Raise your heads Advent 1

And so we begin our countdown to Christmas. This is a time when so much of our attention is upon cards and gifts, carolling and partying. It is as the old song puts it “the time to be merry.” Or is it? For whilst we may be longing to think of baby Jesus, our Bible readings this morning point us to a very much harsher world.

Jeremiah’s words come from a time of great threat to the nation of Judah. The army of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar is on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Many are telling Judah’s King to resist, for Jerusalem was seen as a pretty strong fortress to defend. It had worked before under Hezekiah albeit due to Divine intervention. But now, such is the power of Babylon’s army that the chances of holding on appear to be but slim. And Jeremiah claims that God has told him that these Babylonians are to be the means by which Judah will be punished for its disobedience to God. Dark times says the prophet are ahead. And indeed, soon Jerusalem including the temple in which such pride was felt will be destroyed. The elite will be taken into exile whilst those who remain will face a harsh existence in surviving the destruction of their economy.

In our Gospel Reading too, there is much to disturb faint hearts. Jesus talks about signs in the sky and distress amongst the nations. People, he says, will faint from fear and foreboding. And certainly Luke’s readers knew very well what it was like to live in a world that was threatening. For only a few years before the likely date of Luke’s Gospel being written, there had been a Jewish uprising against the Romans. And it had failed, indeed failed catastrophically. For the Romans had had enough of this troublesome province and had crushed the rebellion with great brutality. The temple which had been the pride and joy of the Jewish people as well as the centre of Jerusalem’s economic wellbeing, was destroyed so that only that which we know today as the Wailing Wall survived. It must have seen to many as if the world had completely caved in.

To add to all of this, things were not easy for the emergent Christian community. Jerusalem was a part of their heritage. And now having initially been seen as a Jewish sect, the divorce from Judaism which was to split families and communities was well under way whilst meanwhile Imperial Rome viewed the Christians as a difficult band of dissidents useful only as an easy group to blame when things went wrong.

And yet, the essential message of Jesus is;

“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

In these words is a message not of denial of hard times but of hope in hard times. It takes me back to a story of how in 18th Century Poland, the Kaiser’s forces were burning all the Jewish villages. One village had been totally destroyed yet the following morning an elderly Jewish man appeared and pounding a few boards together, set up a market stall and opened it for business. A young man passing by, looked in disbelief before asking:

“What are you selling among these ruins?”

The old man smiled before replying;

“I am selling hope. You can sell water in a dry desert, so the place to sell hope is on the ash heap of destruction.”

In Advent, we prepare ourselves for Christmas by looking at harsh realities and then seeking to find the hope, the joy, the peace and the love to enable us to move forwards as God’s people.

Recently, I read of a minister who spoke of putting Herod at the heart of Christmas. I think that he was absolutley right to rescue Christmas from sentimentalism. In a real way, if we ignore the harsh realities of the world to which Jesus came and still comes, we are engaged in nothing better than infantile escapism. We need the Advent Hope precisely because there is a brute side of life.

On Friday, it was World Aids Day. In the past quarter of a century, the World Health Organisation estimates that 25 million people have died of this disease. Alarmingly the toll is ever getting higher. Last year the death toll was at a rate of approximately three September 11ths every day.

Around our world the scourge of warfare goes on. Increasingly images in the press, on television and now through the internet show us the reality of lives that are appallingly devastated . Elsewhere, we see a growth in the toleration of torture and other forms of cruelty.

Behind bars, there is a growing army of people locked away, separated from families and loved ones, loved ones who also feel the daily pain of separation. And all around bitterness grows in ever increasing circles.

On our television screens, the marketing geniuses bombard us with images of that which we should apparently want or they would have us think need but may be unable to afford. And in frustrated hearts, people seek for escape in substance abuse, anti social actions whilst often descending down the painful ladder of depression. And ways out are at their lowest levels for those who experience the absolute poverty of African extreme poverty or the shanty towns of Latin America and the likes of the Philippines.

And yet, today in a brutalised world, we hear the words of Jesus;

“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

What’s it all about? Too often, believers take refuge from the harsh realities of life by looking at events and hoping that they might be so bad that Jesus will bodily return. On the internet, there is a site called “Rapture Index” which scores events as to how they fit into an end time scenario.

But increasingly, I cannot see this as the way of faith. In Christ, we have seen revealed the ways of God, ways which turn our values upside down. In him we see a vision of dignity for all, a vision of peace and a vision of a new community. Sure, we are yet to see the full completion of the Kingdom of God in our world. And it is important that we see God’s work as ongoing. Yet in a world which has always had its brute side, we cannot see ourselves as deserted by God. In a real way Christ is present with us now. And when we endlessly speculate as to the exact nature of a second coming we too often ignore his current presence with us or even treat it as not being good enough.

There is a danger that we will allow ourselves to be so lost between a sentimental view of Christ being born in Bethlehem and an awaited second coming, that we lose a sense of what it means to be God’s watchful, faithful people in the here and now.

Yes, I believe in the power of the God whom we see revealed in Christ to transform our realities. Jeremiah believed in it. At a dark hour in Judah’s history, he had a vision of a “righteous branch” that would bring justice and righteousness back to the land so that Judah be saved and Jerusalem live in safety. Jesus believed in it. Oh there was much darkness around but Jesus tells us that it can not be the last word ;

“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

At Advent, we are called to take some time to consider our lives and our world. We are called to see the realities, unpalatable as they may be. And we are called as God’s people in the here and now to seek to transform those things which are wrong into conformity with God’s will. And we do so with hope, because we believe that what began at Bethlehem is the way for us and for all creation. And we believe that the Kingdom for which Christ was born, will ultimately come in power. For ultimately a word called grace which is at the heart of all that Jesus offers, is more potent than even the grimmest of man’s means of destruction for as Bono writes;

“Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.”

“Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."