"STAND ERECT AND RAISE YOUR HEADS."

December 2nd, 2O18: First Sunday in Advent, Year C.  Luke 21:25-28, 24-26.

AIM:  To proclaim the Advent message: that troubles are signs not of God’s absence, but of his presence. 

          “What are we coming to?  Where will it all end?”

          Which of us has not heard anxious questions like those, or asked them ourselves? They reflect a widespread mood on this First Sunday of Advent. As we cross the threshold of a new year in the Church’s calendar, we have many reasons for uneasiness, anxiety, and fear. 

          What is going to happen, we ask, in Afghanistan, Iran, Gaza? Will the sorely tried people of those tormented countries ever enjoy peace? When will our brave troops be able to come home? Will there ever be peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? Must we look forward to endlessly continuing terrorist threats throughout the world, and in our country as well?

          To these public worries we add our private fears. Somewhere here right now there may be a parent who fears the direction a teenage or older son or daughter is taking. Or perhaps it’s a young person, frustrated and bitter at what seems to you rigidity and lack of understanding from your parents. Somewhere in this church there may be someone struggling with marital difficulties: due perhaps to drink, to financial irresponsibility, or simply to love grown cold and turning to sullen resentment. Here too is someone weighed down by illness – your own, or that of a loved one. Someone else is grieving over the death of a dear one.

          Put all these reasons for anxiety and worry together, and we have ample reason for asking the questions with which we began: “What are we coming to?  Where will it all end?”    

          There are plenty of people offering us reassuring answers to these questions. I remember finding one years ago in the Reader’s Digest. Covering a whole page were quotations saying that the world was going to ruin. A note at the bottom told the reader to turn to the later page to learn the authors of all those dire predictions.  They were from famous people who had lived a hundred to more than two thousand years ago. The message was clear: “Cheer up! The world has always been in a mess. Things are no worse today that they have been many times before.” That may be true. But does that really help? to know that other people, in other times, had their problems too?

          Then there are the folks who try to cheer us up by reminding us that things are not all bad. If you can remember the days when St. Louis had two daily news-papers, you may recall the smiley face on the front page of the long defunct Globe-Democrat above an upbeat story entitled “Good morning news.” There are still magazine articles telling us that things are getting better and better as the benefits of education, medical research, and scientific progress become more widely available. These stories are true. There are advances. There is good news. But simply to claim that the world is getting better and better is nonsense. Many things are getting better. Other things, however, are getting worse. Just one example: the number of children born out of wedlock today, and growing up without fathers, has soared in recent decades to previously undreamed of heights. The social and economic consequences of such broken family life are disastrous. On the whole, losses like those pretty well cancel out the gains. 

          To be told that things have been bad before; or that many things are getting better, may alleviate some of our anxieties. But such answers cannot banish our fears altogether. Our nagging questions remain: “What are we coming to?  Where will it all end?”

           In today’s gospel Jesus offers a radically different answer to those questions. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay ...  People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

          Perhaps you’re shaking your head, asking: ‘What’s that -- some kind of antique science fiction? What has that to do with us today?’ Those questions are understandable. In reality, however, Jesus’ words speak directly to our present day anxieties and fears. Jesus was using imagery familiar to his hearers to describe a world gone awry, times out of joint. Can there be any doubt that we are living in just such a time today?

          Note what follows this bizarre sounding description of a world coming apart at the seams: “But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” That is the core of Jesus’ message, as relevant for us today as when his words were first uttered. The very things that cause our fear are signs not of God’s absence, but of his presence. Jesus never promised that God would preserve us from anxiety, suffering, or even from catastrophes. He does promise, however, that God will be with us in the midst of even our greatest fears and our deepest disasters. 

          “When these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads, because your redemption is at hand.” That is the Advent message as we cross the threshold into a new Church year. “Where will it all end?” we ask. Jesus gives us the answer in today’s gospel. It will all end when we “see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory,” to quote Jesus’ words from our gospel again.

          How can Jesus tell us to “stand erect and raise your heads”? Because this world, with all its horrors, is still God’s world. Come what may, God reigns. 

          When we hear of wars and terrorism – God reigns.

          When we are afraid to open the morning newspaper, or watch the evening news on television – God reigns.

          When we worry about the future of our world, our country, the Church, our loved ones – God reigns.

          Whether we serve God generously, sacrificially, with love and joy in our hearts; or whether we desert and fail him, engaging in the mad pursuit of happiness through “doing our own thing” at whatever cost, a pursuit which has never succeeded and never will – so or so, God reigns.

          When we feel we are dying of fright in anticipation of what may be coming – God reigns.

          The Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end; who was, who is who will come again at the end of all things with power and great glory – the Almighty.