Advent 4 / 1C: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36
The Rev'd Cameron Partridge
December 1, 2024
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” – Luke 21:28
Good morning, friends. We gather this morning on what is for us, in our extended observance, the fourth Sunday of Advent.[1] For much of the wider church this is the season’s first Sunday. It is officially the beginning of the new liturgical year, and the Gospel text anchoring our three-year cycle of readings, known as “the lectionary,” now changes from Mark to Luke. Now hearing, as we have been these last several weeks, readings replete with endings, all of us together are invited to understand that Advent is not simply a road to the baby Jesus, a countdown to Christmas. Advent is so much more. It is the season in which we embrace the overlap between the second Advent and the first, the arrival of the Son of Humanity, upturning, ending, and recreating all things, and his first arrival as the Incarnate one, God-with-us. This mandorla, this already and not yet, this reality of having been joined in radical solidarity and of anticipating God’s in-breaking reign, is where we live. It is a holy and fearsome space. Advent, and indeed our faith itself, does not spare us the deeply challenging realities of this life. It offers us anchoring and courage in the midst of them. Advent channels God’s call to faithful practice, to participate in God’s in-breaking reign while simultaneously acknowledging its mystery, exceeding our understanding and our agency.
Advent unfolds for us in a way we might think of as backward. It starts with the second Advent, the coming of the Son of Humanity, before bringing us into the first Advent, to the baby Jesus lying in a manger. And so before we get to Bethlehem we are confronted with disconcerting scenes. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus warns, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Luke 21:2-26). Luke’s Gospel, like Matthew and Mark, reflects the events of Jesus’ ancient Roman context. Luke was written around 85 C.E. not many years after the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem by Roman imperial forces. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down,” we heard in Mark’s gospel two weeks ago (Mark 13:2). Signs of endings were all around Jesus and his disciples. At the compiling of Luke’s gospel, that destruction had already been witnessed, and more was afoot. Monumental endings in the world about them reflected a broader truth with cosmic implications, as the references to the sun, the moon, and the stars evokes: the One who created all things is also the one who perceives all things, the one in whose justice we all ultimately are held, the one who promises to make all things new. This is a fearsome promise, especially for all who are in power, all who are comfortable now. For the renewal of all things ushers in all manner of reversals along the way:[2] the proud scatted in the thoughts of their hearts, the mighty brought down from their thrones, the hungry filled, and the rich emptied, as Jesus’ mother Mary proclaims uniquely in Luke’s gospel (Luke 1:51-53). The first will be last, we hear again and again, and the last will be first.
For any who experience being last or left out, least or lost, as I remember Bishop Barbara Harris so often preaching, this morning’s gospel passage offers a word of encouragement.[3] “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). Lift up your heads. If you are feeling angry or despondent; if the news has you reeling; if you cannot see the hope in tomorrow; Jesus is saying, look up.Look ahead. Be encouraged. Be awake. The rulers of this world will bend over backwards to convince you that their power is absolute, that their reality is all-encompassing. It is not. We cannot confuse the kingdoms of this world for the reign of God. Our call is to embrace the in-breaking of God’s reign, to do our darndest to collaborate with it even while knowing that it is so much bigger than us, indeed resting in the truth that it does not finally depend upon our faulty freedom.
What might such embrace, such encouraging action look like? On this World AIDS Day, I particularly appreciate the witness of Cleve Jones who described a momentously spontaneous moment in his 2016 memoir When We Rise. It was November 27, 1985, seven years after the assassination of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk on. A crowd had gathered at the corner of Castro and Market, preparing to march to City Hall. Perhaps some of you were there that day. Handing out posterboards and markers, Jones shouted, “We’re going to remember Harvey and George tonight, but we’ve lost a lot more than them now. How many of you know someone who has been killed by AIDS?” People spoke their losses into the air. “Write their names,” Jones replied. “Write their names.”[4] They wrote those names on the posters, holding them aloft as they walked down Market Street. Once arrived, the posters were taped to the side of the old Federal Building in a grid formation. As Jones stood back and took in the sight, the names rendered together as a larger whole, he thought, “it looked like a quilt.”[5] In that moment, the idea of the AIDS Quilt was born. Countless groupings, communities within communities, including this one, would go on to contribute to that powerful, connected and connecting witness, one of so many distinct efforts pushing back against a storm of bigotry and dis-ease.
