There was a time, and it doesn’t feel that long ago, when it seemed that the things people across recent generations have put time and energy and vision into, towards making this world a better place, and learning from humanity’s mistakes, were not only worth the tremendous effort and sacrifice, but were enduring.

Remember?

The Second World War had reshaped Europe and Asia in ways that seemed to establish a working peace after centuries of recurring warfare, and even the subsequent Cold War had been resolved to allow for a kind of peace.  Colonialism had come to an end in Africa and Asia and Latin America, and its lingering legacies of poverty, indebtedness, and environmental destruction were gradually being addressed.  Racism in the US and in Canada had been exposed, and its rationales and excuses shown to be as ugly and empty as African Americans, Afro-Canadians, Indigenous peoples, and others had always known.  Women’s rights were fought for, and significant victories brought women a measure of justice, and a say over their own bodies and health.  Poverty, and social and economic justice broadly, had come to be seen to be a concern for all of us in society, and not simply due to an individual’s bad choices, or genetics, or misfortune…

We celebrated what seemed like victories – the end of apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the work of UN agencies like UNICEF, and UNESCO, the green revolution in agriculture enabling more people to be fed adequately, nuclear arms reductions, access to education, vaccinations against childhood diseases…

Our deep-rooted cultural belief in progress told us that things were moving in a positive direction, and each step forward prepared the way for the next step… forward.  Maybe not in the whole world, but surely in the so-called developed world, or surely in the US with its vision of liberty and prosperity, or surely in Canada, modestly contributing our peaceful and resourceful spirit to the world community.

Except that what we see around us today is increasingly – and bewilderingly for many of us – overlaid with a sense of doom and despair.  Nuclear arms treaties are simply expiring, and sabre-rattling has resumed, starting with North Korea, but now Russia, and the US close behind.  China is arming, and declaring the Pacific is its front yard.  Women’s rights are being eroded in the US, and racism is being blatantly used for political leverage.  UN agencies are being undermined and defunded.  And once again we see despots and autocrats being elected in democratic countries, often-times quite legitimately, seen most recently in the US.  And war has returned once again to Europe, in Ukraine.  And the scale of death and destruction in Gaza is beyond description.

Marvin Gaye’s epoch-defining 1971 song starts playing in my head and heart… What’s going on? Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying.  Brother, brother, brother,
there’s far too many of you dying… What’s going on?  How is it that we are watching the costly achievements of generations of women and men slowed, rolled back, reversed… and often with broad public support?

If all we bring to this moment in history is a sense of optimism in progress and human resourcefulness… well, after the optimism burns out, the ash it leaves behind is resignation. What we need is hope.

A fierce and tenacious hope.  Hope despite.  Hope regardless.  Hope where we had ceased to hope.  Hope amid what threatens hope.  Hope with those who share our hope.  Hope beyond what we had hoped.  Hope that makes a way where there is no way.  Hope that calls us into life.

And, as Luke’s Jesus does in what Laurie read today, a hope that faces reality without fear.  “On the earth, there will be dismay among nations in their confusion over the roaring of the sea and surging waves.  The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”  Yes, these are pre-scientific words about cosmic turmoil – but the feeling of foreboding, of being overwhelmed by factors beyond our control, is the same.

So, yes, Luke 21 and other passages like it poses challenges to our understanding, with its cosmic scope, cryptic references, and eschatological urgency.  But its message is one of hope.  Amid a world filled with chaos and a future marked by uncertainty, Luke’s Jesus invites us to imagine what might it look like to embrace the apocalyptic – not as a kind of biblical literature which we find strange.  But to hear in Jesus’ words that it means that God is here still, and always, and the powers that appear to be in control are not the powers that control who we are, and how we choose to be in the world.  And that how we live our lives matters, and makes a difference to God’s active presence in the world, but that it will come at a price.

As Jesus knew, there is extraordinary risk in insisting on a kind of power that will never be coercive or manipulative, that seeks out the lost and liberates the oppressed, and lifts up those who are overlooked and undervalued.  It cost Jesus his life.  The empire strikes back, silencing the prophets, and those whose way of living and being points to the signs of God’s active presence – when the powers that be are hellbent on convincing us otherwise.

The season of Advent gives us a vision of apocalypse each year not only so that we might recognize it, should it come, but also—and perhaps especially—that we might enter more mindfully into our present landscape and perceive the signs of how God is working out God’s longing in the world here and now.  The meaning of the word “apocalypse” is revelation.  The birth of Jesus is an apocalypse.  A revelation of God’s very self.  And God is always about the work of seeding the world, and people’s lives, encounters, and activities with hints and nudges that uncover God’s spirit at work.  The one who came to us two millennia ago as God-with-us, is revealed constantly, now, in our midst, calling us to see all the guises in which God’s spirit goes about in this world.  Today.

Our world is riddled with uncertainty, injustice, conflict, indifference, pain.  But however chaotic and uncertain our world is, Luke does not fix it.  Luke introduces an element of waiting.  Of being ready.  We live in-between.  A time, like ours, that is fraught with tension, but nevertheless also characterized by hope.  A time when we are free to struggle, to wait, to work — to live and die — with hope, because we have trust in where the story will end.

It’s living within a paradox.  As teacher and activist Parker Palmer writes in his book The Promise of Paradox, “The way we respond to contradiction is pivotal to our spiritual lives.” Paradox requires “both/and” instead of “either/or” thinking.  Paradox may seem contradictory or absurd, but it expresses truth.  The Greek word means “to appear contrary.”  Keeping space in life for the creative tension of paradox is difficult – especially in our polarized society, that insists on either/or, us and them.

The gospel is full of paradox.  In Luke, Jesus is a baby born in a manger who is also “a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”  Jesus says “Whoever seeks to preserve their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life will find it.”  He says, “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division,” yet when he comes among them resurrected, he declares, “Peace to you!”  Christians affirm paradox all the time: Jesus’ crucifixion led to death and to new life. Jesus, both fully God and fully human.

This is why we pay attention and work to be aware.  Like the fig tree that Jesus notices, be rooted in the life of the earth.  He calls us in each moment to do the things that will stir up our courage and keep us grounded in God’s Spirit, that we may recognize God’s spirit and Jesus’ way among people in the world even now.  Amid the destruction and devastation that are taking place in the world, we’re called to perceive and to participate in the ways that he is already seeking to bring hope and healing for the whole of creation.  “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Advent and Christmas are all about God’s vision for the world — a vision that is God’s.  A vision that is far more inclusive than either/or thinking can allow.  What is at stake is not just another annual celebration or making Christmas memories with friends and family.  What is at stake is the coming of God’s vision of creation as it was intended to be – abundant, peaceful, and just – which, Jesus says, is both already and not yet here.

So, Advent invites us to tell the truth.  Advent is brutally candid.  In Advent, we are invited to get real.  Advent also invites us to yearn, to say we are hungry, thirsty, lonely, empty, unfinished, or unhoused.  In Advent, we sit in darkness, longing for light.  We sit in exile, longing for home. Advent reminds us that necessary things — things worth waiting for — happen in the dark.  And Advent invites us to notice.  “Look at the fig tree,” Jesus says. “Look at all the trees.”  Be attentive to the details.  Notice the changing sky.  Attend to the mighty movements of the oceans — and the tiny movements of your soul and spirit.  The God who shows up in a teenager’s womb might show up anywhere.

Deep in the gathering dark, something tender continues to grow.  Yearn for it, wait for it, notice it, imagine it.  Something beautiful waits to be born.  May it be so.  Amen.