Advent begins with painful truth-telling.

Before we get to the virgin and child, or shepherds and angels, we are rocked with apocalyptic images. Heaven and earth churn with perplexity, fear and cosmic upheaval.

I don’t for a minute believe that Jeremiah, Jesus, or Gospel-writer Luke enjoyed bearing such a message. (I don’t either!) If you know only one thing about Jeremiah, it may be that he was the most reluctant of all the prophets. Over and over, he tries to avoid God’s directives.

Who can blame him? In chapter 1, God sent him to “pluck up and pull down, to destroy and overthrow.” Hardly makes him someone you’d invite to your holiday parties.

By chapter 33, the plucking up and pulling down is mostly done. The prophet looks at Jerusalem 600 years before Christ and sees a city in ruins. The Babylonians have laid siege to it. Homes are broken down – by the inhabitants – to block holes in the walls dug by the invaders. Victims of battle lie unburied in the streets. The stench is awful. And an eerie silence blankets the scene: no commerce, no children playing, no chatting over the back fence with one’s neighbor.

A deep psychological shock hangs over it all. They say the will to survive is often the first casualty of disaster. And in Jerusalem, that will was sorely tested.

Could a living, breathing city ever arise from such ruins?

As Gospel-writer Luke begins to record the life of Jesus, the situation is strangely similar.  Seven hundred years have passed, and once more the city is a mess. Words leap from Jesus’ mouth and Luke’s pen to our ears and eyes – words like “distress” … “fear” … foreboding.” And this dreadful mouthful: “The powers of heaven will be shaken.” The unfolding catastrophe isn’t just local or national, but celestial.

Sitting in this beautiful sanctuary, bright with Christmas decorations, it may be hard to picture such a torn up world. On the surface, at least, you look calm and collected this morning. I don’t see fear in your eyes. Coming off belly-filling feasts of Thanksgiving, with lights, tinsel and brightly-wrapped gifts up ahead, it is hard to turn our minds to any looming turmoil.

Still, the apocalyptic impulse is not new. Fatefulness about our survival is as old as the human race. Ever since Noah and the flood, the end-time has claimed a place in all religious thinking. We Presbyterians don’t talk much about an angry God (or gods) unleashing a hideous wrath at any moment. But we don’t have to. We feel it in our gut. We know it deep down.

Moreover, as descendants of John Calvin, Reinhold Niebuhr and other students of the human condition, we realize that God need not be the one to cause such an ending. Our doom may not be sealed by the next earth-covering flood or divinely fueled Armageddon. We are fully capable of doing it ourselves, using anything from our Swiss Army Knife of options – nuclear, ecological, chemical, or economic destruction. Not to mention an array of terrorists eager to do the work for us.

As one commentator has written: “our arsenal for Death by Stupidity is impressive …” especially “for a species as smart as homo sapiens” (Jeanette Winterson, New York Times Book Review, 9/20/09, p. 1).

Even when the apocalypse isn’t universal, isn’t global, but deeply personal – the death of a spouse … death of a marriage … loss of a job … it feels completely consuming.

So how will we live in the fragile and fractured moments, such as we’ve got? That’s really the question of Advent, particularly on this first Sunday.

One option – I’ll call it the reflexive, knee-jerk option – is to let fear and anxiety be our modus operandi.

At the first sign of change or disruption, some will react with a “force-against-force” mentality. They’ll champion the survival of the fittest and reach for their weapons.

In a similarly reflexive manner, others will hide their heads in the sand. Stop reading the news. Plug their ears with downloaded music from iTunes. Twitter about “What I’m doing at this moment,” instead of “What’s going on in the world that needs my attention?” Or numb the mind with alcohol, street drugs, shopping, video games, a dizzyingly full calendar of appointments, deadlines, meetings, or some other indulgence.

Jesus, however, offers a third option – one that is not reflexive or fearful but faithful and brave. When hard times hit, he urges, “do not let your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.”

Do not succumb to going numb. (Sounds like something Jesse Jackson or Johnny Cochrane would say!)

Rather, “Stand up and raise your heads.”

When your world is ending, do not cower in fear. “For your redemption is drawing near.”

