Readings Isaiah 11: 1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12
Image, Joseph Stella, Tree, Cactus, Moon, ca. 1928. 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea. The wilderness held important religious significance for John’s people. It was in the wilderness they wandered the forty years between the Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of the Promised Land. The wilderness where the people grumbled and disobeyed, where the first generation who crossed out of Egypt were buried. At the same time, the wilderness was where the people were fed from God’s hand, led by God’s visible presence and for this reason the wilderness takes on ongoing symbolic power both as the place of nation’s trial and woe, of exile and loss, of God’s judgment and wrath, and as an inner place of trial, fallowness, and encounter.
 
So, what does it mean then, for John to appear in the wilderness? What does it mean for the people of Jerusalem and Judea to go out to him? Because if anything the wilderness is the antipathy to Jerusalem and Judea – the antithesis of these holy places. 
​

Readings, Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-18
Image, Pierre Bonnard, The Lamp (1899)
 
The joy of Advent is a social vision. Which is interesting as the general movement of this season seems to be one of retraction. In that we move from a large, fluctuating and even malleable circles of contact to one which is increasingly small and closed. Early December is filled with the large social events: Christmas parties with colleagues, end of year celebrations with community groups and schools, festivals and frivolities with neighbours and strangers. But as December moves along, and Advent gives ground to Christmas, these larger events make way for the family. And while the family may grow, the others diminish, until we reach the point of Christmas Day, which is so often a day reserved for the family.
 
Now this is not everyone’s story. Indeed, if you come here on Christmas morning, you’re guaranteed to see at least a few people who aren’t your family. And many have rich household traditions of opening their home to those who don’t have a place set elsewhere. But this is by and large the image of Christmas we are presented in the broader culture. The joyful picture of the big family around the bountiful table is the prominent motif in advertising and entertainment. Such is its prominence, that one of the primary icebreaker questions of the season is, are you going to see family over the holidays?
 
However, what ought provoke our consideration as Christians, is that Advent and Christmas concern the arrival of Christ, and the arrival of Christ (whether in humility as an infant, in glory on the Day of the Lord, or today in the least of these) is surrounded by strangers.
 
The Nativity scene may centre baby, mother and father, and they would have likely been surrounded by and tended to by extended family who offered them welcome and care. And yet, the narrative pays this no mention. Instead, shepherds, wise ones, and angels flood the scenes. Even as the gospel of Luke progresses the stories concerning Jesus’ infancy and childhood all revolve around strangers offering blessings, prophecies, or wisdom. In Matthew, the Holy Family quickly become refugees and must sojourn in a strange land.
 
Zooming out further, the words of prophecy that capture our Advent hope – whether they be from Zephaniah or John – direct our attention to those outside the nucleus of society. On the Day of the Lord, God promises to save the lame and gather the outcast, and to prepare for such a day John teaches the people to share coats with the cold and food with the hungry. The importance of such outward looking care of the least is amplified by Jesus’ reminder that our reception of his approach between his resurrection and return mirrors our reception of stranger, the hungry, the lonely, and imprisoned.
 
All this to say, Advent readings and Christmas stories pay little attention to the family lunch, but have much to say about the strangers and outsiders. Indeed, the imperative placed before the people of God to prepare for the coming of the Messiah is to open and expand our circles of care, concern, and connection, such that old boundaries are broken down and new relations formed. As Jesus himself instructs, When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. The resurrection, mind you, will only ratify such subversive guest lists. For how often does Jesus describe the banquet of the kingdom filled with surprising table guests, gathered from the alleyways and highways.  
 
