“Jesus is Coming”
December 1, 2024
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
I have to admit that even though I love the season of Advent, with its candles, and moody music, and the excitement building towards Christmas, the first week of Advent’s readings are a bit of a bummer. Jesus is always swooping down from the clouds, sword in hand, ready to separate the wheat from the chaff. It reminds me of every apocalyptic movie or TV series I’ve ever seen a trailer for—as if hell has broken through the gates and stormed into our world.
“Jesus is Coming” is supposed to be a scary threat. Get your house in order, “Jesus is Coming.” Don’t do naughty things because you never know when “Jesus is Coming.” Be alert, Be ready, Trim your lamps, have extra oil for you know neither the day nor the hour when “Jesus is Coming.” And this isn’t the cute, cuddly little infant Jesus, this is the warrior Jesus. The one who brings in Judgement Day. Watch out! Jesus is Coming!
So, I was taken with Luke’s version of “Jesus is Coming—” especially this sentence, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” The writer of the gospel of Luke obviously wants people to feel encouraged that Jesus is Coming. Yes, there are going to be things that seem scary (like signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, like the earth in distress), but you shouldn’t go and hide in the basement, or your bunker. No, stand up and raise your heads—your redemption is drawing near.
I guess it’s a matter of perspective. Jesus is Coming is good news to those who are down and out (whose heads right now are hanging low). Jesus is Coming is good news to those who have been following the way and loving God and loving neighbor as self. Jesus is Coming is a promise, even a hope—that there will come a time when God’s will is done here on earth as it is in heaven, as we say every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.
Jesus is Coming is good news for all those who try to live as if God were King and no one else!
We can see this perspective in the African-American spiritual, “My Lord, What a Morning!” It is talking about the same circumstances that Luke lifts up: a time when the stars begin to fall. Now this could mean actual heavenly orbs crashing to earth. But maybe it also could mean that those who consider themselves so high and mighty, who ask others to bow down to them as if they were God, who see their names written in the stars, maybe they are the ones who begin to fall.
My Lord, what a morning—isn’t said in fear. I hear wonder and awe and rejoicing. My Lord, what a morning—the promises that God has made are coming true! My Lord, what a morning—and we are alive to see it, we are right here to witness to the coming of the truth and the right and the power of God. When the stars begin to fall, When the stars begin to fall.
And whoever our lyricist was, whoever wove together images of Jesus’ coming and the hope and promise that oppressed people have always heard in the words of God spoken by prophets, spoken by Jesus, spoken by those even in our own time—that lyricist knew this was the day of days.
“You will hear the trumpet sound, to wake the nations underground, looking to my God’s right hand, when the stars begin to fall.” The Apostle Paul talks about the trumpet sound in 1 Corinthians when he envisions the end of days. “Look! I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed…”
I can only imagine how comforting that must have sounded to those in deep distress—those who lived under the threat of being torn from their very families, those who didn’t know where they would be living, or who they would have to deal with from day to day, from week to week, from year to year.
God sees your distress. God knows your suffering. And God will have victory. There will come a time when the stars will begin to fall. And My Lord, what a morning that will be.
That is exactly what I am holding onto as the news people swirl on about what the next years will bring. That is exactly what I am holding onto when it seems that hatred and fear has won the day—narrowly, but still. That is exactly what I am holding onto when some question how we are to live here and now. I remember that there have been people who have wondered that before. I remember that there have been countless others who have lived and worked and prayed and died waiting for God’s reign to come.
That is the part of Advent that doesn’t get enough play. The preparation we do in Advent isn’t just getting ourselves ready for Jesus to be born, for God to once again come crashing into our lives, in the flesh.
No, Advent is about preparing ourselves so that if we are witnessing the signs in the sun and moon and stars, if we happen to be around for the trumpet blast, if we get to see Jesus, the Son of Man, descending on the clouds, we can stand up, and raise our heads, and celebrate that our redemption is drawing nigh.
I was taken by the fact that Luke has Jesus use the same sentence construction in talking about the end of days, as about the coming of God’s reign. “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your head, for your redemption is drawing near.” And a little later in our reading: “…when you see these things take place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” I know in my brain that the coming of God’s reign would also bring a cataclysm—that the last would become first and the first, last. God’s reign would upset the apple cart, so to speak. But I don’t know that I specifically equated the Judgement Day with the beginning of God’s Reign.
Maybe I have underestimated how much it will take to overturn the powers of this world—for they do seem to be ready to fight to the last to hold onto their status. Maybe, I have naively thought we would slowly step towards the kin(g)dom—and eventually, one day, it would just have happened. Poof. I have never considered that I would have to physically fight for what I believe in. But certainly believers have had to do so in the past.
What I do know, is that our Advent readings invite us to stay engaged with our world. We are not asked to listen to everything that “the powers and principalities” say. But we are to stay alert. We are to be on watch. We are to double down on that credo that Jesus announced—What does the Lord require? But to Love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
And that is what I feel deeply in my bones this Advent. That there are neighbors out there who are in trouble. Neighbors that are in need. Neighbors that are in fear. Neighbors that are flailing around in the depths of despair. Neighbors that need to hear a comforting voice, see a hand stretched out in kindness, know that they are being held in the quiet of somebody’s heart.
Maybe that is why the writer of the gospel of Luke says, stand up and raise your heads. Because we need to stand up and be counted. Because we need to stand up to anything and anyone who is working against others. Because we need to stand up, in order to put ourselves between the most vulnerable and those who seek to do harm. And raise your heads—I notice that it is not just “raise your head.” It is plural, heads. This standing and raising is not done alone. It is done as a community. It is done together. It is done, we hope, with the blessing of God.
Stand up and raise your heads requires movement. It is not just “waiting around” for something to happen, it is active, it is about now. For as Benard of Clairvaux (a twelfth-centry abbot and theologian) wrote: Advent is about Jesus coming as an infant. And Advent is about Jesus coming at the end.
But Advent is also about Jesus coming to us in the everyday: the knock at the door, the still small voice, the lonely prisoner, the hungry mother, the weary refugee, the migrant worker, the asylum seeker (from SALT commentary). And as we know from Matthew 25, “what we do to the least of these, our brothers and sisters, we do it to Jesus.”
This response to the everyday knock of Jesus requires fortitude. It requires linking hands with others. And it requires hope. Not a wispy “maybe something good will happen” hope. But a deep, abiding certainty of the eventuality of God’s reign—kin(g)dom come on earth.
“Hope is the thing with feathers (says Emily Dickinson), that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops, at all.” Hope may be singing and singing and singing, but we can feed it. We can learn the song. And we can stand up, heads raised high, and sing for all we are worth.
So on this first Sunday of Advent, bathed in the light of the first candle—a candle of waiting and of hope—I want us to hear the call loud and clear. Jesus is Coming! The Reign of God approaches. Redemption draws near. Stand up. Raise your heads. Link your arms. Be ready. Act in faith. Act in hope. Act in love.
For even as the light wanes in our northern hemisphere, the light of God shines bright. Even if the stars should begin to fall, we know what will illumine our path. Even if all around us seems dark and drear, we stand on firm ground, our hearts swell with God’s love, and we are sure we can keep singing our song, as long as we have breath.
My Lord, What a Morning! My Lord, What a Morning!
Yes, My Lord, What a Morning! When the stars begin to fall,
When the stars begin to fall. May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.