jesus. And finally, we’ll move back about thirty years and hear Mary’s song, in preparation for the story of Jesus’ birth at Christmas.

This season plays with time, which fits with today’s Scripture. In this Gospel reading, which again is from right near the end of Jesus’ life, during Holy Week, Jesus says the end is coming. He’s continuing the teaching we heard a couple of weeks ago in Mark about how even the mighty temple building will not stand forever. This world will pass away. Everything we know—other than God—is ultimately temporary.

We know the end is coming, but it’s not here yet. But we also know the end of the world is not the end. In the time when everything seems to be falling apart, when people are overwhelmed, fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, at the lowest points, that’s when people will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud. Eternity will be unveiled. Redemption is drawing near.

Heaven and earth will pass away. But even that’s not the end of the story, Jesus says. We know how the story ends. Jesus’ words, God’s promises, God’s kingdom will not pass away.

Like some of us talked about in the Making Sense of Scripture study, we are all living in God’s story right now, somewhere between the book of Acts and the book of Revelation, living in this world, yet with a hope that goes beyond this life.

So what do we do as we wait? That’s the question of this season, right? What do we do as we wait? The paradox of Advent is the call to both stay focused and patiently wait for God’s redemption, for Jesus’ coming, and at the same time to be restless, keeping alert for what God is doing.

Advent is about being unsettled, discontented with the world the way it is, and yet trusting in God’s presence with us even as our world lurches from one crisis to another. God is with us in the waiting, and in the arrival, in the night and in the day.

Our call is to rely on God. As our Psalm says, we lift up our souls to God. We’re depending on God to bring about the future God has promised. Our hope is in God, not in anything of this world’s temporary promises.

We ask God to lead us and teach us, to forget our sins, to follow the paths of the Lord, which are steadfast love and faithfulness. We wait with the people in the first-century church in Thessalonica, abounding in love for one another, trusting in God to strengthen our hearts in holiness, to make us ready for our Savior’s arrival.

We keep alert. We pray. We pay attention to what God is doing. Jesus says the way to know the end is near—and remember, the end is a good thing, the hope of redemption, not destruction. Well, destruction of the temporary things of this world, not the end of what matters—the way to know the end is near is to look at the experience of the fig tree.

We don’t have fig trees here, but you get the idea. When the buds appear on the trees, you know spring is near. You know life is coming, winter is ending. When night falls, you don’t panic that it’s never going to be light again, right? Why? Because you’ve experienced that the daylight comes back. We know winter ends, because we’ve experienced spring.

Pandemics don’t last forever, sickness doesn’t last forever, wealth doesn’t last forever, nothing but God’s kingdom lasts forever. Our waiting will come to an end.

We wait with Advent hope, because we’ve seen God be faithful before. My favorite description of Advent this year is from a commentary on this Gospel reading by Audrey West. She says, “The season of Advent is a sticky-note reminder to the church: God is doing a new thing. Again.” The end is near, and so is the beginning. We wait with hope, because we’ve waited before. We trust in God’s future, because God has been faithful before. We wait with hope, because God has already secured our future.

Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. The dawn is near. Welcome to Advent.
Amen