Stand up. Raise your heads. Look ahead. Come awake and alive. More is possible than any of us individually is able to come up with on our own, in our loneliness or despair. God’s in-breaking reign is infinitely larger than any of us, catching us up in its current. Yet even as we see and name signs of endings all around us, even as tyrants and their sycophants project their power, threatening bodily autonomy, health, freedom, and well-being for the least of these, God’s invitation come to us with urgency: center the marginalized; take one another’s hands; proclaim the Good News of God’s in-breaking reign and, as Stephen Siptroth urged us last week, live it together.[6]
And lest the challenges of this moment overshadow and undermine that call, making it seem impossible, may I share some signs I have seen among us to the contrary? A little over two weeks ago I saw a manifestation of God’s in-breaking dream in the form of people gathered on the steps of City Hall in the rain for Transgender Day of Remembrance.[7] People from St. Aidan’s and St. Cyprian’s, from the Night Ministry, from various circles of community around San Francisco and the wider Bay Area came together to lift up trans and non-binary people we have lost and stood in staunch solidarity with all communities who are under attack. We stood together acknowledging the rising tide of transphobia and trans misogyny, xenophobia and racism, gathering in the wisdom of our elders, affirming the holiness of our lives. This Good News cannot be pushed to the side. Nor can the sign of God’s dream I saw this week as various circles of our neighborhood community gathered in here for our annual Thanksgiving dinner. This space was filled on Thursday with tables, turkey and all the fixings, and an overabundance of pie – so much that we can have an opportunity to partake of it after worship this morning. There were people I knew from Sunday morning, from Friday Food Pantry, from Diamond Diners, from Resilient Diamond Heights, from Companion Animal services, from memorial services. There were also people I had never met before, who were invited by others. All of us together lifted up our heads. We were filled with good things, thanks be to God.
And so this morning we gather and give thanks. For the encouragement of community, for the reminder that we are much larger and more powerful than we know, for the Good News of God in Jesus Christ that sustains and emboldens us when events in our world might otherwise push us down. We come together to respond to God’s call to walk in love, gathering in our stewardship pledges for the coming year, resources that enable us to stand together, participating in and proclaiming in St. Aidan’s unique ways the Good News of God’s in-breaking dream. This morning may we refuse to retreat from our call – whether in fear, in despair or in anger, though the earth be shaken – but instead to lift up our heads, to walk in love.
And now, to paraphrase Paul’s encouragement to the Thessalonians (3:1-13):
May God our Creator and Jesus Christ our Redeemer direct our way. May God increase and abound our love for one another and for all. And may God so strengthen our hearts, encourage our minds, and enliven our wills that we may welcome the coming of Christ with the communion of saints, the in-breaking of the divine dream for all creation, now and at the end of the age. Amen.
[1] On extended Advent, see the website of the Advent Project: http://www.theadventproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/rationale.pdf. See also William Peterson’s further development of the idea in What Are We Waiting For? Re-Imagining Advent for Time to Come (New York: Church Publishing, 2017).
[2] Justo Gonzalez, Luke: A Theological Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 238-240). Leah D. Schade and Jerry L. Sumney, Apocalypse When? A Guide to Preaching Apocalyptic Texts (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020), 78 & 79.
[3] As Leah Shade comments, “for communities that labor under heavy burdens of racialization, colonization, economic oppression, environmental persecution, or political conflict, Jesus' words about upheaval can be, paradoxically, reassuring that this is inaugurating a new beginning of justice and an end to empire.” Schade and Sumney, 84.
[4] Cleve Jones, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement (New York, Boston: Hachette Books, 2016), 207.
[5] Jones, 209
[6] Stephen Siptroth, November 24, 2024: https://www.staidansf.org/post/advent-iii
[7] As always, the phrasing of “the dream of God” is inspired by Verna Dozier, The Dream of God: A Call to Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Press, 1991).
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