I have been in a strange mood all week. Christmas is three weeks away. I love Christmas; I’ve always loved Christmas. There’s something special and magical that I remember from my childhood; the mystery and joy of waking up in the morning and seeing the presents and being with the family, and I have been able to hold onto that. I am very much looking forward to my first Christmas here, at Trinity Cathedral; getting to see how we “do” Christmas, and looking forward to the beautiful services that I know are coming.
And yet, this week I have had a particularly difficult time getting into the Christmas spirit. It is not because of the number of things on my list of things to do; it is not because I know I have shopping and decorating and getting a tree and all of that to get done in the next three weeks. It’s not that. It’s the news. I have been weighed down by the news this week. The news just today, for example—fifty-one people died in a car bombing in Baghdad, with another hundred who were injured. It said in the paper that this is the worst attack since two hundred and five people were killed in a series of bombings on November 23. And that was only a week ago.
Every day I am reminded of this horrible violence that is happening to our world. There is talk of civil war, not only in Iraq, but also in Lebanon, Israel, Afghanistan. What really drove it home for me, however, wasn’t a story of anyone being killed or wounded, but was rather a story that was printed in Wednesday’s paper of a woman who escaped Baghdad. It was her account of what it was like to live in Baghdad, and to choose to leave. This first-person account talks about how her lovely community continued to degenerate and fall apart. Her decision to leave Baghdad was made in one night, a night that she spends with her hands over the ears of her young daughter so that her daughter doesn’t hear the gunfire and the bombings that are happening right outside her door. The next morning, when the sun rose, she took her daughter and tried to sneak out of the town, leaving everything behind, in order to become refugees.
This was one family that didn’t become just a statistic, and reading this story ripped open my heart. It made me not so excited to go to the mall; there are bigger things happening in our world than going to the mall, or preparing for Christmas, or putting on a happy face. This week I have felt increasing dis-ease, and a sense that the world is spiraling out of control. It feels like there is not anything I can do to keep it together. I feel powerless, out of control, and scared.
This isn’t the first time this has happened in my life. I’ve had these feelings and this experience before, and whenever this happens, I am reminded of a poem. It’s a part of Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming:”
Things fall apart
The center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed
And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
That’s how I feel. The ceremony of innocence, which is my image of myself as a boy on Christmas morning; everything magical and beautiful and right, is drowned, because the worst are full of passionate intensity. People are being blown up. The center cannot hold; the world is falling apart. That is how I feel.
I’m not alone. I’m not alone right now; there are others who also feel this way. I’m also not alone in history. This poem was written right after World War I, right after the optimism of the scientific and industrial revolutions were blown away. The center did not hold; anarchy was loosed on the world, and there was more anarchy to come.
This sense of dis-ease, of disquiet, that the world is spinning out of control, helps me understand today’s Gospel reading. Luke wrote today’s Gospel reading in a climate that was very similar to our current world’s predicament. The Temple in Jerusalem had just been destroyed. The Temple, as I mentioned in a sermon two weeks ago, was not just the center of religious life, but of economic, social, and political life as well. It had been toppled to the ground by the Romans. The world, as the earliest disciples knew it, had been destroyed. People were dying.
Not only that, but because Luke’s Gospel was written somewhat later than the Gospel of Mark, which we heard two weeks ago, there was also a civil war raging between Jews who were Christian and Jews who were not Christian. The Christian Jews were being kicked out of the synagogues, and were also not welcomed by the Romans, because they refused to worship the Emperor. They were being executed. So the people to whom Luke was writing this passage were people whose worlds were falling apart. They had to leave their homes—they did not know if they were going to make it to the next Christmas, the next year.
Luke records Jesus as saying these words: “There will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and on the earth disquiet among nations.” Things are going to fall apart. This part of Luke’s Gospel isn’t written to a specific, historic time; earlier in this passage, we hear about the Temple being destroyed, and about the civil war and the persecution of Christians. Now, Jesus is talking generally. Throughout history, there will be wars and rumours of wars and disquiet among nations. The earth and the stars will be shaken; in a cosmic sense, things are going to fall apart. We are going to feel like we are losing our grip on the world. The center will not hold; mere anarchy will be loosed.
What Jesus says next is absolutely absurd. What I feel, and what I expect Jesus to say, and quite frankly what Jesus *should* say, is, when this happens, it is the end of the world! So be afraid, be very afraid!
But Jesus doesn’t say that. What he says is, when this happens, when the center doesn’t hold and anarchy is loosed upon the world, stand up straight, and hold your head high, because it is at that moment that you will know that your redemption is drawing near. It’s not the end of the world; this is the moment when God has the chance to transform the world, and make it better. Make it right. And all will be well.
Now, that’s absurd. What is even more absurd is the reading we have from Jeremiah. This reading talks about Jerusalem and Judah being restored to their former power. It opens with Jeremiah saying, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise that I made; I will restore the fortunes of Judah and of Jerusalem.” What makes this particularly interesting is what was going on when Jeremiah said this. The Babylonians had laid siege to Jerusalem. They were about to breach the walls of Jerusalem and kill the people inside. This is a common theme that we’ve heard throughout our Biblical history. Jeremiah is inside Jerusalem. Women and children and men are being slaughtered. It is obvious that Jerusalem is about to fall. Jeremiah says, “God says, I am about to restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem.” That all will be well.
Now, before Jeremiah said this, he did something absolutely absurd. He bought real estate. On purpose, publicly, he took all of his money and bought land, while they were being invaded. He did this because he wanted to say that the present crisis is not the end of the world; that this too will pass. God is in the business of bringing life out of chaos; that all will be well; and to not lose your head. Jeremiah said, “To show you that I have trust in this, I’m going to buy real estate here in Jerusalem while it’s being burned to the ground.” Isn’t that crazy?
That is the crazyness of Christmas. That is what the Feast of Christmas is about. It is about death and destruction and chaos not having the last word. It is about light and life being born in the midst of darkness. The problem is, it is easy to miss it if we’re down at the mall all the time—you know, in the Christmas “happy place.” We may not realize that what Christmas is really about is speaking hope into our darkest moments.
What I am coming to realize is that my mood this week isn’t weird; it’s Advent. The purpose of this time of year is for us to become disquieted, for us to become dissatisfied with the way the world is. For our hearts to break, and break open, with the sadness and tragedy of the world. To be in that house with that mother, cupping her hands over her young daughter’s ears so that she doesn’t hear the gunfire and the explosions. To cry out in our own anguish over the darkness, not just globally, but in our lives.
Christmas is often not a happy time. It is a time when our own brokenness becomes all too apparent for many of us. The brokenness of our families, of our community, the brokenness within our own hearts. It is a time for becoming aware of the deep sadness that makes us ready for the light of Christ and the love of God that will not let us go. Ready for that love to be born again and anew.
I’m going to do something I’m not supposed to do in a sermon. I’m going to leave it unfinished; I’m going to leave us feeling disquieted, because the world right now is spinning out of control. I want to invite all of us to be in touch with that, with the brokenness and the heartbreak, so that we can stand on tiptoe, yearning for the coming of Christ, for the light of Christ, to be born anew. Amen.