Redemption is Near
1 December 2024; 9 a.m. Sung Mass
Homily Delivered at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Grants Pass, Oregon
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Advent 1 C
Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
I once had a friend, who, when faced with a horrible disaster and nightmarish death in the family, told me, “How can I have faith in God? God did not deliver on any of those promises of protecting us and caring for us. We tried to follow God’s will, and all we got was this. No more faith, no more hope. Please, don’t talk to me about God.”
It is hard when you face the unimaginable, when the God you trust seems to abandon you. Loss of faith can come suddenly, like for my friend, or gradually, over years of being worn down by seeing one’s hopes wither and one’s heart broken.
Sometimes, hope and faith gradually return. They did for my friend. Sometimes, we remain emotionally dead. This is the way God made us: flight or fight in danger and trauma, hunkering down to duck from further missiles of fate.
Yet in all this, God entices us, and invites us into a loving, trusting relationship.
How do we respond to disappointment, to a sense of being betrayed by God?
In 587 BCE, a great catastrophe befell the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah. The great empire Babylon, after a decade of dealing, in their lights, patiently with the fanatic and ultra-nationalistic people of Judah, came down hard. After killing all insurgent combatants and activists, they deported the entire ruling class of the nation to secure and safe provinces in Mesopotamia far from where they could stir up opposition, and where they were expected to blend in, accommodate, intermarry, and disappear. (Such a transportation of populations is clearly aimed at their dilution and eventual destruction, that’s why they are considered crimes against humanity in international law today.) The Babylonians deposed and blinded the puppet king they had put on the throne of Judah only ten years before, a minor prince of the House of David whose name, Zedekiah, meant “Yahweh is Zedek,” that is, “righteousness, uprightness, vindication.” They burned Jerusalem, and leveled to its foundation the Temple of the Jews’ God. The House of David no longer ruled. The nation no longer existed. It had gone the way of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, destroyed by the Assyrians a century and a half before.
This was a disaster of overwhelming and unfathomable proportions. The people had believed that Yahweh had promised to protect and keep them from harm. He had promised, they thought, to preserve the line of the kings descended from David. Now all that was gone.
The prophet Jeremiah had warned of catastrophe for years. But as it broke over his people’s heads, he reassured them that hope remained. Playing on the various meanings of the word Zedek in the name of the last Davidic king, in chapter 23 Jeremiah prophesies, “The days are surely coming, says Yahweh, when I shall raise up a true (ZDK) Branch for David, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness (ZDK) in the land. In his days Judah shall be delivered and Israel shall dwell secure. And this is the name by which he shall be called, Yawheh-zedekenu, ‘Yahweh is our Righteousness or Vindication (ZDK).’” This king won’t be overthrown like Zedekiah. When Yahweh’s righteousness is our own, he says, vindication will come to us. Dour Jeremiah says here that Yahweh’s promise to the House of David will someday come true, and even long-lost Israel will be restored along with Judah. The new king’s name will even reflect that of the last Davidic king.
Many of the prophecies we read during Advent about a coming ideal king of the future are reactions to this catastrophe: the hope was that the Jews would return to Cana’an under the leadership of a new Davidic hero to restore their former glories. But even as the mass of exiles did return some fifty years later, it was clear that the Davidic crown was gone: No kings in the offing, just scribes and priests like Ezra and Nehemiah. This was yet another defeat of hope and trust. It was at this time that a later prophet, writing under Jeremiah’s name and in his tradition, repeated the earlier oracle about the future Righteous Branch, thus affirming hope against hope once more. It is today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson.
Note how this version changes and adapts the earlier one. The prophet starts by adding the words, “The days are surely coming, says Yahweh, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah.” Then, “In those days and at that time, I will cause a Righteous Branch to spring up for David: and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” He thus puts hope again into the future, and says we mustn’t lose faith because our hopes for the moment are once again disappointed. He adds, “In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” And then rather than applying the name “Yahweh is our righteousness” to the hoped-for king of the future as Jeremiah had done, this later prophet applies the name to the city Jerusalem itself (33:114-16), suggesting it is the hope to be fulfilled that counts, not the specific means or players by which it will be fulfilled.
Today is the First Sunday of the Christian Year, First Advent. Today’s Collect from the Prayer Book is a summing prayer for all of Advent, to be said each day in daily prayers throughout the season. It is based on the closing section of Romans. Paul counsels us to be good, to amend our lives: “The hour has come for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first came to faith. The night is nearly over; day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:8-9).
This idea—that salvation is nearer today than it was yesterday, and the we need to wake up and put on God in preparation—is present in all of today’s readings.
The Gospel is part of Luke’s version of the little Apocalypse found in Mark 13 and Matthew 24. Jesus here says that scary things will precede the final salvation: “People will faint from fear and foreboding.” Hopes will be dashed and hearts broken. But, he says, “when these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” He adds, in the words of Eugene Petersen’s The Message that seem particularly a propos for us in Advent preparing for Christmas: “But be on your guard. Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping. Otherwise, that Day is going to take you by complete surprise….”
Human beings have been dealing with horror and dashed hopes from the beginning. The prophets teach us to hope on, regardless. The promises to David fail; Jeremiah says they will still be fulfilled. This hope fails, and Jeremiah’s student says it still will be fulfilled. Prophecy inspires hope, and hope inspires further prophecy. Help is on its way. All will be well in the end, and if they are not well, it is not yet the end.
Christians, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, realized that this promised ideal king of the future, this Messiah, was in fact the Galilean rabbi they had followed. They saw in Jesus the embodiment of all hope, the fulfillment of all the promises. So when Paul says we should put on Christ as an armor of light, he means the best preparation for the suffering in store, as well as the joy at the end, is thinking about Jesus, following Jesus, trying to show the love of Jesus, praying to Jesus and in Jesus’ name. All this puts us in a place where God can give us what we need, can protect us like armor, can light for us the darkness all about. He does not mean that Jesus is some kind of talisman or amulet that magically turns aside tribulation or sorrow. God is not a magician or some kind of wacky great uncle to grant us our wishes. Rather, opening our hearts and our minds to Jesus makes sense of what appears to be our meaningless suffering. And there is no suffering where God cannot help us in some way. Jesus suffered injustice, abuse, and terrible, painful death. But God raised him from the dead in glory. If we share in human suffering with Jesus on our lips and in our hearts, we share in Jesus’ pains, and this means we will share in his joyful glory.
Prayer, reading scripture, thinking on Jesus, and loving service are what we can do to prepare for the trials and pain of life, as well as for life’s joyful culmination. It is putting on the armor of light that the Advent Collect talks about. And what gives it all sense is this: our redemption is near, and help is on the way.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
