1st Sunday of Advent
Homily for the 1st Sunday of Advent 2009
By Fr Steele Hartmann
“When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand” (Luke 21:28). All this last week, the last week of the Church’s year, the focus of our readings at mass has been on the end-times, on the Last Judgement. This theme has spilled over into today’s celebration of the Liturgy for the First Sunday of Advent. For we are an Advent-People, a Waiting-People: we wait for ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’ (Luke 21:27). This has often been seen as a fearful time, ‘for we, each one of us, are to stand before the judgement seat of God. … There we each will give our account of ourselves to God,’ as St Paul puts it (Romans 14:10, 12).
The early Church expected the Lord to return in power and glory quite soon. As the years rolled on and still no return, the Church had to adapt itself to living in this waiting time, this Advent time. Well, it is now about 2000 years since the Lord went, promising to return (e.g. John 14:18), and still he has not come, and still we wait. In all this time there have been many who have seen in times of crisis and discord signs that the Lord’s return is immanent. We still hear them in our own day, promising death and destruction on an unheeding world if it will not turn from its sinful ways. As recently as this last year, in the global financial crisis, some saw the end of the world. In all their clamour, Jesus simply says to us, “Take care not to be deceived, because many will come using my name and saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near at hand.’ Refuse to join them. And when you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened, for this is something that must happen. But the end is not so soon” (Luke 21:8-9).
I am reminded of the play, Fiddler on the Roof. It opens with a people whose lives are governed and held together by tradition. Indeed they celebrate and rejoice in their traditions. But, as the story unfolds, little by little, they let go their traditions, and, little by little, their world begins to unravel, till at last it all falls apart and they are forced out of their homes, out of their world, and forced onto the road that leads to nowhere except uncertainty. As they are about to leave, a young man with downcast heart says to the Rabbi, “Rabbi, wouldn’t now be a good time for the Messiah to come.” The Rabbi responds, “We’ll just have to wait for him someplace else.” It is the same for us: the Lord is not coming and will not come to fix up whatever plagues our world. This is not why we wait or what we are waiting for. Whatever happens in our world happens, and we have to live in it as best we can. And if it should be that what happens forces us to move on, then we’ll have to move on and live someplace else — and wait for him there. We are to wait for the Lord and long for his coming not just in our times of need, but also, and probably especially, in our good times when all is going well for us.
Since the time of the apostles, we have all been wanting to know when: When, Lord, will you come? (Luke 21:7). After 2000 years of waiting, you would think we would realise that this is the wrong question. Jesus said to his disciples, “See that you are dressed for action and have your lamps lit. Be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks. … What sort of steward is faithful and wise enough for the master to place him over his household to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? Happy that servant if his master’s arrival finds him at this employment. I tell you truly, he will place him over everything he owns. But as for that servant who says to himself, ‘My master is taking his time coming,’ and sets about beating the menservants and the maids, and eating and drinking and getting drunk, his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. The master will cut him off and send him to the same fate as the unfaithful” (Luke 12:35-36, 42-46). We are to be on about our Lord’s business, whether he is with us or not, simply because our Lord has entrusted it to us(c.f. John 4:34; 20:21; 21:15ff). The temptation, because the busy-ness of life, is to let things go: Tomorrow I will do it. Of course, tomorrow comes and it is still ‘Tomorrow’, and little by little we let it all slip. Jesus says to us, “Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life, and that day will be sprung on you suddenly, like a trap. For it will come down on every living person on the face of the earth” (Luke 21:34).
What Jesus has in mind here, he stated clearly earlier in Luke’s Gospel: “As it was in Noah’s day, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating and drinking, marrying wives and husbands, right up to the day when Noah went into the ark, and the floods came and destroyed them all. It will be the same as in Lot’s day: people were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but the day Lot left Sodom, God rained fire and brimstone from heaven and it destroyed them all. It will be the same when the day comes for the Son of Man to be revealed” (Luke 17:26-30). These people were not doing anything especially wrong, but were more just caught up in the ordinary things of life. Here I am reminded of the Parable of the sower, and more especially of the part concerning the seed that fell among thorns. Jesus said, “As for that part that fell among thorns, this is people who have heard [the word of God], but as they go on their way they are chocked by the worries and riches and pleasures of life and do not reach maturity.” These he contrasts with the part that fell in rich soil: “This,” he said, “is people with a noble and generous heart who have heard the word and take it to themselves and yield a harvest through their perseverance” (Luke 8:14-15). It is the worries and riches and pleasures of life that can choke the word that has been planted in our heart. This Jesus is warning us against.
To help us keep our focus, in telling us to live expecting his return at any moment, Jesus is suggesting that we live with our mind’s eye fixed our own end, if not THE end, and which can happen at any moment. This Benedict also recommends to his monks: “Live in fear of Judgement Day and have a great horror of hell. Yearn for everlasting life with holy desire. Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die. Hour by hour keep careful watch over all you do, aware that God’s gaze is upon you, wherever you may be” (Rule of Benedict 4:44-49). This is not being morbid, but a way of keeping ourselves free of all that would choke us. Such an attitude will help us not lose our perspective: whatever it is, it may not happen, for we may die and then it all won’t matter: “Your plans that day will all come to nothing,” as the Psalm puts it (Psalm 146:4). In this way we will keep our focus on what really does matter: hearing the Word of God and taking it to heart (Luke 8:14-15). If we do this, then we shall have no cause for fear, even should death and judgement take us by surprise. For at any moment we shall be able to stand erect with head held high, and stand with confidence before the Son of Man (Luke 21:28, 36).
