Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
1 Thessalonians 3: 11-13
Background:
The readings from the prophets in Advent year C come from Jeremiah, Malachi, Zephaniah and Micah. Although living in different centuries there are two important dates in the lives of these prophets, serving as a reminder of the deeply challenging political times in which they lived:
722 BCE – fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel
597 BCE – fall of the southern kingdom of Judah, and the Jerusalem Temple
So, on this first Sunday in Advent we meet up with Jeremiah. Born sometime around 650 BCE in Anathoth, Judah, died in 570 BCE in Egypt, it seems that Jeremiah came from a priestly family (Jeremiah 1:1).
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas?
It would be easy, cosy and comforting to reflect on the familiar words of the coming of a righteous branch bringing justice and righteousness. It would sit well with the comforting advertising slogans (seemingly on-screen since mid-October): ‘it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas’. I’m guessing that the intention in the advertising (apart from making us part with our money, of course) is to operate as a counter-balance to last year’s Christmas so famously stolen from us. Many of course, did not get to see loved one’s face-to face last year at that time and are now looking forward with dreamy nostalgia to what Christmas ought to feel like. Except of course, the TV images are a long way from the Advent readings from the Prophets. And even more so, if you look at the reading from Luke’s gospel when the dawning day of redemption has a very dark side indeed (Luke 21:25-36).
Except of course that experiences of darkness and despair are the lived reality for many people. Gary W. Charles poignantly notes:
‘I long for the day that is surely coming when God’s future will be a reality beyond the violent boastings of the Babylon of the day. I long for the day that is surely coming when in God’s future the poor are not sent to shelters or forced to sleep on the streets. I long for the day that is surely coming when God’s future has no space for violence, when we will stop producing body bags – because there are no dead soldiers to fill them. I long for the day that is surely coming when God’s future affords no room for rancour, a day when our world is no longer torn aside by racism and sexism and homophobia.’ (Gary W. Charles, Feasting on the Word, Year C vol. 4 [ed. David L Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor]. (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster Knox Press, 2009), 7)
I’m fairly confident we would echoes those longings, and perhaps add some of our own. And that’s why the message of Jeremiah continues to be so relevant, because he wrote from a place of severe discomfort.
Doom and gloom
His was a generation of great upheaval and change, either witnessing first-hand the fall of Jerusalem (586 BCE) or hearing about it from those who did. Many of his contemporaries would be deported to Babylon, and those left behind lived in a war zone of ruined property and devastated farm-land. Jeremiah yearned for the day when God’s future would become a reality. He gave warnings about social injustice and called for repentance to avert the impending doom seeping down from the north. In fact, much of the book of Jeremiah is taken up with a call to repentance and a return to divine standards of justice and righteousness. But by the time the words of today’s piece was composed, Jeremiah was dealing with the despair of the people; years of terror and death, destruction and deportation had left the people completely demoralised. For those in Babylon, this grief and despair was famously summarised by the Psalmist –
Alongside Babylon’s rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion. Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps; that’s where our captors demanded songs, sarcastic and mocking: ‘sing us a happy Zion song! Psalm 137:1-3, The Message.
The book of consolation
Since the time of Martin Luther, Jeremiah chapters 30-33, have been known as ‘the book of consolation’ because Jeremiah offered hope to the despairing musicians, as a re-imagined and alternative future of safety and peace.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 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. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’ Jeremiah 33:14-16
These three short verses open with the dramatic phrase pregnant with hope: The days are surely coming …
We may not live with the fear that Jeremiah and his contemporaries felt at the state of their world, but the state of planet-earth today must surely require a change of direction? And isn’t that at the heart of Christian faith, that we believe in ‘metanoia’. This about-face change of direction is what is meant when we speak of baptism or spiritual conversion.
ES405
Recently I had cause to sort out some old paperwork. I came across course ES405 on conservation. Words like endangered, extinction, pollution were followed with a warning about failure to act when the preventative process is known. Now you may think that this was a relatively recent study. It wasn’t, for the dates of this undergraduate module, indicate that it was offered over forty years ago, which I think, is indicative of the time it takes to move from heresy to orthodoxy.
So, as you can imagine, I followed the 26th United Nations climate change conference (COP 26) with interest. And I have continued to reflect on what a re-imagined and alternative hope for the future looks like today, where post-pandemic and post-COP 26, justice and righteousness are desperately needed to bring healing to people and to the land.
The IPCC report from 2001 (yes, I know it is now 20 years old) warned that the global mean surface temperature was likely to rise between 1.4 and 5.8o and indicated sea level rises would ensure as glaciers began to melt. This would impact some of the worlds’ poorest people – who incidentally are the least culpable for the destruction wreaking havoc upon the plant – not to mention the impact on biodiversity around the world. As we are learning to our peril, the speed of change is already impacting low-lying communities from Pakistan to the Pacific islands.
New (Church) Year Resolution.
This first Sunday in advent marks a turning point as we begin a new liturgical year. It is a time to pause and again to begin to open our lives to the mystery of God’s presence. For the arrival of a small helpless child, the incarnation, speaks profoundly of divine engagement with planet earth. Just a fortnight after COP-26, the people of Immanuel aware of the certainty of God’s presence with us, must be those who envisage and encourage the building of a brand-new future. So following on from Gary Charles’ longings:
I long for the day when people in low-lying properties can sleep at night without fear of being swept away by a storm. When words like ‘endangered’ and ‘extinct’ due to human activity are consigned to the history books. When climate justice encourages us in the global north to live more simply so that other can simply live.
Worship at home 