FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

THE LESSONS IN PRÉCIS

Jeremiah 33:14- 16. After years of trouble, God will raise a righteous Branch (leader) from David's line and the people will be saved.

Psalm 25:1- 10. The psalmist cries out for rescue and forgiveness for his youthful sins and testifies to God's steadfast, reliable love.

1 Thessalonians 3:9- 13. Paul gives thanks for the joy he receives from knowing the Thessalonians, and prays that they may be blessed in all ways and be blameless at the coming of the Lord. Note: the troubles that are present in the other texts can be found in verses 6-8.

Luke 21:25- 36. Jesus warns his disciples of the terrifying signs that will precede the coming of the Human One. He urges his disciples to watch for signs of his coming, to be alert, and not to allow self-indulgence or worldly worries to keep them off guard.

THEME SENTENCE

Christ is coming so be ready! The context of all the day's texts is trouble. Amidst that trouble the biblical writers have hope that God will act. The Gospel foretells the decisive act, the coming of Christ. So remain faithful and be ready.

A KEY THEOLOGICAL QUESTION

Paying Attention

Advent is the season when we pay close attention to the phrase "from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." These texts draw our attention to the doctrines of the end time (eschatology), sin and salvation, Christology, and end-time Christian living.

The lessons for the day draw a tight link between the coming decisive action of God and the present life of the individual believer and the community of faith. Present hope and joy are generated in light of what God is about to do in spite of current troubles. The coming action of God is not anticipated by the surface of world events, nor is it a logical deduction from historical processes. The coming near of the kingdom of God is not a natural, immanent possibility; only God can and will do it. Joy and hope are the character yield in the life of a community that invests in the promise of the coming of God, despite ominous current conditions. These virtues are nurtured through worship and reading the word in the light of God's promises, not the promises in the light of the world. As with so many of the texts that will be read in the season of Advent, the appropriate posture is sitting on the edge of our seat, looking up and around in watchfulness. People who hope in God look up toward the coming rule of God in the Human One's return.

Leaning and looking forward to the coming of God is not generally a posture of the Church, individually or corporately. The sort of doomsday scenario presented, particularly by Luke's Gospel, is at odds with much of mainline Christianity. The idea of God coming near and shaking down the powers in a cosmic work of rebirth isn't often within the imaginations of what is left of establishment Christianity. Our imaginations are stoked not with eschatological promise or stories of apocalyptic change, but rather with natural probabilities. Church architecture often bespeaks, for example, permanent and settled arrangements; our forward planning for church life may involve one- dimensional models that anticipate our action, not God's. Our church investments in community, government, military, and economy are based on things as they are rather than what they will be. We struggle with these biblical texts both at the level of imaginative comprehensibility and possibly at the level of their threat to our long-term investments in the current status quo. It's hard to be joyful and hopeful about the shaking down of Wall Street or the Pentagon, or "the powers of the heavens" (Luke 21:26, nrsv), when they are the guarantors of current fragile prosperity and safety. Proclamation of these texts can feel more like, "Put your head down—your damnation is drawing near."

Reinhold Niebuhr (1964) divided his treatment of sin into two parts: pride and sensuality. The second of these categories is particularly rich for conversation with our Advent texts. Sensuality is actually the sin of putting our heads down and settling in, chameleon-like, in the world as it is. Among other things, sensuality, says Niebuhr, is "an escape [into unconsciousness] from the tension of life" (237). Our Gospel text, together with other Advent readings (Rom 13:11-14; 1 Pet 4:1-6, Eph 5:15-18), singles out sins of dissipation as particularly alluring when waiting for regime change. When trouble is served in the form of exile, displacement, crises of conscience, or marginalization, the temptation is to sink into sensuality rather than to hold out for what God will do. Debauchery and revelry are anesthetizing schemes, ways of losing our faithful selves and relieving the tension between the not yet and the already by not paying attention,...