Jeremiah 33:14-16
December 1, 2024
When I was a kid, I looked for two
signs, and to me they were sure signs, that announced Christmas was coming.
These signs had nothing to do with the calendar, and in Tennessee they had
nothing to do with the weather. We know that this time of year can be cold or
balmy or somewhere in between. The first sign I looked for was a commercial for
Norelco razors. An animated Santa Claus would come sledding down a snowy hill
on a Norelco electric razor. I have no idea why I remember that so well, but I
just remember seeing it on television and thinking, “Christmas is coming!”
The second, and even more important
sign that Christmas was on its way, was the Andy Williams Christmas Special. I
know I’m dating myself, but I also know some of y’all remember this too. The
Andy Williams Christmas Special every year was a staple of Christmas when I was
a kid. Christmas had officially arrived when Andy Williams sang, “It’s the most
wonderful time of the year.”
As a child I didn’t consider the meaning
of the time before Christmas because I didn’t grow up in a tradition that
celebrated Advent. The most wonderful time of the year started as soon as the
Thanksgiving turkey was eaten, and the Macy’s Day Parade wrapped up. From there
we went straight to Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. So, when I
became Presbyterian, especially when I was called to be a Presbyterian
minister, I found Advent to be a little bewildering and a lot jarring. Where
were the happy Christmas carols? Where were the scripture passages about babies
and heavenly hosts? Where were the words of joy and exultation? Instead we begin
this season reading scripture about apocalyptic events, passages of scripture
that I wish I could avoid – not only as a preacher but as a reader. They make
me uncomfortable and anxious.
But after a while, Advent took hold
of me. It has become one of my favorite seasons in the church year. Don’t get
me wrong, I love Christmas. I love the music – sacred and secular. I love the
festivities and the lights and the decorations. I love it all, but Christmas,
like so much else in the world, gets noisy. The hustle and bustle feel chaotic
at times, and there are moments when the cheeriness can feel forced. But then
there is Advent. Advent is quiet. Advent gives us a moment to catch our breath
and be still. Advent is waiting and preparing, true, but Advent is also naming.
In this season of Advent we name the truth that the world is not what it should
be, and certainly not what God created it to be. We name the truth that we are
not who we should be, and not who God created us to be. And in Advent, we slow
down, we become quiet, and we turn again to ancient voices that proclaim that
even though nothing and no one is as it should be … yet, God is still with us,
and even more, God is doing something new. God is still creating. God is.
“The days are surely coming, says
the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Isarel 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.”
Jeremiah
was not a prophet known for his hopeful, comforting words. For most of the
book, he laments. He will not let anyone think that everything’s just okay,
fine and dandy. It is most decidedly not. So, these words before us today,
words of hope, seem strange and out of character. These are words which are far
from lament and doomsaying. Yet this passage from Jeremiah does not occur in a
vacuum, it is part of a larger context. For our understanding today, we need to
look back at two significant events that happen at the beginning of Chapter 32.
The first is that Jeremiah had been preaching and prophesying gloom and doom to
King Zedekiah – repeatedly. Finally, Zedekiah could stand it no longer. He
placed Jeremiah under house arrest. Perhaps Zedekiah thought imprisonment would
shut Jeremiah up once and for all.
The second significant event was the
Lord instructing Jeremiah to purchase a piece of land. That sounds relatively
benign, but when the Babylonians are at the gate and your city and homeland are
about to be overrun, buying property is generally low on your priority list.
Yet despite the destruction that is about to descend, God told Jeremiah to buy
land. What did buying land signify then and now? Hope! Why would you buy
property if you don’t think there is a future? Why invest in anything if you
have no hope for next week or next year?
Zedekiah imprisoned Jeremiah because
he was tired of the prophet’s doom and gloom. But confinement could not silence
Jeremiah, nor could it squash the hope to be found in God. This is the context
of the prophecy Jeremiah voiced in our passage today. He was speaking God’s
promise from prison. He was proclaiming God’s hope in a situation that seemed
utterly hopeless. This word of hope and promise seems to provide a divine dissonance
with the reality of the world. But that’s what the hope of Advent really is,
isn’t it? It is a proclamation of dissonance. This is the world around us, but
we have hope that this is not the world as it will be. We have hope that God
has a different reality in mind for us, an alternate reality. Hope is not
merely positive thinking or a cheery, optimistic outlook on life. Hope speaks
out of the worst circumstances, the most desolate of places, and the most
despairing of times. Our hope comes not from our abilities or action but from
God.
The late theologian Jurgen Moltmann
wrote a definitive book in the 1960’s called The Theology of Hope. In
that text he distinguishes between two understandings of the future from the
Latin words futurum and adventus. Futurum is the future
that comes from the present and the past. It is the future that is created by
what we do or don’t do. It is dependent on and created by the events happening
now. But adventus is the future that happens outside of our reality. It
is not dependent on what humans do or don’t do, past or present. It is outside
of us, and it is beyond us. It is what God is doing and what God will do. If I
understand Moltmann correctly, we are waiting for God’s adventus, the
future that is God’s, and that is where our hope lies.
On this first Sunday of
Advent we proclaim hope, hope for God’s future, hope for God’s advent, hope for
the coming of a baby, and hope for the coming of Christ. But that does not mean
that there aren’t signs all around us that signal that God is already doing
something new, that new life bursts out of the most barren places.
I read a story in the Christian
Century about the steel works that once made up the large part of the south
side of Chicago. The steel plant, known as South Works, began in the late
1800’s. It was a large employer, and attracted Germans, Swedes, Poles, and
other immigrant communities to come and settle, work at the plant, and build
the steel that would eventually build Chicago’s massive skyscrapers. But with
the slowdown of the steel industry, the plant fell on had times and eventually
closed in 1992. The buildings that made up the plant were razed, except for two
large ore walls that could not be taken down, even by dynamite.
The land was toxic. It had been
covered in molten slag for years and years. But in the early 2000’s the Chicago
Park District saw a possibility in this deserted land that others did not. The
land was covered in healthy topsoil, which allowed it to heal from the
pollutants and toxic waste that had settled on it for so long. As the land
healed, plants and trees and flowers were grown on it – native prairie flowers
and grasses and trees. Paths were made for walking and biking. And all of this
came with a stunning view of Lake Michigan. Now it is known as Steelworkers
Park, and it is a place for families, for picnickers, for afternoon strolls,
and for getting into nature in the heart of a huge city. And those two large
ore walls that couldn’t be taken down? They were turned into rock climbing
walls. All of this was fueled by imagination, by seeing what was there and what
could be there. It was doing a new and wonderful thing in the midst of barren
and hostile land, land that some may have believed to be dead forever.
If this is what humans with hope and
imagination can do, just try to wrap your head around what God can do. Just try
and wrap your imagination around what God is doing. Surely the days are
coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of
Israel and the house of Judah. Surely the days are coming when I will take what
seems to be dead and bring life from it, when I will bring true justice and
righteousness to people and land devoid of it. Surely the days are coming when
I will make what is broken whole, what is lost found, what is dead alive.
Surely the days are coming, when all people put their hope not in themselves or
others but in God and God alone. Surely the days are coming when our hope will
be fulfilled, and the world will be made new. Thanks be to God.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia.”
Amen.
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