By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Because Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year, it always feels like our readings should reflect that sense of starting over. Logically, it seems that on the first Sunday of a new church year we would read something like the first chapter of Genesis—“In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth”—or even the first chapter of the Gospel of John—“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God.” “In the beginning” is essentially the Bible’s equivalent of “once upon a time” and it really feels to me like how the church year should start.
Instead, every year, as late fall drags along into early winter, we begin the great narrative arc of the story of the church year by saying, in effect, “Watch out: the world is coming to an end.” It’s a very strange way to start things off!
It’s especially dizzying when we pair the solemnity of what is unfolding inside the church with the frenzy and excess that marks this season in much of the rest of our lives. The head-spinning message feels something like, “The end of the world is nigh—now let’s go to the mall and celebrate the most wonderful time of the year!” Truly this is the height of cognitive dissonance. We know that Advent is a season of preparation, but are we supposed to be getting ready for the birth of Christ or for the apocalypse?
The answer, of course, is yes.
Yes to both, because we are getting ready for the coming of Christ. And while I’m sure you’ve heard this before, it bears repeating—Christ is coming as a newborn baby and Christ is coming again, to judge the living and the dead, and to usher in a new heaven and a new earth. And at any given moment, whether we choose to focus more on the birth or more on the second coming, the question remains the same: are we ready?
Parents preparing for the birth of a child often feel like they will never really be ready. Family members preparing for the death of a loved one after a long illness also feel like they will never be ready, they will never be fully prepared for the reality, no matter how hard they try to wrap their heads around it in advance. It’s not because we don’t care enough or haven’t done all that we can do to make ourselves ready, it’s just that life and death are both too much for us, too absolute and profound for whatever preparation we can summon up. Some events defy all our efforts to domesticate and control them. In the end all we can do is experience them, be present and awake to the gifts they have to offer, no matter how scary or overwhelming they may be.
I imagine it probably throws us off a little that in today’s readings it is the Old Testament prophet who is promising a time of fulfillment, restoration, and justice, while it is Jesus who is sounding pretty apocalyptic. It is worth noting that both Jeremiah and Jesus were realists—they both saw the world as it was, with all its heartbreak and injustice and suffering, but also with all its hope and love and beauty and grace.
And it might also be worth noting that the word “apocalypse” is itself not the frightening shibboleth we have made it out to be. Apocalypse basically means a revelation or unveiling of something previously hidden. So, Jesus and Jeremiah are both showing us things as they are, revealing to us much of what tends to be obscured from view in our day-to-day scramble for existence.
One of the things that is being revealed by Jesus is how the natural world is both an ally and a teacher as we seek to have greater clarity about reality and a deeper awareness of the presence of the divine in our lives. Most clearly, there is the parable of the fig tree, which tells us that humanity has the ability to read the book of nature. We know that when trees sprout leaves it is a sign that new life is at hand, that spring is upon us and summer is right around the corner.
This is knowledge we gain either by experience or by someone else teaching us that creation is cyclical; trees and grasses may appear to die in the winter, but really they are just going through a natural part of their life cycle, and soon they will be showing signs of new life and new creation. This knowledge helps us to integrate the larger insight that life and time are more cyclical than they are linear; if we are alert and practice conscious presence, we will know how to read the signs of death and rebirth within our own lives and within the society and cultures we inhabit.
In her book Wintering, Katherine May writes, “That’s what the natural world does: it carries on surviving. Sometimes it flourishes, lays on fat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey, and sometimes, it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. It doesn’t do this once, resentfully, assuming that one day it will get things right and everything will smooth out. It winters in cycles, again and again, forever and ever. For plants and animals, winter is part of the job; the same is true for humans.”
She goes on to explain how our resistance to change and our desire to see our lives as linear both tend to make the cyclical nature of reality much harder for us—especially when we encounter the parts of the cycle we don’t like. This seems to me very close to what Jesus is talking about when he warns us about being distracted or dissipated or weighed down by life. Jesus tells us to look at the natural world, at what we already know to be true, during these difficult times. May puts it this way: “To make it more manageable, we only have to remember that our present will one day become a past and our future will be our present. We know that because it’s happened before. The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will one day be past history.”
Unlike some Sundays, when it can be hard to see the relevance of the readings to our life, these lessons feel almost uncannily connected to our present reality. The cyclical nature of time is more apparent now than ever before, given that we are all experiencing a second Christmas since the arrival of the COVID-19 virus and all the ways it has disrupted the normal flow of things. So many things have been revealed during this time, most of them things we did not particularly want to see about how dysfunctional many of our systems, institutions, and organizations really are.
And, of course, the natural world is trying to send us a message, too. Some people refuse to read the signs in the heavens and the roaring of the waves, but for most of us the message is clear. The end is coming—but what end? Will we, in our lifetimes, see an end to our beloved institutions, to the church as we know it, to the rule of law and democratic norms, and to a climate that is uniquely, ideally suited to human life? Possibly. But could we not also see an end to so much of what is threatening to destroy us? An end to rampant self-centrism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and an over-reliance on fossil fuels? Might we not see an end to policies that harm the most vulnerable and reward the greediest and most ruthless? Stubbornly, resolutely, perhaps foolishly, I continue to believe that those endings are possible, too.
Once again, I turn to the words of Katherine May, who finds in creation a pattern for trusting in hope and the power of perseverance. Sometimes, as she puts it, we will just “have to clench our teeth and carry on surviving…[but in] the meantime, we can only deal with what’s in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next, and at some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.” And that too will be a beginning, as well as an end. Thanks be to God. Amen.
