Year C
 Jeremiah 33:14-16
 Psalm 25:1-9
 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
 Luke 21:25-36

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

If I had to guess, I’d say that most of you have seen the movie Forrest Gump… or Saving Private Ryan… or Slumdog Millionaire…  or perhaps even Annie Hall…  or Gandhi…  or one of those other movies which start off at their end…  and then walk us through how the storyline itself…  and the characters within it…  got to be at that place…  as the audience…  we have the benefit of knowing in advance…  how it all ends…  and so perhaps we can more easily identify with the struggles the characters endure…  their insights…  their successes and their failures…  and their humanity…  because in the end…  their humanity is our humanity… 

And we’re on the cusp today…  of humanity and divinity…  of eschatology and incarnation…  we’ve taken a few weeks to look toward the end of the story…  and we’re starting to shift our gaze now to focus on the beginning of the story…  and whether we think it’s Advent 1 or Advent 4…  we’re all preparing for Christmas morning… we’re all getting ready for the birth of the baby Jesus…  but still…  today’s Gospel alludes to foreboding events…

In a sense… Genesis is being undone…  the order…  which in the beginning…  God brought to chaos…  is being undone…  the containers which hold the seas are being tipped…   and the seas roar… and the deep has always been disconcerting…  it’s dark down there…  and after all…  that’s where the Leviathan lives…  and the dry places on which we’ve stood are becoming submerged…  we’re afraid of falling into the primordial darkness with which the depths of the waters threaten us…  maybe we need another ark to help raise us up above the turmoil…  but didn’t God promise that this wouldn’t happen again…  and wasn’t the rainbow God’s sign of this promise…

In our reading from Jeremiah…  God promises to raise up a righteous branch for David…  but with how things are these days…  I’m wondering if God can make it a tree…  or even a forest…  full of groundedness and strength…   in Paul’s epistle to the Thessalonians…  Paul is full of gratitude and love…  and prays that their hearts will be strengthened in holiness…  perhaps so they too can deal with whatever may come…  in the Gospel…  Jesus expresses his desire that our hearts aren’t weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness…  so that we’re not weakened or distracted…  Jesus wants us to be prepared…  to be alert and aware…  over and over Jesus wants us to be alert and aware…  so that the day he describes doesn’t catch us by surprise…  but sometimes we’re too nearsighted…  or thick-headed…  both individually and collectively…  and see only what’s right in front of us…

In Matthew 24:32…  Jesus says that…  as soon as the fig trees sprout leaves…  you can see for yourselves that summer is already near…  but the sprouted leaves don’t show only what’s going to happen… they show what’s already happened… because when you see the leaves…  new life has already been at work under the ground…  hidden from sight…  and as it’s emerged…  it has disturbed and disrupted not only the soil…  the status quo…  as it were…  but sometimes this new life overcomes great resistance… so that it can emerge…  like when it pushes up through asphalt…

And theologically…  this new life is connected to the parousia…  which we understand to mean…  the appearance of Christ in glory at the end of time…  and when we think about today’s Gospel in the context of a seven-week Advent…  we may also think of the Second Coming…  but the word itself…  simply means presence…  and those who heard Jesus speak these words…  would have understood it to mean a deepened experience of Christ’s presence in the here and now…

Because if we understand the parousia only as the Second Coming…  then implicit in that understanding is that Jesus has gone away…  and that some day… he’s coming back…  but according to Episcopal priest Robert Capon…  in the case of the Word who became flesh in Jesus…  the notion of…  not here yet…  will simply not wash…  the Word that existed before time…  did not  show up in a world from which he was previously absent…  he was here all along…  and the resurrection…  the judgment…  and the ultimate re-creation of all things…  are present…  now and always…  because the incarnate Word is present…  now and always…  and when we remember that the Trinity is three distinct Persons of the same substance… the homoousios…  then Jesus has really not gone…  because another Person of the same substance has been with us ever since…

And in today’s Gospel when Jesus says…  this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place…  we wonder…  like the disciples did…  when all of this will happen…  what’s the date…  we want to be prepared so we can be ready to head to some underground bunker somewhere when things begin to hit the fan…  but what many scholars believe… is that when Jesus says…  this generation…  he’s referring to those in every generation who reject his offer of salvation…  who will always be there to oppose him and his message…  even when he finally and fully acts to set all things right…  in ways we can’t even begin to imagine…

Fr. Capon continues…   If we understand parousia as presence…  Jesus stunningly reverses all of our preconceived notions about coming…  he does not come to us…  does not enter our lives by some kind of divine locomotion…  instead…  he stands still… and we come to him…  without even taking a step…  because we come to him as part of our own inner journeys…

In today’s Gospel… Jesus says…  your redemption is drawing near…  if we understand parousia as presence… as a state of being…  as the great I AM…  then we can also understand Jesus to say…  your redemption is here… I am here…  Jesus is always with us…  and when the primordial chaos overwhelms us…  Jesus is the new rainbow of God’s promise… he is the eternally present ground on which we can stand firm…  he is the door…  and he is standing at the door…  knocking…  all we have to do is invite him in…  but we’re tired…  some of us are even too tired to get off the couch and invite him in…  and many of us are tired of waiting…  for the pandemic to be over…  for finger pointing to stop…  for our societal ills to be healed…  we’re just waiting to feel…  well…  normal again…

Pastor Isaac Villegas writes…  that during Advent we discover that the wait is bearable…  the longing tolerable…  the ache sufferable…  because God waits with us…   the promise revealed in Advent…  and this I think is profound…  is that God…  submits…  to Mary…  that God…  trusts…  Mary…  that God waits…  inside a human life…  and if God waited with Mary…  then we can trust that God now waits with us…  the gospel is inside of us…  the promise of God’s life…  is within ours…

Luke’s Gospel was written after the 70 AD destruction of the Temple…  and it’s easy to imagine that for those Jews in Jerusalem…  its destruction was the roaring of the seas and the shaking of the powers of heaven…  but part of why we celebrate a seven-week Advent…  is to hear the end of the story before we arrive at Christmas-morning…  to be reminded and reassured…  that however we understand or experience these words…  we still fit into God’s sweeping and timeless panorama…  and can better understand the Christ as the King of kings…  to consider our growing awareness of God’s presence now…  in our lives…  and to prepare…  but especially…  to remember that resurrection and new life…  we might even say God’s theological new normal…  are all available to us in each and every moment… and for that…  we say…  thanks be to God…