|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Daniel 7:9–10, 13–14
|
Psalm 93 |
Revelation 1:4b–8
|
John 18:33–37
|
Sometime between Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas, my sister and I were taken downtown to North Pearl Street to visit Albany’s two main department stores. I remember that flanking the entrances were tall window displays of regal looking manikins, dressed in magnificent robes. I recall white-gloved elevator operators calling out the floors, and the sounds of bell tones and chimes sending signals back and forth to sales clerks. Despite the crowds, we seemed to visit every department on every floor of the two stores. Of course the floor I liked best was the basement level where the toys and games were displayed and where children lined up to visit Santa. All and all it was a magical place whose workings I could only admire and never fathom.
Then, at some point, the large malls began to be built, we stopped going downtown, and North Pearl Street turned into a dusty and empty shell of buildings, haunted by the ghosts of abandoned and broken manikins. While I can still picture the long vanished scene through the eyes of a young child, I know that both stores were really very modest in scope, together likely having less floor space and merchandise than either Target or K-Mart.
This morning we prayed for God to restore all things, to free people divided by sin and bring them back together, and to gather the world into a caring unity. However, God does not restore things to what we would remember them to be. The way things were or how we hoped that they would have been will never do; they are always too small, limited, and cramped. Like my view of Albany’s department stores, they may be big to a child, but not to a mature adult with perspective, and certainly not to God. Our view of things ultimately is as sterile as the stones of the Temple in Jerusalem or the bricks of the stores on North Pearl Street. Hence God does not restore things to where they were, but moves forward and restores things as they were intended to be.
For his entire ministry, Jesus had announced the coming of God’s new age. By work and deed Jesus made it clear that this new era was not going to perpetuate the boundaries meant to keep people at bay. God wasn’t going to construct or reserve enclosed courtyards where only one type of person could worship, but not others. God was going to restore some things by smashing down the walls and leveling the barriers. No longer would the sick be kicked out or quarantined; no longer would one caste receive all the privileges and power, and others kept subservient, getting left over crumbs. The fortresses to confine and keep people down would be abolished. A new Jerusalem without the walls, barracks, and dungeons would be utterly unrecognizable to those expecting a return to some period fulfilling their own hopes of glory.
That is why the Bible readings for this day, while full of words of victory and triumph, are misleading if we do not look through their common meanings to the way God uses them. God is revealing much more than putting us back on top, returning to us what we think is our due, or reimbursing us for what we think we lost.
So on this day we use the traditional language of glory and victory, but what is affirmed is a new reality we can hardly conceive of and only God can bring to pass. We have come to the end of the liturgical year once more. Despite all our prayers, all the sermons, all our bold assurances, things aren’t much better in the world than last year. Humanity will not in and of itself bring in the fruit of the harvest of God’s future. Yet beyond the city we have built for ourselves, beyond the tiny confines of childhood memories and immature dreams, off in the distance, is God’s Advent.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