The question this leads us to then is, how much does our Christmas season reflect this outward, expanding, and shifting circle of connection, care, and concern? Are we moving through this season in such a way as to be drawn into a stranger’s orbit, or welcome new bodies into our own? How closed are the edges of our circles? How set is the guest list of our hospitality? I’m not decrying the enjoyment and prioritising of time with one’s immediate and extended family at or around Christmas. There is no betrayal in this being part of what comprises the joy of the season. Again, implicit in the story is the family and community gathered around Mary and Joseph, welcoming the birth of Jesus with great joy. And yet, with the details we have, these readings question of the ever-increasing mythos of this season as one of “family and food.” In doing so perhaps they help us guard against the cultural captivity of Christmas which wants to close the circle of our focus on family ties. Instead, John, Zephaniah, and those robust Nativity scenes allow us to see the wider and expanding story of strangers not only in the story, but in our own lives this season.
 
For having seen we become better prepared for the coming of Christ, better prepared for the arrival of the Messiah; ready to offer cloak and food, welcome and care, dignity and love to those who may not bear our name, but bear the image of the Lord. And in doing so we increase the joy of the season. Because without diminishing the joy found at the family lunch, the circle is widened, opened toward the surprising joy of the other. For these acts of mercy, hospitality, solidarity, and friendship not only provide a different story and greater joy for those cast outside the monopolising image of “family and food,” but – significantly - it grants us foretastes of the kingdom to come and leads us into the presence of Christ, and what greater tidings of comfort and joy could we hope to find in this season than that.

This third week of Advent fills us with joy, as we draw ever closer to the celebration of Christmas and take to heart the good news of great joy that broke into the world with the Son of Man. May this joy permeate our hearts and shape our actions, as we seek to follow in the stead of the one whose circle of concern spans out across the world, securing for us not only a seat at the banquet table, but a room in the household of God.

Readings, Mal 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6
Image, Pablo Gargallo, The Prophet (St. John the Baptist) (detail), 1933.​
 
Luke precedes his introduction of John the Baptist with a list of the main political players of the time. At one level we could attribute this to Luke’s desire to produce an orderly account that establishes the historical context of his gospel. But even if that is one of his primary motivators, this list of rulers also helps establish a fundamental Advent confession: the Prince of Peace is born into a time of violence.
 
Although, that is not how Tiberious, Pilate, Herod, and Phillip would have seen it. We are right on the cusp of the beginnings of Pax Romana, the celebrated time of peace and economic growth in the Roman Empire which allowed its borders and population to swell. Empires tend to view themselves as the great securers of peace, defenders of freedom, and champions of order, and Rome was no outlier. However, as historians point out, the exalted Roman peace was the fruit of unprecedented military violence.[1] It relied on rigid social hierarchies, on coercing marginal and diverse communities to conform to hegemonic values and practices, and continued subjugation of those communities’ denied citizenship and status… communities such as the one into which John and Jesus were born.
 
Luke makes clear, John is preparing a way for Jesus (the Prince of Peace) to enter into this very specific, highly flammable time of contested visions of “peace.”
 
Many of us are likely starting to think about how to keep the peace at Christmas. Whether that be at big family gatherings where you can foresee unhelpful comments or outright conflict, or perhaps preparing to regulate the big, swinging emotions of overwhelmed and out of routine children, or perhaps you’re planning how to get through all the additional errands, tasks, and expectations that pile up in the coming month.
 
In many such cases, peace can be quickly reduced to avoiding conflict, letting sleeping dogs lie, and papering over. Peace can be conflated with serenity, where we trade off inner turmoil for external acquiescence. Perhaps you’ve considered letting go of a tradition, or expectation, but are worried it might produce disappointment. We can all be tempted to decide that the thing that will make for peace this Christmas, is the status quo – even if that’s not really working for us, even if we dread it – we so want to keep the peace.
 
Now this isn’t a sermon about how to manage any of that. You know the specifics of your situation and how you wish to navigate the dynamics that lie ahead. What I am drawing attention to is the varying ways peace can be conceived. That it is easy to reduce peace to not making waves, not upsetting the status quo, of going along to get along. And while I drew these examples from the intimate and domestic, it applies also to the political and social. For how often are protests labelled disruptions of the peace? How often are those who advocate for freedom cast as risks to order and security? How often are those who stand up in the face of indignities decried for their violence?
 
