FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C

December 1, 2024

Saints Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Jeremiah 33:14-16

I Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

 

Today, as we begin a new liturgical year—and as I begin my ministry here in this wonderful parish—the season of Advent invites us to reflect upon the future.  And, more than that: to reflect upon our relationship with time itself. The question for us to consider is whether there’s a uniquely Christian attitude towards past, present, and future?

 

Before attempting to answer this question, it may be helpful to survey four basic options that various philosophies offer us in the way of possible orientations towards the future. That way, we’ll be in a better position to appreciate what’s distinctive about the Christian viewpoint.

 

The first basic attitude is optimism: the belief that things are getting better all the time. This worldview confidently asserts that despite periodic setbacks, the steady march of reason, science, technology, and education is continually improving the human condition, gradually eradicating disease, poverty, ignorance, and superstition, until eventually we achieve by our own efforts a perfect society, or utopia, on this earth.

 

The second basic option is pessimism, perhaps tinged with nostalgia. This viewpoint characteristically looks back to a past golden age, from which everything’s gone downhill ever since. Such a view is sometimes associated with old age: nostalgic reminiscing about the “good old days,” combined with disapproval and dismay at the dreadful state of affairs that things have fallen into now. The trouble is that all too often we tend to view the past through rose-colored glasses. When we actually study history, however, we discover that the good old days weren’t always as good as we remember, though they had some good features, and many aspects of the present aren’t really all that bad.

 

A third basic option might be described as resignation. In this view, the future is determined by fate, or by blind impersonal forces beyond our influence or control. So, there’s no guarantee that the future will be either better or worse than the present or the past. Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.

 

One variation of this worldview is a cyclical view of time, which sees only never-ending repetitions. Civilizations and worlds come to birth, grow, prosper, decay, and die, over and over again. To quote the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, there’s nothing new under the sun. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Our only sensible option, in this view, is to make the best of whatever circumstances we happen to find ourselves in. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

 

A fourth basic option, finally, is despair. From this viewpoint, history isn’t going anywhere at all; past, present, and future have no discernible direction, and hence no purpose or meaning. In its more depressive moments, the Book of Ecclesiastes gets into this frame of mind: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!”

 

So, four possible orientations towards the future are optimism, pessimism, resignation, and despair. During the coming week, it might be useful to reflect on which of those options best reflects our own basic attitude. Perhaps we strongly identify with one or another, or perhaps it changes according to our moods.

 

Over and against these four, however, we’re now able to sketch out the biblical view. In the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, first, time has a beginning and an end. World history is going somewhere; it has a definite meaning and purpose. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. From that moment, history moves forward, according to a God-given plan, towards its future goal and end in God’s kingdom.

 

Contrary to the optimistic viewpoint, however, all is not inevitable progress. No, everything is not necessarily getting better all the time. Despite all our very real advances in science, education, medicine, and technology, we still live in a world afflicted by war, poverty, disease, famine, pandemic, and disaster. Indeed, the very technology intended to better the human condition often has unintended consequences that threaten our very survival: for example, global warming, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Christian tradition expresses this aspect of our predicament by saying that we’re fallen creatures living in a fallen world.

 

Contrary to the pessimistic viewpoint, nonetheless, Scripture promises us that the best is yet to come. The future is better than the past. God holds in store for us joys infinitely surpassing anything we’ve known up until now. But, this glorious future is in no way the result of human achievement or inevitable progress. We cannot make it happen by our own unaided efforts. Instead, it’s the result of God’s own final intervention in human history – an intervention that the Bible calls “the coming of the Lord.”

 

And that observation brings us to today’s lectionary readings, which belong to the genre of biblical literature known as apocalyptic. They’re full of mysterious and surreal imagery, using highly symbolic language to signify realities otherwise impossible to describe in words. So, it’s difficult to know what to make of them ahead of time, and we do well to be cautious in interpreting their meaning.

 

But one feature they do have in common is the warning that before things get better, they’re going to get worse. That’s the bad news. Before the end, signs in the heavens will portend cataclysmic natural disasters as well as persecution of the Church on earth: a time for believers to stand firm and bear witness to the faith. And then, when it seems that things can’t possibly get any worse—then, the Lord will come. That’s the good news.

 

As Christians, we believe that God has already come among us once, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary his mother, born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth—and who at length died on the cross for our sins, was raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven. At the end of time as we know it, this same Jesus will return in power and majesty, to judge the living and the dead, and to inaugurate the fulness of his kingdom.

 

So, for Christians, the proper orientation to the future is neither optimism, pessimism, resignation, nor despair, but hope. Every year, this season of Advent reminds us that our Christian calling is to be a people who live in joyful hope for the coming of the Lord, regardless of whatever trials and tribulations we must endure in the meantime. So, another question worth reflecting on this coming week is how we may best cultivate this virtue of hope in our lives. What would it be like to become a truly hopeful people?

 

Advent is an exciting time: a time of anticipation, expectation, and preparation; of prayerful watching and waiting. Through our observance of this season, we ask God to grant us the joy of Christian hope and make it our own.