Advent 1 C December 2, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Jeremiah 33: 14-16 + Psalm 25: 1-10 + 1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13
Luke 21: 25-36
Grace and peace to you from God who created us, the Holy Spirit who sustains and comforts us, and Jesus the Christ, who is coming again. Amen.
Every Thanksgiving the coffee table in our living room is cleared away and a jigsaw puzzle makes its annual holiday appearance. A one thousand piece holiday jigsaw puzzle. Well, usually it ends up being a 999 piece jigsaw puzzle because there’s always one piece that mysteriously disappears. My participation in the holiday puzzle is to put together the edges. That’s arguably the easiest part, all of the side pieces have straight edges…so it’s not that hard to piece them together and create the frame that will eventually contain the puzzle. But what happens over the next several weeks is that everyone who comes to our house, from our kids and their beloveds and friends, to neighbors…everyone just loves gathering around the puzzle to make a whole image come together from one thousand…or 999….pieces. Those pieces, in and of themselves, don’t look like much. If you just look at one of them, alone, you’d have no idea how it will fit with the others to make a single image.
In Luke’s Gospel today there’s a LOT going on. Jesus is talking about signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars…distress among nations who are confused by the roaring of the seas and the waves. The Son of Man coming in a cloud. Fig trees. I mean there’s so much going on it’s hard to know or to find exactly what we are looking for. Because let’s face it, in some form or fashion, we are all looking for and longing for the Kingdom of God. And in this Advent season we are reminded that this Jesus whose arrival in a manger we both long for and remember, will come again.
Artists and authors have depicted this reading from Luke’s Gospel….the next coming of the Kingdom. It’s all very dramatic and there are clouds and trumpets and the earth and her people are trembling in fear. But do we really know how Jesus will return? What if he doesn’t come on a cloud at all but comes as a person from a village in India or out of the hills of Appalachia or riding a donkey out of the mountains of Nepal. I mean, it could happen. There is precedence for Jesus arriving in strange places and by unusual means, like feed troughs, and unmarried mothers, and riding on a donkey.
Why then, is Jesus talking about fig trees today? Why speak of something as ordinary as sprouting leaves when what we want to find is the advent of the kingdom of God?
In the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, the fig tree was often used as a metaphor for Israel. Jesus would have been familiar with this. But I’m not sure that’s where he was headed in this parable. Jesus is using an ordinary tree – something that would be familiar and common to his listeners and his followers. A tree that provided shade and fruit. A tree that was plentiful in the orchards.
Jesus moves from describing a terrified, confused people looking for signs and trembling when they think they see them, to the image of an ordinary tree, bringing the kingdom of God near.
One of the dangers of this time of year is the imagery that plays out before us in what we watch and what we read and what we hear – perfect families gather around perfect meals and open perfect gifts. There is no brokenness, no sadness….there are no unrealized expectations. There’s just all of this….perfection.
And what we know is that life is not like that. We live as broken people – our hearts are broken and our relationships are broken and our spirits are broken. In the midst of that brokenness we look for the Kingdom of God – for some sign that it is coming – and we are met with the ordinary things of life. The fig trees, if you will.
In today’s Gospel Jesus is coming to the end of his ministry and the end of his life. There’s not a lot of time left to press home the meaning of his life and teachings. Yet, even so, his followers want to know: when this will all be complete – when it will all come to some conclusion. And Jesus tells them that the kingdom of God is near when they watch the fig trees bloom. The kingdom of God is near in the ordinary days, which may actually be, the most unexpected of places.
I was thinking about this congregation and the ways we have continued to be surprised by the presence of the kingdom of God as it breaks into our life together. Of course, there are the big, festive moments like the trumpets at Easter and the fiery red of Pentecost. There are the memorable times: gala dinners and pancake breakfasts and prayers around the cross. There are the moments here that usher us across life’s thresholds….baptisms and weddings and funerals.
But I’m not sure I see God any more clearly than when the children run to children’s time or to the table. Or when we lay food out for a potluck, and when a stranger wanders into the building, we just hand them a plate too.
And certainly, in this Advent season, the Kingdom of God is being built right in front of us. It is literally being built before our very eyes. Because surely, the kingdom is our true home. And the homes being built here are reflective of that kingdom.
And how often have the bearers of the light of the Christ in this place been those we hardly expect? The lessons we learned from Robbie are too numerous to recount. Or what of another Advent Sunday in another year when we had two guests in worship whose names were Joy and Gloria? Signs of the living God are all around us. Every single day. They are in our lives….every single day. But we are often so busy looking for what we imagine the kingdom of God will look like that we miss the beauty of having it all around us. We are so busy looking for roaring seas or clouds and trumpets that we overlook the fig trees.
Like pieces of a puzzle, the Kingdom requires that we look at the big picture. When we only consider our own needs, our own desires, our own hopes and dreams, it’s as though we are holding one puzzle piece. We have no frame of reference. We have no concept of what the whole picture looks like. We forget that the kingdom is so far beyond our imagining that it requires the hyperbole of Jesus’ description. And yet, it is as close as an ordinary backyard tree. Our task especially in this season, is to be aware of it, even as we anticipate it.
Advent is a season of hopeful expectation. It is a time of watching and waiting. In today’s Gospel, Jesus bids us pay attention, so that those signs of the kingdom don’t catch us unexpectedly. So that we aren’t so busy or so worried or so distracted managing the things of this life that we miss the signs of life eternal that are right in front of us. There will still be matters that require our attention. There will still be work to tend to. Our hearts will still be broken. But in the midst of all of that, like the final piece of a puzzle, there is a manger awaiting a baby….and a young unwed mother pondering an angel’s message….and some shepherds wondering if anything exciting will ever happen to them as they watch over their flocks by night.
Raise your heads, beloved people of God….our redemption is drawing near. The kingdom is at hand. Jesus is coming and Jesus is here.
Thanks be to God. Amen.