And yet, when we consider Jesus, the one for whom the paths are made straight, the one born of Mary into the domain of these Roman rulers, what kind of peace does he bring? Jesus says it best himself, I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. The peace that Jesus provides is not one satisfied with smoothing over the status quo, is not ready to acquiesce to social, political, and religious norms of power and service, is not occupied with being a model second-class citizen, happy with the security of subordination.
 
No, the peace of Jesus, like the peace of his kingdom, is one that takes umbrage with the false peace of empire, with the spotless veneers placed over so much fear and exploitation. Like Jeremiah before, Jesus is a prophet who denounces those who say peace, peace, when there is no peace. Peace comes through confrontation of the powers that be. Peace comes only through the establishment of a new kingdom, a new reign, a new creation in which the old ways will be judged and we shall all be refined and reformed to live together in ways freed from fear, exploitation, injustice, and indignity.
 
Jesus is the Prince of Peace who sees the unacknowledged firmament of conflict and violence that supports Rome’s imperial splendour, and if we wish to take our place as John did, as Advent voices crying out prepare the way, then we need to be ready to do the same. Ready to recognise when we enjoy peace at the expense of others. Perhaps that’s the political peace and economic prosperity that comes through the abandonment of global neighbours suffering under the yoke of tyranny or the ravages of climate change. Perhaps that’s a plausible family peace that comes through the subtle silencing of those family members whose grievances and experiences are consigned to baskets labelled ‘better left unsaid’ or ‘not the time or place.’ To be followers of the Prince of Peace asks us to name a false peace, to confess the false benefits we have reaped, dismantle old orders and build something new. A something (we hope and pray) that reflects the kingdom Jesus came to announce and promises to again to bring in its fullness. Because this work of seeking an honest and liberative peace is one of those places we see the salvation of God. For it is this, in its perfection and completion, which Advent teaches us to hasten and wait.
 
At Advent we celebrate, that some 2000 years ago, the word of God came to John and he announced the coming of the Prince of Peace into the midst of Roman rule. And the reason we celebrate it, is that despite that Prince’s death at the hands of those charged to keep the peace, that Prince and his kingdom could not be contained by death, nor by imperial norms and purposes (however much, sadly, they have been tragically intertwined and enmeshed since then). The Prince of Peace could not be contained by death, nor silenced by empire, and in this we take courage to follow in his way, risking confrontation and truth, in pursuit of the peace which surpasses all understanding but brings with it justice, joy, and love.   


[1] https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/tom-holland-roman-empire-pax-romana-military-violence/102960376

Readings, Luke 21:25-36 and 1 Thes 3:9-13
Image, Gordon Coutts, Waiting (1895)
 
Jesus’ rather striking words in today’s gospel reading arise in response to a question. Having made the alarming remark that the Temple shall be thrown down, he is asked, Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?
 
Jesus’ response has given rise to all manner of speculation about the ‘signs of the times,’ at least in part, because there does seem to be some movement in the focus of the speech. For the most part it explicitly concerns what will come to pass within the generation of those present. The destruction of the Temple at the hands of Roman Imperial violence in 70CE had likely already occurred by the composition of Luke’s gospel and so would be fresh in the minds of Christian communities reading it. For them, the destruction of the Temple further services the understanding Jesus’ own body as the Temple (now ascended and impervious to the whims of imperial violence). Take heart, they might say in the face of persecution, we can be scattered but no distance can ever arise between us and our temple.
 
At the same time, there are sections of Jesus’ response that elude the historical referent. That is to say, Jesus also seems to be speaking of something to come. For the destruction of the Temple happened without Nation rising against nation, without great earthquakes, famines and plagues; without dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. The Temple was sacked, the people scattered, and yet where were signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars? Why did all this happen, and yet the people did not see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory? These loose threads, this excess, lead Christians to take a ‘both and’ approach to the passage. Yes, in the first instance, Jesus responds to the question of the Temple, the “little apocalypse” which will happen before this generation passes away. But that also, in the second instance, Jesus refers to the end of all things, to the great and glorious Day of the Lord, when the judgment and restoration of all things will take place.

