It is advent, and we’ve got calendars (I am sure some of you have got Advent calendars lined up for Tuesday) and we’ve got a wreath so that’s normal. I’m buying decorations for my first Christmas tree and trying to find more eco-friendly options like wooden baubles and LED fairy lights. Exactly as you would expect. But we’ve also got the agonising choices about Christmas bubbles, the terrifying unknown of which shops are going to be open to do a last-minute present buying, and services in November have been over Facebook rather than being gathered together in the church building, which is all rather strange.
We might want readings today and through Advent that are nice and easy, and that comfort us in nice and easy ways. Instead, in this week’s readings* we hear about the apocalypse. There’s a failing moon, some angels, a fig tree, and Jesus commanding us to get ready and keep alert, as if we haven’t had enough of ‘staying alert’ already. Jesus did not, thankfully, make his warnings into a pithy three word slogan and stick it to a podium in primary colours.
Hearing apocalyptic words can be panic-inducing, especially if they come suddenly and unexpectedly. But we should expect talk of the apocalypse as we start Advent; it’s one of the major themes of the season. Of course we are starting to get used to expecting the next apocalypse, or something like it, as we go through waves and spikes and curves and briefings and tiers – lots and lots of tears. In March, it was unexpected and panic-inducing. Now it’s an accepted fact that things are not going well, but we’re all clinging to the hope that it will end well, or at least it’ll end at some point. What seemed like an apocalyptic scenario - a global pandemic, the sort of thing you see at the beginning of a dystopian film - has turned out to be another version of life that we persevere through and to which we just keep adapting.
In some ways, this can help us empathise with the Christians of the early church. They had already gone through what must have felt like various apocalypses. The first was the death of Christ, when the disciples thought that was the end of the story. They went back to their fishing nets and just resumed life. At the resurrection, that thinking proved to be wrong and actually they needed to adapt to a new version of life. At the point when Mark was writing what is literally called his ‘apocalyptic discourse’ there was a lot of drama going on in first century Palestine. There were various revolts against the Romans, and scholars over the years have hypothesised that Mark was writing after the destruction of the Jewish temple in A.D. 70. That definitely felt like an apocalyptic moment for the Jews, the community of which the Christians at that point were still a part. You can see that they might have been in a similar sort of state of mind as us – oh, what’s happened now then?
Jesus mentions an impending apocalypse throughout the gospels, and in the first few generations of Christianity, the preparation for it felt rather urgent. But as the years and then the centuries rolled by, the church got a little bit lax, because in the same way that the world has not ended at the declaration of a global pandemic, neither has any of these scenes that we hear Jesus talking about come to pass since he prophesied them.
So it begs the question, what does it mean to us now, 2000 years later, to read Jesus’ warning about the apocalypse? What does it say to us as we begin what will be one of the strangest Advents in a long time?
For Christians the apocalypse is a good thing – it’s what Paul calls the revealing of Jesus Christ. That’s because it’s part of the larger story, the story of God’s relationship with creation. The thing about the apocalypse, combined with Paul’s assertion of God’s faithfulness, is the sure and definite hope that God is going to finish what she started.
The reason we bring this up in Advent is that we are preparing for the celebration of Christ’s birth. That moment, what we call ‘the Incarnation’, that was essentially the start of the end. Since then God has been working, first in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, then through the life of the church and the Holy Spirit in the world, towards this apocalypse that Jesus talked of, the ultimate goal that will end the story started at creation. Whilst the word apocalypse has become synonymous with destruction, it just means ‘revelation’ – the end of the world as we know it once Jesus is revealed truly, and he restores creation to perfect relationship with God. Which is why it is a good thing.
So we are waiting, another theme of Advent. What’s reassuring in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is that he is confident that we have been strengthened to wait. Something of our relationship with Jesus gives us the spiritual gifts and strength to wait for his final revelation. I know that if you told me back in March that 9 months later we would only just be coming out of a second lockdown in time for Advent, with news of some vaccines on the way but no knowledge of when this would all be over, I would’ve felt quite ill-equipped for such a long wait that still just stretches into the future with no end in sight. But I’ve got through it so far, and so have you. It’s been tough, heart-breaking, and full of loss. We’re still scared of the future and weary of more waiting, but I hope you feel as I do that we are more equipped for it than we might otherwise have thought.
The strength to wait, the ability to match God’s faithfulness, to keep doing the right thing even as it becomes tedious and frustrating, that is a spiritual gift that we have been given. Jesus asks us to keep alert, and Paul says God will strengthen us to the end, so you know what, I think we can persevere. Our advent wreath candle this week remembers the patriarchs, our ancestors who give us great examples of God giving strength in waiting. Abraham waited decades for a child, having lost hope that it was going to happen at all. Jacob waited years to marry the woman he loved, through working hard labour, through being tricked by his uncle, through having to persevere more years than he anticipated.
This Advent we will persevere through social distancing, Christmas bubbling, and BoJo briefings. We will do the right thing through masks, sanitiser and one-way systems. We are strengthened in our waiting. We are gifted in our perseverance.
This Advent will be weird and different, but some things are still the same. In advent, we contemplate the deep and solemn importance of the start of the end, the revelation of God born of flesh, and we look to the final revelation, the second coming of Jesus, the end of the world as we know it as creation is restored to glory. That is the larger story which speaks to our ability to persevere, that calls us to know our strength as we wait for the end.
It will end. The pandemic, and the world. Advent holds us in our waiting as we anticipate the joy that such endings will bring.
