December 3, 2006
(First Sunday of Advent)

Look Up

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Jeremiah 33:14-16  •  Psalm 25:1-9  •  1 Thessalonians 3:9-13  •  Luke 21:25-36
(From The Lectionary Page)

“Don't look up," the little league coach shouts to the batter. "Keep your eye on the ball."

"Don't look down," the firefighter yells from his ladder to a person anxiously waiting to be rescued. "I'll bring you to safety. Just look straight ahead."

"Don't you dare look at that TV set!" a wife says to her husband as a holiday ad for Victoria's Secret appears on the screen.

As you pass people - in the halls at your school, in your work place, in malls and along the Country Club Plaza - where are they looking? And where are we, as the Church, as the Body of Christ, looking?

”Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your head." Today, we begin in a particular way to prepare our hearts anew for the coming of Christ. From the prophet Jeremiah and from Our Lord in today’s readings we hear descriptions of what it means to have God draw near. The pictures they paint are at once dark and foreboding, and yet spectacularly brilliant. The Day of the Lord is both one of judgment and of healing. It will bring an end to life as we know it and end the suffering of the world. It is both a terrifying and exciting vision.

This apocalyptic vision of the coming of Christ at first seems discordant with the meek, gentle, infant Jesus. It seems worlds away from the vision of sweet Mary and Joseph huddled in the stable. It seems light years away from our culture's mad rush to decorate everywhere, and buy everything all before December 25th, even though every year we experience a kind fo let down when too much has been focused on gift-giving and not enough has been focused on celebrating the Incarnation.

Why not change things this year!? The apocalyptic vision proclaimed in today’s lessons has everything to do with our preparation for Christmas. (The Rev. Carol J. Gallagher, Sermons That Work, 1997)

Is it only God’s responsibility to make a new heaven and a new earth? Or do we share in that responsibility to make the earth new as well?

When we learn of a horrific event or a wondrous happening we ponder if the world as we know it is changing.

When high school students gun down each other, we actually ask, "What is the world coming to?"

By the same token, when we hear that a baby who weighed less than two pounds at birth, is now earning good grades in school and as delightfully ornery as can be, we will never look at life the same again.

You and I must be committed to changing the earth so that guns are not fired in schools and infant mortality becomes a thing of the past.

Jesus said, "People will faint from fear and foreboding."

If we are truthful with each other, we would confess how often we find ourselves worrying. Our children worry us, our parents worry us, our health worries us, and all the risks around us worry us. The state of the economy and the growing number of poor, the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, mounting death tolls from war and terrorist attacks all worry us and legitimately so. Statistics about drugs use among pre-teens and the rising rate of alcoholism among senior citizens, and incidents of violence in our city can put a scare into us.

We human beings are creatures with a great deal of anxiety in our hearts, and truth be told, if there isn’t enough to legitimately worry about, we’ll create some anxiety to fill the void!

And in response to that inclination to fret and worry, to our anxieties, to our overwhelming fears, Jesus says, "Look up!"

The good news in our Gospel today is that, despite the fact that we live in anxious times, in spite of the fact that the signs all point to the end of the world, Christ Jesus tells us that we can stand and lift our heads high for our redemption is near. Because He is near.

It is Jesus who calms our fears, for it is Jesus who has destroyed the power of death. Our Lord says that when things look most frightening, when life is beyond our control and most everything is changing: that is when we draw closest to God. It is when we draw closest to Christ.

The Gospel challenges us during this Advent season to live as people who expect God to be near, and expect that God is at work in us, converting us in some fashion so that new life may take root in us. In this season of preparing to celebrate Christ’s first coming, we are to live as if we expect Christ's second coming. That means we are to see our worries as possibilities. We are to look anew on the people and situations that trouble us and see them as signs of God's near and living presence. We are to look at the dark skies and the dark places as moments of waiting and anticipating God's nearness. This means that we don't have to be bound by our fears. Instead we learn that by reaching through our fears, we in fact touch God. (Ibid.)

This means that painful relationships can be made whole, not by our will or power, but by God's alone. God has promised to be near, and these situations become moments of redemption, moments when we are made whole. (Ibid.)

As we prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Christ Jesus at the last day, and in this Advent, let us also receive those around us in a new way. Let us see and know that God wants to transform us and make new even the most impossible situations in our lives. Let us look and see Christ Jesus in those around us who have caused us heartache and pain. As God draws near we are given the strength to see others in a new way. And then, truly, the Lord’s promise will be fulfilled, for the world as we know it will pass away, and all things will be made new: a new world, a new Church, a new cathedral, a new us. Amen.