Of course, the gesture to the broader apocalypse creates its own set questions – many of which concern signs and portents, and fuel the desire to categorise the stages of history and eschatology. Many a sign, graph, or table has been devoted to the question asked of Jesus: when will this be? Speculation of this kind are complicated in the contemporary context, where there is often an unhelpful conflation of the modern nation state of Israel and the covenantal people of Israel (who exist within and beyond the modern state with a range of feelings and theologies toward it). Contemporary conflict in this region should not be read solely through the lens of precursors or fulfilment of biblical imagery, nor understood only in relation to Christian eschatology. Doing so reduces the promised end to a problem to be solved and in so doing frustrates our compassion and calling as Christians. For the end is not a bingo card to be stamped, but a horizon of hope that shapes the way we live today.

The question of the end concerned the church in Thessalonica. They were so sure the end was coming in their life time, that they were growing concerned about what was going to happen to those who died before Christ’s return? Paul assures them they do not need to fear. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever.
 
And yet, despite attending to the end, the main thrust of Paul’s letter to the church concerns their activity and witness in the present. In the passage we heard, Paul prays that the Lord shall increase their love for one another, that they will be strengthened in holiness until the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Later, when Paul writes concerning the times and the seasons, he does not dwell on how one might know when or how, but urges them simply to keep alert and awake. Put on the breastplate of faith and love, writes Paul, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Having been thus destined, Paul teaches: encourage one another, be at peace among yourselves, and seek to do good to all.
 
Advent is season where we learn once more to hasten and wait for the coming of Christ. As such, Advent readings contain numerous injunctions to keep alert, keep watch, to stay awake and be ready. But what does this look like? For my kids, waiting for someone to arrive means standing at the window with binoculars asking if ever passing car belongs to their friend. Back when I worked in uni chaplaincy, hosting events with no idea if anyone would arrive, waiting consisted of pacing back and forth, looking for a glimpse of recognition (or better yet enthusiasm) from any student who came by! But this eye-straining, patience-testing, anxiety-inducing alert waiting, is not what defines an Advent people.
 
It is not that we forget about the return of Christ or promised end (both vital in an age where hope is so often put to the test), but that we redefine what it means to hasten and wait. It is not stocking up on red twine to string together clues. No, the way we wait is to increase in love and prayer for one another and our world. We stay alert for the coming of Christ in glory by staying alert for the coming of Christ in the least of these. We ready ourselves for the coming of the kingdom in its fullness by seeking first the kingdom on earth. We keep awake to the yearned for restoration of all things by tending to God’s creation in our daily life. We yearn for the day when we shall see God face to face by seeking God’s face in worship, prayer, scripture, and a life of mercy. We wait, in short, by seeking to live as if we are no longer waiting.
 
Jesus’ response in Luke weaves the little apocalypses of this age with the great unveiling of the age to come. Paul’s letter to Thessalonica weaves confidence in what is to come with exhortations for what is needed today. What is to come and what is occurring are related, though this relation is not limited to that of sign and fulfilment. Rather both fall within the concern of Christ (and thus of Christians). After all, Christ’s response is not limited to prediction. He laments that the Temple’s desolation will lead to pain, scattering, and violence visited upon the vulnerable. And as Christ was concerned for that wanton act of imperial violence visited upon his generation, so we should be in ours. For this kind of violence and subjugation has no place in the age to come when swords are beaten into ploughshares. And as Paul was concerned for the grief befalling those who bury their loved ones, so we should be too. For the sting of death has no place in the age to come when every tear shall be wiped from our eyes. To be an Advent people is to view the end not as a problem to predict, but a promise to empower. Alert and awake, we do what little we can to respond to the little apocalypses that befall the world’s vulnerable today, what little we can to increase in love and good deeds for one another and to all. In doing so we prepare ourselves to receive both the Christ child born into oppression and humility, and Christ the King who comes on the clouds with great power and glory at the end of the age. These are signs of life, signs of hope, and to these we cling.

