Unstoppable

Propers: The First Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2018 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

It amazes me how often the Bible sings that same refrain. Even in the midst of chaos and calamity, even as the prophets pronounce the just recompense of God, still echoes this injunction: let not your hearts be troubled. Keep your inner peace. Cling to it. Never let the world snatch it from you, whatever may occur.

The Scriptures do not pretend that bad things won’t happen. There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, distress upon the earth, confusion among the nations at the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint for fear and foreboding and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. Yet we are to stand and raise up our heads, for our redemption now draws near.

So be on guard that your hearts be not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life. Rather, be alert at all times, praying for strength to stand before the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord.

What are we to make of this? Do we begin this fresh new year proclaiming the end of the world? Is the beginning of Advent our end? Well, yes and no.

Apocalypses, as I’ve noted before, are typically misinterpreted. We read their shocking imagery as an announcement that this is the end when it’s really just the opposite. Apocalyptic literature arises in the Bible in times of crisis. It uses prophetic imagery—natural disasters, signs in the heavens—to speak of the overthrow of worldly powers. Empires rise and empires fall, after all. That’s why the names of so many of the ancient peoples in the Bible are obscure to us. They’ve had their day, and passed away centuries before we were born.

Apocalypses tell us that what we think is the end never really is. Wars, famines, plagues, disasters—these are constants throughout history. They come and destroy our world, overturn what we know, wipe out the bedrock constants of our lives. And we think, How can this go on? How can we survive? Surely these are the Endtimes!

Yet the people of God go on. The fallen seed bears fruit. From the broken stump arises the shoot. Death, war, chaos, oppression, these things will not have the final say. There is an end that God has planned, a purpose and a meaning and a goal towards which the entire Creation yearns and longs amidst the labor pains of new birth.

We must trust that no matter how bad things may seem, no matter what we may suffer or whom we may lose, ultimately God is in control, and He will not let things stand as they are. He abhors death. He condemns suffering. He damns war and famine, pestilence and poverty. These are not His Creations! They are our corruptions. God does not cause the evil in the world, yet He chooses to join us in it, to enter into our sufferings, into our brokenness, that He might heal every fallen soul and the whole of Creation from the inside out.

And yeah, that sounds kind of crazy. And yeah, there are things so horrific that we cannot see how they could possibly be allowed, let alone set right. Yet it is the bold and scandalous cry of the Christian that God will have the last word! He is Lord and King, Creator of all, and He will not abandon us to these hells of our own making. He is at work even now, healing the broken, forgiving the sinner, raising the dead to new life.

And He will not stop until every stray sheep has been herded, every lost coin has been counted, every wayward and prodigal child has been gathered into the open and loving arms of our Father, who rejoices with the entire host of Heaven at every single rescued and repentant soul. That’s the apocalypse. That’s the eschaton. That’s the end of all things: when Christ has redeemed the whole of Creation and handed the Kingdom over to His Father, that God at last might be all in all.

And where there is God there is no suffering. There is no death. There are no shadows in which to hide. Perfect justice and perfect mercy become as one the perfect Truth. And let me tell you, that may hurt. A lot. We are so broken and so wicked that to have the darkness purged from us may feel like the death of who we think we are. Truth hurts, and infinite Truth outright burns, if we define ourselves by our sins.

But it is the pain of healing, the pain of purification, the paradoxical pain of joy. Indeed, the presence of God burning out of us everything that is not properly us is ecstasy.

That is the way the world ends: with purification and joy and infinite new life. And it’s a rocky road to get there. There will be wars and famines and God-only-knows what else in the years and the centuries to come. But we are to keep our eyes fixed on the promise, on the goal, on the endgame of God. And this is our peace in the storm. This is our comfort in pain: that God has come in the flesh, to die at our hands and rise for our sake, in this way to call all His children home in Him.

And nothing, nothing in this world—not cancer, not poverty, not addiction, not betrayal, not all the horrors the human mind can devise—nothing can prevent the coming of the great and terrible Day of the Lord. Nothing can prevent the will of God from being done. His love is unstoppable, resist it as we might. For He has already proclaimed His will in the clearest and most wondrous of terms: that not even one of His little ones be lost; that Christ has come so that we may have life and have it abundantly.

And should we flee from His mercies, even unto the deepest pits of Hell—Christ is already there. For He has descended into Hell. And He has conquered.

We cannot escape the love of God, no matter how we rage, no matter how we despair. If we ascend into Heaven, He is there. If we go down to the Pit, He is there. He is with us in the quiet, with us in our pain, with us in our wounds and our doubts and our despair. And if we would but listen, we can hear what He has always said:

“I am with you. I am for you. This shall not be your end. I shall love you, I shall pursue you, I shall hunt you, I shall raise you up from the dead, until at long last you turn to Me to beg the forgiveness that I have already given to you. And then I shall set My robe upon your shoulders, and My ring upon your finger, and My sandals on your feet. And you shall be My daughters and sons, and I shall be your God forever.”

For woe be unto anyone or anything that dares to stand between the Father and His child.

So let not your hearts be troubled. Do not be weighed down. Raise your head. Be alert. Stand strong before the Son of Man. For your redemption even now draws near.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.