The Light Illuminates God’s Presence

1 December 2019 – First Sunday in Advent

Written in 2004, these words carry both hopeful and sad resonance even today:

“We begin this new year with the Gospel of Matthew, who takes Christ’s own words to unite Advent and Christmas/Epiphany. ‘The coming of the son of man” is repeated several times and then, “your Lord is coming.’ Advent is both our coming to God and God’s coming to us. . . .

Advent is the time to be open to the unexpected intrusion of God, to experience God in unique and special ways, to accept the embrace of the divine becoming one with us. Advent speaks birth; it also speaks resurrection.

Babies and children around the world kept dying this past week. Some public figures kept lying to their people on all continents. Heavy storms took many lives last week. Gunfire took many more.”

And yet at the same time: “People worked in intensive-care units and emergency rooms last week. Some people taught other people to read last week, as a way out of their poverty and misery. . . . Many people did these things because their belief in Jesus, the One who is coming, is the firm conviction that God fulfills every promise.” –– Blair Gilmer Meeks

Matthew 24:36-44

Matthew 20—25 details Jesus’ sayings about the kingdom of heaven and. . . of his betrayal, death and resurrection. . . . There will be links to the Hebrew Bible in his teaching, as when he draws an analogy with Noah’s days. But the analogy with the householder suggests that present experience is as authoritative as that of the past. . . . The promised kingdom is at hand, the day “when the son of man comes.” For Christians, the birth of Jesus inaugurates a new era.

How can we prepare for our own death and risen body? . . . Someone said that preparation is finding the Lord in each task we do and discovering the Lord in every person we meet. God sanctifies us, and from that we become aware of the truth of Christ’s presence, and we desire to acknowledge the presence to ourselves and others. –– Blair Gilmer Meeks

Isaiah 2:1-5

This passage illustrates the contrasting messages that pervade the Hebrew prophets. Much of Isaiah 1 attacks the social and religious failings of Israel, but in Isaiah 2 a profound hope appears. The vision of Isaiah rests on a coming day when “the mountain of the Lord’s house,” that is, Jerusalem, “shall be set over all other mountains.”

. . . Jerusalem is favored simply as the source of eschatological hope. From out of Jerusalem “comes the word of the Lord,” and this is one of the most powerful of eschatological hopes. . . . Biblical hope, in other words, centers not on vindication or triumph but on the achievement of

everlasting peace. Jerusalem is exalted as the source of this message, for whose realization all nations search. –– Blair Gilmer Meeks

Romans 13:11-14

The word “salvation” is understood by Paul as communal rather than individual. He has in mind the coming of the end time rather than a particular person’s death. The deeds of darkness and works of light distinguish the one who is “in Christ” from the one who is not. –– Blair Gilmer Meeks

Blair Gilmer Meeks, was at the time of this writing, a pastoral minister, writer of worship-related resources, and leader of workshops on worship living in Brentwood, Tennessee. Among her four books is Standing in the Circle of Grief: Prayers and Liturgies for Death and Dying (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002).

Homily Service 37, no. 12 (2004): 43-49.