Wrapped and Ready

27 Days. You may still be wondering how else to creatively serve turkey, but Thanksgiving is over. My mom and mother-in-law both have reminded me that they need lists of gift ideas. We put up our trees and set out our nativity yesterday afternoon. We are moving now. 26 days to shop and wrap and bake and get ready because in 27 days, it will be Christmas.

But things are bound to go wrong. As we put up the Living Room tree, we noticed that a string of lights seemed to have some bulbs not lighting. It didn’t seem like many, so we kept going. Come nightfall, the missing lights formed a ring around the entire tree, and there was one fewer day to get presents bought and wrapped and ready.

The countdown in on. I know when Christmas will arrive. December 25th. It may not be the day Jesus was born; in fact it likely isn’t. The date was chosen in 336, some 300 years after Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but it is the day we celebrate God slipping into our midst. And by Christmas morning, our tree will have lights on all the branches, and wrapped gifts will surround it.

The bows and the ornaments with their silver and gold, metallic reds and sparkling glitter, will catch the light and shine. Over the coming weeks, it will be a thin place for me, drawing me into quiet reflection, causing me to pause and pray, to open up to God about my hopes and my fears.

And then the paper will be ripped off and thrown away, and the ornaments will be lined up on the coffee table to be boxed up for another year, and the house will seem empty.

That’s what is Jesus is talking with his disciples about in this passage we read this morning from Luke. Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. The first Century Jewish historian, Josephus, documented that the temple was covered on the outside with gold plates so brilliant when they caught the sun’s rays that they were blinding to look at. And where there was not gold, there were blocks of marble that was so pure white that from a distance, it looked like there was snow on the Temple mount.

The Temple was the dwelling place for God on earth. It was a “thin place” – a place where the divide between heaven and earth collapses, where it is as if only tissue paper separates the material world from the spiritual world, a place where ”we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine so that we are jolted out of our old ways of seeing the world” (Rev. Dr. David E. Grey “Thin Places”). But as the disciples were admiring the care taken in placing the stones and the way the sun danced as its beams bounced off the decorations, Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
Don’t get attached to this thin place, it is earthly. It is material. It will be come to an end. Everything isn’t going to be shiny and bright. There are going to be times you feel as empty as your house after the decorations are put away.

When violence and uprisings break out, don’t be afraid that something has gone terribly wrong and I am not returning; these things must happen first. Jesus tells the disciples that there will be wars, earthquakes, famine, and epidemics. You will be persecuted, your family will betray you…when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, the time is near. Even the heavens will declare it – the sun, the moon, and the stars will signal that the Son of Man is coming in glory.

Over the centuries, people have tried to read the signs of the times. Every generation has believed that they were experiencing symptoms of the end times. Predictions of the end of the world, the apocalypse, have come…and gone. In the 21st Century, three years are predicted for the apocalypse: 2021 (not a lot of this year left), 2026, and 2028. There are a few dates predicted a little bit into the future, and many predictions that have passed. The earliest apocalyptic prediction was 66 AD. The Essenes, a Jewish sect, even minted coins to mark the occasion of the redemption of Israel.

In his telling of the exchange, Matthew records Jesus telling the disciples that , “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36).

The first Sunday in Advent is traditionally focused on Hope, and the Scripture readings remind us that our hope is not only that Jesus was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, but that he lives now and is returning in final victory. Our Advent waiting is not only for the celebration of his birth, it is waiting for the time to be fulfilled when God’s Will is done on earth like it is done now in heaven.

In the meantime, sons and daughters will go to war to defend their country and not come home. In the meantime, natural disasters will shake the foundations you have built. In the meantime, there will be times that you don’t have enough. In the meantime, you will face disease.

Jesus is not giving his disciples a puzzle to solve about the end times. He is teaching them, and us, that we will be wrapped in suffering, and it is those very times that can prepare us for his return.

When you feel the pain so sharply, when the walls seem to be closing in, when the energy to move out of the cocooned darkness of your bed cannot be mustered, only just enough to pull the blankets tighter and close your eyes against the day, “stand up,” says Jesus, “and lift your head to look at the fig tree.” They have gone through winter, lost their leaves, stood bare in the cold night air, and now, they are sprouting leaves. You know what that means, summer is coming. The seasons will shift. Growth and flourishing will happen again. God has not abandoned them. God has not abandoned you.

Bad things are going to happen, and some of them will happen to you. There will be parents who abandon, abuse, or neglect their children. Cancer and COVID and car accidents will claim the lives of people we love. Jobs will be lost. Homes will flood. Families will be dysfunctional, siblings will betray each other. We will all face loss and hurt and death.

But we do not face them alone. Wrapped in God’s love, our present suffering becomes a thin place. When we don’t have the strength to stand, God takes our hand and stands beside us. When we can’t lift our eyes to face what is next, God gently tips our chin to meet his gaze and to see as he sees, beyond the present circumstances to see that his promises are trustworthy and true even in this season. We are not left to our own devices in the chaos. The One who is our redemption draws near in the midst of the chaos of this life and gives us hope.

We celebrate the gift of hope at Christmas because the greatest gifts come in the smallest packages. God’s upside down kingdom of the smallest being the greatest, the last being first, began to be established on earth when a young girl named Mary labored and pushed when she couldn’t not push until she gave birth to a son. Our hope is certain because he came to reveal to us God’s love. God so loves people that he came.

We wait with hope at Christmas because Christ will come again. The time is coming when the old order of things will pass away and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. God will lovingly wipe away every tear. And God will make God’s home with us, among us. God so loves people that he will come again.

We have hope because God is here, now! In the midst of the chaos, we experience God’s presence, thin places where the veil is drawn back and we see God’s glory. In the nurse who takes that extra moment to straighten the sheet after she replaces it over the arm with the IV, in the vegetable soup that is delivered ready for supper when you had no energy left to think about being hungry, in the arm of a friend around your shoulder, in the prayer that spoke the words that your heart didn’t know it was crying, in the still of the winter’s morn even as some of the lights on the tree are dark, Emmanuel comes, God is with us, May we be wrapped in hope as we stand, chin up, ready to see his glory! Amen.