Pastor Ken Wheeler talked about this Wednesday night in his sermon at the Thanksgiving Eve worship service at Cross Lutheran. He noted that many people put their trust in the world as it is. They envision nothing more, nothing greater, nothing else than what they currently see.

So when the spoils of this world are not freely given, they are utterly lost. And even when the spoils are given, they are disappointed, realizing that all they have is still not enough.

But, when Jesus says, “Stand up and raise your heads, for your redemption is drawing near,” we are offered hope that goes beyond the materialism of this world.

We give thanks – in adversity and in abundance – out of the assurance that there is always more waiting for us from God.

So when the end comes, or when it looks like it is coming, Jesus assures us that that ending is actually a beginning.

Before one can build and plant, one must pluck up and pull down, as God told Jeremiah. But the time for building and planting will come. Before our Savior can arrive, a straight road must be built, mountains and hills must be leveled, and valleys filled in. But our Redeemer will come. Before Mary can welcome her son as King of kings and Ruler of the nations, all other kings must be brought down a notch. But already the new world is breaking in. (If you doubt me, read Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1.) Before any resurrection can occur, something or someone must die. But God won’t leave us in the grave. God will bring new life. A new beginning after every ending. [Every baptism is a dying, in order to rise to new life.]

A lot has to happen for us to reach the time of Christ’s coming and the fulfillment of his reign, on earth as in heaven. Some days will be scary. Some days you’ll see nothing but endings. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a day without an ending. But in Jesus Christ, there is always a beginning.

The alternative to a fearful and reflexive response is not to bury your head, but to “stand up and raise your head, [knowing] in Christ that your redemption is drawing near.”

As I say that about standing and raising, I picture a soldier in a movie – I just can’t remember which movie (maybe lots of movies) – a soldier who climbs out of a fox hole, or wades ashore through pools of blood and piles of bodies. Bullets whiz past on all sides, bombs explode at close range, yet this one anointed figure moves forward … always in slow motion … unscathed, toward the destination where meaning and purpose and fullness of life converge.

I don’t recommend you go to a battlefield and try it. But that’s the image it conjures up for our metaphorical battles. The image of standing up, and raising your head in desperate circumstances, trusting that “your redemption is drawing near.” That’s how Advent begins.

So, what would it be like, to move into and through Advent with that attitude? What freedom would we gain by entering Christmas in this frame of mind, with a new confidence of the heart, even while we’re bombarded with ads to numb ourselves by buying “stuff”?

Upheaval and change won’t vanish. The scriptures never promise that we’ll avoid all trouble by believing in God. But they do tell us that troubles can be endured, when we give God room to maneuver.

Change and upheaval are daunting. They summon all the courage we have and then some. But upheaval and change are the only way God’s world takes root.

The day of judgment in scripture becomes a day of grace. By “grace” I do not mean exemption from trouble. Rather, grace is the opportunity to face each and every judgment without anxiety, without fear, and without the need to numb it. Grace trusts that in every ending of whatever we cherish, God works an ever greater beginning.

Indeed, the end of one world as we know it – apocalyptic as it may be – brings an invitation to a larger, fuller life … a life not limited to our own seeing and touching, but one that expands exponentially into the experience of God.

So think about endings. If you knew, say, that you only had only a month to live – just until Christmas and a few days after that – what would be most important to you?

·        Would you want to finish up certain projects at work?

·        Would you travel to that one place you’ve always wanted to go?

·        Would you pray more? Come to church more? Give more?

·        Would you reconcile a fractured relationship?

·        Or visit someone who misses you?

·        Would you set your affairs in order, so as to leave a lasting legacy and mark on the world?

In the intensity of knowing that an ending is at hand, most of us, I suspect, would focus one way or another on the things that matter most to us. We’d make the ending a beginning.

Here’s one more “what if.” (It’s way out, but consider it.) Suppose we discovered that this congregation had only one month to exist? What would we wish to accomplish together? What would we hold on to, and what would we let go – in terms of habits, traditions, or anything else we value? I imagine that we wouldn’t have any trouble getting a full house for those services. Members both active and inactive would want to be here to see what unfolds. Curious strangers too.

End times have that kind of power.

Jeremiah and Jesus (and Luke) tell us that now is an ending. God’s kingdom is breaking in. The old is passing away. Using the power of the moment, let’s put our time to good use, grateful that a new world is coming.