First Sunday – Advent Cycle C

Reflecting on Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Well, we made it.  This time last year we were all reeling from the stomach-churning stock market dips and ominous job market.  We are all changed now.  Many of us are unemployed, many are underemployed, and all of us know that our best health insurance is to not get sick.  But we made it, and with the comforting scent of evergreens and violet/rose candles we settle in to the dark, sacred weeks of Advent that mark the new liturgical year.

I’ll tell you a secret.  This is the season most pastors I’ve known most love.  Those thirty-four weeks of Ordinary Time, with its endless greens and difficult preaching challenges, are finally behind them.  Liturgists start looking longingly at the Advent decorations in the closet around mid-October.  And those of us in the pews feel a certain relief, a blessed time-out, when we come into the church on this first Sunday and relax into its beautiful colors and scents, and the minor keys of Advent carols.

The events Jesus talks about today may have already happened way back in the year 70 AD when the Roman army laid siege to Jerusalem.  He certainly is also warning about the end of the world, and the day when he will come again in glory.  Maybe he’s talking about both.  Either way, after all the Advents of my life, I’ve decided to trust in the God who tells us, in the most-oft repeated phrase in Scripture, to be not afraid.  That’s my new year’s resolution.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What anxieties in your life are you willing to put aside for these four weeks of Advent?

Advent - Cycle C