#  First Sunday of Advent 

 





December 03, 2024

 

 

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*By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13*  
*Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity*  
*Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church*

*(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Dec.1, 2024)*

In the name of God, who loves us as a parent and loves us as a child and loves us as a friend and a companion. Amen. Please be seated. So on Thanksgiving Day at our Thanksgiving meal over across the way at Sparks House, Danny was sitting in front of his plate of food, pushing his turkey around, and he looked up and he said, "It's not fair. Why can't today be Christmas?" He's got his Santa hat today; also, he's feeling it already, but it's not just him. The whole Potts family is ready for Christmas. If you walked by Sparks house this morning, you see that the lights and the inflatables are out, and more are coming, and we're excited about the Christmas season. The Advent season is a season of anticipation and waiting, and it's hard to wait.

We're ready for the joy of Christmas morning. We're ready for glad tidings of comfort and joy. And so what does Jesus give us this morning on the First Sunday of Advent but bad tidings of suffering and apocalypse and destruction and actually the lesson that we had this morning from Luke 21 isn't even the worst of it; this is at the end of chapter 21. All of chapter 21, from the beginning until this verse, is just Jesus recounting all the awful things that are on their way, and he lists them. He says, "Watch out for wars and insurrections. Watch out for persecutions and purges. Watch out for waves and rising seas."

Sound familiar? What we have here is the end of all those predictions, all those namings, of all these things: war and insurrection, persecution and purges, waves, and rising seas, and at the end, Jesus says, "Look for the signs. Watch for the signs. So you might anticipate what's coming." And honestly, that's familiar to me, too. The last time I stood in this pulpit and preached was the Sunday after the election, and since that Sunday, reading the news almost every day, I've been making predictions: "What's going to happen? How could this person be the one? What will they do?"

These signs, these predictions, wanting to predict the future when the bad things will happen. This is familiar also. Now, Jesus's pronouncement of these apocalyptic ends is not just out of nowhere. He doesn't just pop off and start naming these things. It's actually prefaced by something; he and his disciples are in Jerusalem near the temple, and they're looking at the temple and marveling at this beautiful structure, this amazing structure. Actually, as I was looking at the sermon and reviewing my notes this morning at about 9:30, some tourists came into this church and were looking around and marveling at the beauty of this space, and the disciples start talking about how magnificent this building is. How beautiful and wonderful, and that's when Jesus says, "It's not going to stand forever. Things are going to happen. Waves, rising waves and rising seas, wars and insurrections, persecutions and purges, and this temple also will fall down."

Now, what's interesting about this gospel is that it was written after the temple had already been destroyed. The second temple was destroyed, razed, burned to the ground by the Romans, along with the rest of Jerusalem. It's hard to overstate how important the temple was to Jewish life at the time. Hard to overstate how cataclysmic this event was. The center of Jewish life and culture burned to the ground, the city of Jerusalem razed, tens of thousands enslaved, hundreds a day crucified; I've spoken about this before from this pulpit. It's hard to overstate how catastrophic this was, and it has already happened when people are reading this gospel. Jesus says, "Heaven and earth will pass away." For the people reading this gospel, hearing this gospel for the first time, heaven and earth have already passed away.

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[Harvard Memorial Church](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church "Harvard Memorial Church") · [The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts Ph.D. - Dec. 1, 2024 | Sunday Sermon](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church/the-rev-matthew-ichihashi-potts-phd-dec-1-2024-sunday-sermon "The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts Ph.D. - Dec. 1, 2024 | Sunday Sermon")



 



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The center of life and culture had already been burned to the ground. The leaders and the people already massacred and enslaved. In many ways, what Jesus is talking about in this passage in all of chapter 21, and as we conclude chapter 21 here, Jesus is not talking about what's going to happen. He's talking about what has already happened. He's talking about what it's like to live in a world that has already fallen rather than predicting how that world will fall. In many ways, the first readers of this gospel were waiting for something that had already happened. And that's a peculiarly Christian thing, also a very Advent thing, to wait for something that has already happened, right? Because we're waiting for Jesus. We're waiting for Christmas. We're waiting for the birth of the Christ child, of course; that happened 2,000 years ago.

