Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, channeling the destructive forces of emptiness, vanity, and chaos for the first time – almost as if directing the mighty torrent of a hurricane into the established limits and banks of a river called “the cosmos”, “the universe”, or “the heavens and the earth.” What was nothing became something. What was destructive was transformed by the Spirit of Wisdom to become life-giving. God looked upon the work of Wisdom and said, “This is very, very good.

Did the void and the emptiness of nothingness feel the surge of expectancy when God’s Spirit first began to move upon the face of the deep? Was there a noticeable pause in the frenzy of vanity before Wisdom began the work of advent – the work of bringing forth from darkness into light? Was there a moment just before the instant of the big bang where everything was so tightly packed together there wasn’t even space for a molecule to vibrate before the whole of it exploded into what would eventually become you and I, knit together by the fingers of God across the vast expanses of time and space? If there was, that instant could be called Advent. Or, that instant could be called Apocalypse – for as certainly as creation was beginning, emptiness was being judged. Likewise, from the very beginning, creation was being judged by its Maker, who proclaimed it very, very good.

Both Advent and Apocalypse are about waiting with expectancy for judgment and restoration. In a way, both are a pregnancy – an experience of birth pangs when the flesh and life of the past and present are ripped open in the act of bringing forth new life and new hope as a tiny babe. In that instant the entire universe as we know it is judged (as are we) by a dependent child.

Aye, and there’s the rub. Our flesh, like the past and present, is solid, temporal, transient, and subject to decay. God, however, like the future, is spirit – invisible as the wind, uncertain in its movements from our perspective, and impossible to pin down. Sometimes the past and present circumstances of life have been disrupted by the forces of chaos leading us to wonder if all is well or indeed, ever can be. Such moments are frightening and apocalyptic – filled with darkness, emptiness, vanity, and endless questioning. It may seem that the only solution to our troubles is the dissolution of all that is and all we are.

Almost any real, transformative change is like that, not just the change of Advent or Apocalypse. Yet, it is precisely in the midst of uncertainty and crisis that the smallest candle is able to illumine our lives with the greatest light. What is surprising, then, is not that the universe is subjected to change in spite of being founded upon pillars of a perfect love and lover of our souls – what is surprising is that we are so firm in our resolve to resist change.

Only when faith is matured in the fires of surrendering to the will of God, and mature in the acknowledgment of the presence of God, are we able to embrace the transformative change of Apocalypse and Advent. If we fear change, the death of a familiar past and a comfortable present it is because we have yet to understand that without the apocalypse that sweeps away our past, the future has no room to grow. So, when we survey the circumstances of our present, we too often long for the past, when instead we should be longing for the future that God is inventing, or “Adventing,” and wait in the wings of hope, faith, and love, to see what God will say is very, very good.

This is the pattern of life lived in faith, surrendered to love in order to love. This is the pattern of apocalypse in the life of the cosmos which will ultimately pass away – every whip stitch of it, while the presence and the promise of God remain, promising that we will find the life of God ushering in a new day of hope – even if it only follows the darkness of a tomb. When we hear strident voices complaining that the present doesn’t look enough like the past, we should prayerfully consider that it is not the past that God is striving to preserve. The purposes of God have ever been, and will ever remain, to overthrow those idols, principalities and powers in which we have placed our trust, and to reinstate in the lives of humanity the holy awe of a new creation – a new creation that demands humanity’s partnership in love.

This is the hope of Advent. In the same way, it is the hope of Apocalypse – one does not appear apart from the other. Each are the same wellsprings of God’s eternal love living in the midst of humanity’s darkest circumstances, shaking the foundations of the past that have prevented us from moving into the future God intends. We can either hold tightly to the past that has molded, shaped, and hardened us, or we can embrace the tiny baby Jesus that has come to transform us.

Today, the first Sunday of Advent, we begin a new year in the life of the Christian journey – the ongoing journey of Christ’s body in the life of the world. Advent begins in darkness to remind us of our true condition. The single candle does not represent the hope that the future will look a great deal like the present. Rather, the flickering ray of hope is a prayer that we will see the light of God in the midst of our dark condition. It is not a prayer that our lives will be maintained as we are accustomed to being maintained – it is a prayer that God will have God’s way, at last, in our lives.

“Lord Jesus, master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom; we whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence. To you we say, ‘Come Lord Jesus!’” -- Henri Nouwen

(Comments to Michael at mykhal@epix.net.)