Longing as spiritual practice

Luke 24:36-44

36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus actually stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 In their panic and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. 38 Jesus said to them, “Why are you disturbed? Why do such ideas cross your mind? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; it is I, really. Touch me and see—a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as I do.” 40 After saying this, Jesus showed them the wounds. 41 They were still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder, so Jesus said to them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 After being given a piece of cooked fish, 43 the savior ate in their presence. 44 Then Jesus said to them, “Remember the words I spoke when I was still with you: everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the psalms had to be fulfilled.”

Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (pp. 2277-2278). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.

Today marks the beginning of a new liturgical year, as you heard from Pete last week. The church year has long been broken into larger liturgical seasons, and Advent is the first.

Advent begins the religious year with a season of hope, of longing, of anticipation, and preparation for Christ’s arrival.

And as you heard in our gospel reading, advent also reminds us of our longing for the second coming of Christ.

So happy new year! It’s the end of the world!

How is this end times passage a message of hope?

Since Jesus was Jewish, teaching the Hebrew scriptures, he might also be incorporating Jewish end times teachings—or a bonus term for the religious nerds: eschatology.

Jewish eschatology predicted the coming of a Messiah who would usher in the beginning of a new age—an age of justice, peace, and love. When Jesus teaches about the end times, in a way, it’s nothing he hasn’t already been teaching all throughout his ministry.

He teaches that the reign of God is here,

and the reign of God is coming.

He is constantly teaching about the reign of God (kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven)—teaching how it flips our worlds upside down, how it changes everything we value, how it reprioritizes our lives.

He teaches that it is here, present, now among us when we sow love into this world of greed and suffering.

And the reign of God is on its way. It isn’t all the way fulfilled yet, is it? We may not all imagine the same thing when we dream of a world where Love reigns,

but when we see the decline of our oceans and waterways, the insidious racism and sexism built into the structures of our society,

when we see the Amazon rainforest cut down and Amazon packaging build up in our garbage bins,

where body autonomy only belongs to a very small subset of people and the rest hope for politicians to support them,

in a world where it seems that the more evil I become aware of, the more evil I see beyond it,

it seems like we are a far cry from the reign of God that we pray for together every Sunday at the table in the Lord’s prayer.

We pray these prayers to practice! We practice being courageous enough to imagine what the world would be like if Love were the top priority,

and we pray and long for this new world enough to work to make it happen, in some very big, and very small ways.

This tension is the already-not yet paradox of end times theology: we believe Jesus’s words that the realm of God is within us—is already present with us now—that Christ’s love shines in us and through us as we connect with one another in our most vulnerable and most mundane moments.

We believe also that this realm of God is yet to be realized in a way that fuels our longing for a better world.

Advent is about nurturing that longing

as preparation for Christ’s arrival.

We wait by stirring our desire for the reign of Love in all people and on our planet.

We wait with anticipation!

Jesus teaches us to anticipate, to keep watch, stay awake!

Be participating in the work of the new world—live the movement you long for and you’ll be ready when it comes.

Live your life according to love and expect to find more of it!

In anticipation of the reign of Love we practice love.

Loving can be hard!

And as we get more comfortable in it, we begin to move through life looking out for opportunities to love.

As we grow we learn the ways we get in our own way of love.

We learn the lies we tell ourselves instead of receiving and giving love, and we allow God and one another to heal them.

We let God teach us to love ourselves until we believe we are loved.

We discover the counterfeits we’ve accepted in the place of love. We learn that success or freedom or power or wealth or someone else’s approval can never satisfy us in the way that we need,

because what we need is the confidence that we are truly, deeply loved.

We practice loving, and as we do, we are transformed into love.

And then transformed people transform their worlds into love!

Each of us, in our own domains, in each of the micro decisions that make up our lives,

has a responsibility to do all that we can to sow seeds of love along our paths.

In practicing love, we are planting the seeds of God’s reign. We are living in anticipation of a New Way.

And as we anticipate it, we become it.

With every connection of love, with every shared moment of grief or sorrow or fear,

With every shared song and prayer,

we breathe life into the body of Christ

which we make up together!

Perhaps Christ’s coming again is fulfilled every time we choose connection, every time we add our footprints to the well-worn path of love, every time we allow ourselves the space to long for a better way…

and perhaps to stay alert means to start by looking out for ways to love each other.

This Advent we practice God’s reign in love, fanning the flame of hope in one another, shining brightly into a weary world.