We processed into this church this morning saying, "Come, oh, come, Emmanuel." The word Emmanuel, the name Emmanuel, means God with us. We came in saying, "Come be with us. Come be with us." But also we believe, we say every Sunday, "God is already with us," waiting for something that has already happened. That's sort of a fundamental Christian posture. What does it mean to wait for something that has already happened? And indeed, despite all the predictions in this gospel lesson, all the familiar catastrophic things Jesus describes, I think this is actually the heart of what he's trying to tell us. He's trying to tell us what it looks like to wait for something that has already happened because a lot of it has already happened. A lot of apocalypse has already happened.

Elizabeth preached a beautiful sermon a couple of weeks ago about Asheville, her hometown. We just celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday while many of our brothers and sisters down in Plymouth were remembering a day of mourning for the indigenous peoples who are still here but whose world was in many ways destroyed. Lots of people around the world today have seen destruction similar to what Jesus's people saw in the first century: Gazans, and Ukrainians and Sudanese. What does waiting for something that has already happened look like? Well, I think Jesus tells us; he says, "This is what waiting for something that already has happened; this is what it looks like." He says, "Stand up, raise your heads."

Why do I say that? Why do I think stand up, raise your heads is what it looks like to wait for something that has already happened? I don't know how to describe it except by telling a short story. This is something that if you're part of the Faith & Life Forum, you've heard me speak about downstairs on Sundays and years past. When I hear this phrase, "Stand up, raise your heads." It makes me think of Congressman John Lewis and the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the marches from Selma to Montgomery and all the other leaders too, Hosea Williams, all the rest. Standing up and raising their heads. What does it mean to wait for something that has not already happened?

When John Lewis stood on that bridge ready to march over, he didn't have any illusions about what was waiting for him on the other side. He knew exactly how unjust the world is; he knew the world to come that had been promised to him, the world of justice, the world where his dignity was respected as a man and as a human. He knew that world did not yet exist. He was waiting for it to happen, but it was already true inside of him. The world to come had not yet been realized. It had not yet realized it, but he knew already that those promises were and are true.

God was with John Lewis and Hosea Williams, and the other leaders of that march; even if Governor Wallace and Sheriff Jim Clark didn't know it yet, John Lewis and those other marchers were waiting for something that had already happened. They were waiting for the world to come into the shape of the truth they already knew. And so, they stood up and raised their heads. Even when the world does not yet live by the truth that we know, that truth is no less true. And so you stand up for that truth and you raise your head. There is so much apocalyptic news all around us in this world. Wars and insurrections, persecutions and purges, waves and rising seas. But even as all that happens, God still loves us. God loves you. God loves your neighbor. God loves your enemy. Heaven and earth will pass away, but none of that, that love will not pass away. Temples and institutions, and nations, and cultures and norms will collapse. But not this.

We don't know what the world to come will be or when it will be, but we know this much will be true. The love of God in us and in one another, this much will be true, come what may. There is so much apocalyptic news in our world, and we don't know what will happen. But when persecutions and purges and deportations come, we know what to do. Stand up and raise your heads, and do the truth in love, because migrants and trans kids, and persecuted people of all kinds are beloved of God, and we will love them by God, come what may.

When politicians peddle war and insurrection for their own benefit, we will stand up and raise our heads and do the truth in love, because the victims of war and of gun violence, and of genocide are beloved of God, and we will love them by God, come what may. And when seas rise, and waves crash, and climates change, stand up and raise your heads because this natural world is beloved of God. As are all the people vulnerable to the changes in this climate, and we will love them and it by God, come what may. This is what Jesus gives us this morning. Not a prediction; it's not that kind of prophecy. Jesus doesn't tell us exactly what things will happen. He tells us how to treat each other when they happen. Whatever happens, whenever it happens, stand up for love, come what may.

This First Sunday of Advent we look for glad tidings. Here they are. I'm sorry to tell you that the good news is not that all our troubles are gone. The good news is that we have the truth to meet those troubles. So when trouble comes and I fear it is coming, stand up, raise your heads, and do the truth in love, come what may. "Be alert," Jesus says. "Watch for the signs," Jesus says. If we need a sign, here it is. Or rather, here he is because this is the sign. This child who has already arrived, but who we also await, this child who has already come to us, this child whose life we already know will come to the most terrible end. This child is also the child who always and evermore stands up with us because we are beloved of God, and he will always love us even to hell and back, come what may.

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