This Week: Advent 1C
Gospel: Luke 21:25-36
There are several elements I’m drawn to dealing with during the first Sunday of Advent every year. It’s the first Sunday of the church year, and it almost always lands right after the American Thanksgiving holiday. These are rich, symbolic moments for a lot of emotional conversation about where are hearts are at this time of year.
The gospel, however, hits us different. Every time. Because each year, the first Sunday begins with apocalyptic talk. And most people don’t really want to associate the apocalypse with, say, Thanksgiving leftovers and dusting off the Christmas music.
At the same time, we are dealing with the cognitive dissonance of the postmodern era, the hyper-individualistic political ideologies being passed off as human nature and inevitable by powerful people in our society who never actually have to interact with the people who are subject to their laws and rulings. We are bombarded with consumerism and inflation, with a sense that we should be happy with what we have and absolutely never satisfied with any of it.
This week, we buy up grocery stores of the “traditional” foods of the season, prepare for insane overeating, share all of this in a great night of giving thanks and offering gratitude…only to turn around and spend gobs of money on total excrement because it is an additional 20% off and the prices won’t ever be this low again. Before the glow and the food coma have time to settle in, we’re breaking out our laptops for Black Friday deals that have arrived early. And, let’s be clear about this—this is an improvement over the Black Fridays of the ‘00s when people literally trampled each other to death to save $50 on a new TV.
We don’t receive this apocalyptic vision from Jesus in the middle or beginning of the Christmas Season. It is the first Sunday of Advent, which is two days after Black Friday and the day before Cyber Monday and we are being inundated with messages to consume, consume, consume after we have over-consumed on turkey and carbs.
And what is the message we actually get from Jesus and the church this week?
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”
Don’t overindulge in ways that keep you from seeing the signs of the times.
Let’s get apocalyptic! Again!
This is why I love apocalyptic imagery—because it forces us to wake up. Not in The Matrix red-pilled sense. People are distorting that junk in absolutely insane ways. But it wakes us up to what we are doing, what we are anticipating, and what we are hoping for from this moment.
Jesus speaks about signs—being able to see that there are signs for the truth in the world around us. And these are signs about the way people fundamentally reject participating in the joy-filled blessed community. Reject, not because we intend to, but because we are afraid to give away our privilege or participate in the work of the Kin-dom of God.
Family Systems Theory
There are great images here that I’m sure you’ve already come up with. Images of seeing and miscomprehending. But what I’m most drawn to is the family systems theory example of misplaced anxiety. When a member of a family chooses to do their own thing and break from the rest, how will the family react? We all know this—the family will hate it. They will get pissed off for a lot of reasons, most of them based around fear and misunderstanding. This is why a family member will get mad at another who goes into rehab or starts following the twelve steps—because they are changing the arrangement and they don’t like it. Often it is something clear, like this family member is also an alcoholic and doesn’t want to face that fact or perhaps they think they’ve lost a drinking buddy. Sometimes it is because they think their life is trash and sometimes it is not really all that explainable—it is just a case of “how dare you ever be different from my expectations.”
My favorite part of Family Systems Theory is not only is it totally predictable, but we all fall for this junk. Like, we can see it in other people, but when it is us, we are in full self-obsessed mode and we just can’t handle it when someone else self-differentiates. Can you believe that guy? He has the gall to disown his own parents! we might say; while we are unable to see the way we treat our own children or how our loved one has abused their kids for years.
Family Systems Theory gives us a framework for seeing the signs in our family systems as actual signs of dysfunction—not inevitable qualities of permanent arrangements. It means we can look at dysfunctional relationships and say You know what? I don’t have to put up with this!
Seeing the signs
When Jesus talks about signs in the world, being able to see them, he is trying to help us see that these things aren’t actually inevitable. They aren’t natural or permanent. They aren’t the way people need to behave or what society must offer the world. That there is a predictability to it is not a sign of permanence or order, but of disorder. Just as dysfunctional relationships aren’t a good option (because, as we often argue, at least they are a relationship). We all deserve better than a toxic partner/parent/loved one. Nor are we to be the toxic person for another.
The point of seeing the problems is that we are called to live differently, to work in different ways, and to offer a different life than the one offered to us.
That is what seeing the signs gets us. Not just proof of the Kin-dom, but the reaction of an unjust world, raging that God would have the audacity to make it more just. Raging at the poor getting money, the hungry getting food, the thirsty getting something to drink, the unhoused getting shelter, the indebted to get their debts forgiven, the immigrant getting treated with respect, the incarcerated being reconciled, heck, the meek inheriting the earth. When we see people raging about this, fighting and clawing and abusing and bringing out their guns to intimidate and silence, are we not seeing signs that the Kin-dom is struggling to be born?
Is this not what the incarnate Christ comes to offer the world? Shalom—peace, justice, wholeness? And the world, like a dysfunctional family, is too scared to accept it?