Readings 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 and Luke 1:26-38
​Image, Nativity, Paul Gauguin (1896). Oil on Canvas

This Advent we have lit candles for hope, peace, and joy. We reflected on what it means to hold onto hope even now, to confess that even now after so much historical inequity and present injustice Jesus can call life from death. We committed to be people of peace, drawing strength in the wilderness from Christ who appears on the stage of human struggle in full sprint, bearing our burdens and leading us into the kingdom. And last week we not only experienced a great deal of joy, but we reflected on where we might find the joy in our lives today that leads us back to the angelic pronouncement of good news of great joy.
 
Advent ends with love, because everything ends in love. Paul reminds us that even when everything else comes to an end, when all else fades away, love never ends. Even faith and hope fade in the age to come. For when we see God face to face, and live before the enteral and undiminished light of Christ, only love remains, because God is love.
 
The writers of scripture tend to excel when they are writing about love. Love is patient, love is kind, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Not height or depths nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. Perfect love casts out fear. Cloth yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. For God so loved the world… it is fitting that some of the most stirring passages in all of Scripture should be those that orbit most closely the nature of God.
 
Advent ends with love because we are at the precipice of Emmanuel, God with us. Christmas celebrates that out of infinite compassion and steadfast kindness, God elected to be with and for us so that we should never doubt that we are loved such a great deal. The good news of great joy is that we are loved enough that Christ would not exploit his equality with God but was born into human likeness. Humbling himself to share in our suffering and death so that as he is exalted, so we shall be exalted, as he is raised so we shall be raised, as he shall triumph, we shall triumph.
 
In the first Advent of Christ, the light of the world stepped onto the stage of human struggle. In his love Jesus conquered death, swallowed sin, and issued forth a spirit of adoption so that we should be called siblings of Christ, children of God. Because he lived a life of perfect love, all that is his by righteousness is ours by grace. And for this reason, we trust that until and beyond Christ’s second Advent our lives, like our death, will be held in love.
 
It's time of year where we are want to revisit favourite films and books. The act of rewatching a film or rereading a book is a dramatically different experience than reading for the first time. Because all the various character decisions are shaped by our knowledge of their end. We rue all the more a father’s decision not to tell their child the family secret before departing on that streamliner because we know they do not return. We tear out our hair at the protagonist’s impatiently rash decision to take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator because it means they miss their beloved and thus remain estranged for 236 more pages. The knowledge of a character’s end, exposes the virtue or folly of all the little actions and attitudes that lead them there.
 
Advent is a season which asks us to reflect on our lives in light of the horizons between which they are lived. To consider the way in which the shape of our life conforms to its end. The knowledge of the location of our end (in love) affords us the capacity to almost reread our lives as we live them, searching our actions and attitudes for the ways in which they befit our end. And because our end is love, so too the shape of our life is love. Our lives of love do not procure us this end, rather, like opening a present on Christmas Eve they celebrate it in advance! We live lives of joyful, abundant, prodigal love, because it is satisfying when an ending is foreshadowed throughout the narrative.  
 
Mary knew she could trust God’s love. When the angel asks her to do the impossible, she responds, Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Mary might not know all the chapters of the story she embarks upon, but she knows that with God, it will end with the glorious triumph of love. Mary exemplifies the faithful life shaped by love. She knows that the tumult of the present is given perspective by the promise of the end. Her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her saviour, because the Divine Love does not abhor her womb. The Divine Love does not abhor the suffering of the people nor the lowliness of the manger. The Divine Love does not abhor the crown of thorns nor the ugliness of the cross. The Divine Love comes swaddled in humility and will return dazzling in glory, because it is God’s nature to love. It is who God is. It is because of love that God abides with us in our struggle, confronts oppression, and acts for justice. Because of love that God makes a way through the impossible to restore and redeem all creation. Mary knows, that she can declare herself ready, because God gifts us hope, peace, and joy, until we find our end in the perfection of love that is God’s very being. And as she does, so can we, because we too have beheld the great truth: nothing is impossible with God who is love.

