From the 1938 broadcast
Travel with me back to the year 1938. Pockets are empty, and anxiety is at an all-time high. Newspapers feel the pinch as the rising popularity of radio competes for advertising dollars. A young man by the name of Orson Wells has an idea. He decides to assemble a 27-piece orchestra and ten fellow actors for a dramatic broadcast of H.G. Welles’ 1898 science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. The production features news alerts of an imminent Martian invasion of New Jersey. The broadcast is stunning, riveting, spellbinding, heart-stopping…
Some listeners, perhaps tuning in late, mistake the fictional play for the real deal. Frantic phone calls to police, newspapers, and radio stations convince journalists that the show has incited nationwide hysteria. Newspapers, anxious to cash in on the event, jump at the chance to sensationalize. By the next morning, 23-year-old Wells is famous, his name and face plastered on front pages from coast to coast. Headlines herald the mass panic his broadcast has allegedly inspired. This effort to discredit the radio program only enhances its impact, shoring up a burgeoning addiction to mass media.
With constant access to social media and a relentless 24/7 news cycle, we’re still pretty addicted.
Only now we have more sophisticated media. Our phones, video games, and virtual reality all compete for our attention, but eventually, these will pass into obscurity.
We need look no further than our Gospel passage to appreciate how the bible, this most influential, interesting, most misunderstood best-seller of all time, can still stir our hearts and capture our imagination.
“Signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, the powers of the heavens shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.”
Luke’s Jesus knows how to generate buzz.
Luke’s Gospel was likely written at least partially in Rome, sometime between years 62 and 70. Luke, also believed to have authored the book of Acts, was not one of the original disciples but was a traveling companion to the Apostle Paul, author of our Epistle. In another of his letters, Paul tells us Luke was a physician. We’re pretty sure Luke used the Gospel of Mark for reference. Luke’s audience is a growing gentile or non-Jewish audience awaiting Christ’s return amidst a dangerously hostile political climate.
Cut to Advent 2024. We enter a new liturgical year for the church. Advent is a time of preparation, waiting, and expectation…
As we light candles of hope, peace, joy, and love on each of the four consecutive Sundays of Advent, we prepare for the coming of God’s kingdom into our world, into the joy and the mayhem of our individual lives. And like the early Christians, we wait expectantly for Christ’s return.
“O come O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lowly exile here, until the son of God appear.”
Tom Petty was right, “The waiting is the hardest part.”
Jurgen Moltmann, who passed away at age 98 this year, is considered one of the most important theologians of the 21st century for his revolutionary and somewhat controversial teachings.
He writes, “…Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart but is itself this unquiet heart in (us.) Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”
Reading Moltmann is a little like reading science fiction, only better - because it’s rooted in the grittiness of real life. By the ‘promised future,’ I believe Moltman refers to something like Kairos time (as opposed to Chronos or linear time) – Kairos is Greek for the right, critical moment. Kairos is God’s time. Fluid and unpredictable, with a magnetic pull toward justice and redemption. In God’s time, God breaks through, and anything can happen.
“Stand up, raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke’s Jesus interrupts the regularly scheduled programming of the anxious first-century Christ follower with a reminder to “keep alert.”
How long, God? How long, I imagine the apostles ask, as, one by one, many of them die horrible, violent deaths. Paul was martyred around the year 70. It’s thought that Luke finished his gospel in the aftermath of that traumatic reality.
During time spent as a prisoner of war, Jurgen Moltmann encountered Christ in the holy scriptures and the kindness of strangers. In a blossoming cherry tree out his window, he found hope for new life after the devastation of war. For Moltmann, everyday experiences reveal the inbreaking of God into our lives, and most especially into our suffering. Moltmann’s theology is not pie in the sky. It distinguishes hope from mere optimism. Hope, it seems, is less about dreaming and more about paying really close attention.
All year, but perhaps especially during Advent, we’re called to assume a posture of receptivity: to stay alert for the inbreaking of Christ. In doing so, we are agents of our own transformation, co-creators with the Holy Spirit of the Kingdom of Heaven, here and now.
Where have you noticed God breaking through in your life this past week? Turn to a neighbor and tell them about it.
Was that hard? It gets easier with practice. My friend, who recently found her cancer has reoccurred, is good at this. These days, she seems to encounter God just about everywhere, even on Facebook, as she keeps us updated. Like so many others, she regularly stops in front of the huge statue of Christ in the dome of Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she goes for treatments. But the inbreaking Christ may not always be so obvious. Think babies, blossoms...bumper stickers…
My friend and her doctors have been vigilant, so they’re hopeful. Still, she waits for results as her friends and family enfold her in prayer.
My friends, during this extraordinary and challenging season, may we lift our heads and hearts in expectation of Emmanuel – God with us. May we stay receptive and alert to hope that just might be reaching out to us from a long-promised future.
In Spirit Wheel, Meditations From an Indigenous Elder, former Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston writes:
Don't look down, don't look back, don't look away.
Don't look down with your head bent by sorrow or fear, for the courage you have within you is reason enough to hold your head high.
Yes, you carry a heavy burden, but you know you never carry it alone. Look up, for love still has much to show you.
Don't look back to the old hurts and struggles, for they have had their moment and cannot live in the light of this new day.
Look ahead to what life offers you now. Don't look away from the challenges before you, no matter how hard they may seem.
Breathe in the strength of the Spirit and trust what guides you. Look your truth straight in the eye and capture the vision that will set you free.
Heads up, friends. Christ is coming. Always and in All ways. Happy New Year. Welcome to Advent.
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