Lo! he comes
“Advent: “O come, O come, Immanuel."
"The days are surely coming," says the Lord; therefore we proclaim the Mystery of Faith:
“Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
“We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory”.
“We celebrate his death and resurrection, as we await the day of his coming”.
Luke’s gospel this morning is a vivid apocalyptic image of that Day of the Lord, the coming of the Son of Man.
In First Thessalonians, Paul says the wrath of God is coming but believers are not to fear, for “the Lord himself - - with the archangel’s call and the sound of God’s trumpet - - will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air."
With colorful imagination, Paul conjures an anxious day in which a good time will be had by some, but not by all. Yet, though "things fall apart, and the center does not hold"*, we do not anticipate the ominous elemental horror of the "rough beast" in William Butler Yeats' nightmarish poem "The Second Coming" *.
Advent: lo! he comes, with clouds descending, the Second Coming of Christ at the End of Time. Writing First Thessalonians about 45 or 50 AD, Paul fervently believed the Second Coming was imminent - - but from Eternity, God the Father keeps his own counsel about Time, and Jesus tarries! So, do not mark the Second Coming on your calendar just yet, nor a sticky note on your refrigerator door. Do make a mental note not to miss it if it comes to town (or to a theatre near you), then get on with the life our loving God has gifted you.
Whether apocalypse comes in Star Wars, or the Bible, or astronomy textbooks and a telescope - - whether it comes before church is out this morning or a billion years hence, life is short enough as it is without worrying about the sky falling.
I decline to go there politically from your pulpit, but we have well more than enough anguish, about what we are doing to the earth, the sky and the sea, to ourselves and each other, without watching for signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars.
And yet we have these strange “memorial acclamations” that our prayerbook terms The Mystery of Faith:
“Christ will come again.”
“We await his coming in glory”.
“We await the day of his coming” …?
When the revised Book of Common Prayer came out in 1976, I was puzzled why the church would add archaic words to our eucharistic prayers, when the Second Coming that it memorializes rings benighted in our Time. We are not Christian Millennialists gathering fearfully on a mountaintop to greet the Second Coming.
Added to the Book of Common Prayer during the twentieth century liturgical reform, why were these memorial acclamations lifted from ancient Eastern Orthodox liturgy? The answer is found in Professor Marion Hatchett’s comprehensive reference work “Commentary on the American Prayer Book”. Memorial acclamations were added to our liturgy (and therefore lex orandi lex credendi to our theology), not to correct any theological flaw, error, deficiency, or omission, but simply to increase congregation participation - - by giving the people something to say [more than just the traditional permissory responses in the opening dialogue to the Eucharistic Prayer]. I’m dead serious!
So, no, we are not going up on a sand dune to watch for Jesus coming in clouds of glory (he’ll not be coming over Panama City Beach anyway, he’ll be coming in the skies over Jerusalem!).
And Advent that the church started as a dark season of penitence in sackcloth and ashes like Lent, with the church forbidding alleluias and organ music and Altar flowers and Christmas carols - - Jesus says the son of man is lord of the Sabbath, so we Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve also have taken dominion of Advent, such that instead of letting Advent beat us down, Advent lifts us up.
We prepare for the coming of Christ not solemnly, but festively.
Advent for us is a joyful month of anticipation, excitement, and love: check out the list in your worship bulletin:
Angel Tree, Family Services,
Operation Christmas Child,
Love Thy Neighbor Collection for Anchorage Children’s Home,
and we sing: “Angels we have heard on high”, “Angels from the realms of glory”, “Hark! the herald angels sing”, Lessons & Carols,
St Nicholas Sunday, Pajama Sunday, the Christmas Pageant on Christmas Eve, the Nativity Gospel, and for some, the joy of Santa Claus and family on Christmas Day.
Surrounded by twice too much of the world and the devil, with family crises and hurricanes and pandemic, we here at Holy Nativity are not just observing Advent, we are celebrating Advent:
So, welcome - - Home for the Holidays!
+++++++++++++++
Homiletic endeavor by the Rev Tom Weller in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on the First Sunday of Advent, Year C, 28th November 2021. Texts: various from the Propers for the day, eucharistic prayers A,B,C, and other.
Top art: Ercole Ramazzani, "The Last Judgment" 1597
* "The Second Coming", W B Yeats 1865-1939
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Art (above): Jim O'Neil, "What rough beast"