Readings, Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-13
Image, Christ in the Wilderness - The Hen, Stanley Spencer (1954) 

Peace is central to the seasons of Advent and Christmas. Christ is the heavenly born Prince of Peace, God with us in a world of worry and woe, violence and fear. A world shouting out for comfort, longing for a highway through the wilderness to reveal the glory of God. In the Gospel of Mark, of course, such a path appears with a bang!
 
We do not wade into the story through genealogy, we are not serenaded by an overture of creation, no births are foretold, no maternal songs sung. Mark, steeped in Isaiah, heard the voice say Cry out! and the desperate response, What shall I cry? And decided to begin at full steam, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. This is the comfort that God speaks tenderly to the people, this the Word of our God which will stand forever.
 
Christ bursts onto the scene of repentance and trouble, of yearning and resistance and goes straight into those waters with his people. As soon as he does the heavens are torn apart, the Spirit descends, and the voice from heaven announces: You are my Son, the beloved.
 
We remember last week the longing in Isaiah for God to tear the heavens open and come down. Now the presence of Jesus, bursting onto the scene of human struggle, opens those very heavens. Here I am, the great I Am, joining you in the waters of repentance, ready to baptise with the Holy Spirit. In Jesus shall the glory of God be revealed. He is the shepherd come to gather the lambs in his arms, to carry them in his bosom.
 
But not of course, before the Spirit drives Christ into the wilderness. It is this immediate move to the wilderness that is so essential to the comfort that God speaks through the eternal Word, the peace God provides through the Advent of Christ. For it was in the wilderness that the voice cried out for the coming of God, and thus it is to the wilderness that Christ is driven. Christ goes to the wilderness of our lives to face the temptation we all suffer, the erosion of peace we all endure, the evil of the world under which we all grow weary. Christ faces it with the angels and the beasts, and returns to proclaim: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.
 
Advent is an anticipatory season where we hasten and wait for the eschatological coming of Christ, by recollecting his historical arrival. Usually this recollection centres Christ’s birth, but as today’s readings remind us, Christ bursts upon the scenes of human drama in various ways. What is consistent, of course, is the announcement of his identity as the beloved son of God, his sharing in our struggle, and his overcoming of that struggle as the good shepherd who gathers us up with a word of comfort and peace.
 
Mark’s account speaks, I think, most acutely to those of us who, when we hear Cry out, very much identify with the responding question What shall I cry? Those of us who (whether this year or all years) feel so deep in the wilderness that we cannot see any straight paths (let alone highways). Those of us who aren’t even aware of how much we need that word of comfort right now! Those of us who want to say, ‘God, I don’t have time for the impossibly docile child sleeping through the night in the manger. I don’t have time for the shepherds and the magi, the beginning and the word, the precocious boy and his temple escapades.’ For those who want to say ‘God, the wilderness has grown so thick I can’t see the sky let alone your star.’ For those who want to say, ‘God the temptations are overwhelming, I don’t see any angels, and these wild beasts are baring their teeth.’ It is to we who need nothing short of the precise immediacy of God’s saving action to whom the Gospel of Mark comforts this Advent. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Here he is, already on the scene. In less than half a page Jesus has been baptised by John, anointed by the Spirit, named beloved from the heavens, and rushed into the wilderness to be with you.
 
Peace isn’t only silent nights. Peace bursts into the wilderness with machete and torch. The peace which surpasses all understanding doesn’t always need the paths to be made straight. For Jesus is the shepherd sent by God to seek, search and save. Jesus finds us in the wilderness and says (in a tender voice) comfort, and (in a mighty voice) here is your God. Jesus shows up in the wilderness to share its burdens and to provide the way out.    
 
Let we who long for peace, look ahead and back to the coming of Christ. Let us find peace in those advents. Whether that be the quiet, poignant, and stirring stories of the infant who upturns the world and rewrites the skies, or be that the man running through the story at full sprint arriving as the world’s redeemer without a second to waste.

Readings, Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37
Image, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Resurrection of Lazarus, 1896

Let’s consider for a moment, the story of Lazarus. Lazarus grows ill. His concerned sisters, Martha and Mary, send a message to Jesus, Lord, the one whom you love is ill. Then they wait. They look to the horizon awaiting the coming of the Son of God. And yet, he does not come. Unbeknownst to them Jesus chooses to remain where he was for two days. The sisters wait. Lazarus declines. The sisters hope. Lazarus dies.
 
By the time Jesus arrives in Bethany, Lazarus has been entombed four days. Martha approaches Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Soon after Jesus is approached by Mary, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
 
Advent is the season where we hasten and wait for the return of Christ by reflecting on his on his arrival incarnate some two thousand years ago. Advent is reflective, Christ has come, and anticipatory, Christ will come again. Both these horizons serve as sites of hope. And yet, when we take up the Advent injunction to keep awake, watching for Christ to bring the peace and restoration of the new creation, we can certainly relate to the feelings of Mary and Martha, Lord, if you had been here. Just as we can relate to the sentiments expressed by the prophet Isaiah, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!
 
For the world is awash with violence and misery. We lament the thousands of children killed in Gaza, we await the release of more hostages, we grieve the war waged against Ukraine, we long for the freedom of West Papua, we are weighed down by the refugee crisis in Artsakh, we despair at rates of incarceration for Indigenous folks in these lands. Beyond the cruelty humans impose on one another, the climate crisis gives us the sense that the world is fraying at the edges as whole communities risk of losing homes to rising tides. Then there are the intimate worries and woes of our lives and the lives of those we love, the times we have called out, Lord, the one whom you love is ill, only to be met with silence.
 
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. Lord, if you had been here.
There are many in history, as there are many today, who felt as though the time was ripe for Christ to come again. We could likely look at the long line of human history and find several points at which to say, Lord, if you had been here of all this suffering could have been avoided. The day and the hour no one knows, but many have hoped it would be their own.
 
Let’s return to the story of Lazarus. Martha comes to Jesus with her complaint, but then adds, even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him. Even now… even now, despite the seemingly inescapable finality of death, even now after the long history of human cruelty, even now in the face of catastrophe and conflict, even now after the prayers seem unanswered and the return of our Lord interminably delayed. Even now… This is the posture of the Christian; the posture of Advent.
 
In such a posture we do not deny the presence of death and loss in our world. Nor hide from present injustice and historical inequity. We know the world is not as it should be and would be different were the heavens torn open and the Lord was here. And yet in this posture we say even now. In this posture we hold onto hope, hold on past hope, hold on to the promise that despite everything feeling lost, Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Even now, with so much harm that can no longer be repaired, and so much hurt that yet needs to be healed, even now God will give to Jesus whatever he asks. And what Jesus asks is that Lazarus should come out of his grave. What Jesus asks is that those who die, will live. 
 
What this will mean or look like when Christ returns is as mysterious as the day and the hour at which it will break into history. What awaits us when the present age fades away is a great mystery. But God’s eternity means God’s relation to time is otherwise. The one who arrives too late to Bethany is not too late to raise the dead. History will yet be redeemed, its wounds healed and its path transfigured. The glory of God will be revealed in the infinite compassion of the one who looks and weeps at the world’s loss and calls us from our graves. For we are all God’s people; we are the clay as God is our potter. We shall all be remade by the one who calls us to be unbound from our sorrows and released from death’s grip. So much injustice and loss has occurred, that we who are human cannot retrieve or repair. And thus we look to the Advent of Christ, holding out hope that even now Jesus Christ, the resurrection and the life, stands ready to come in glory and gather up all of creation - from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven - and restore all things in love.