First Sunday of Advent -B

Year B
Isaiah 64:1-9
Ps. 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Do you remember and yearn for the Age Of Awesome Deeds? Men were men, black was black and white was white and ne'er the twain shall meet - doing right was rewarded and transgression quickly punished. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.

But it has been long years since a favored few could so easily justify their separation from the unlucky, the poor, the unfavored, the sick, the sinner, the other.

With this hiatus we can wait with envy to be restored to what ought to be our rightful place, a place where nothing changes. We might also find the humility to move away from these kinds of false and make-believe separations to appeal, "Now consider, we are all your people."

It is this larger view of the particularity of circumstance not being unique that needs new light to be shined on it.

When such a shining saving arrives we note that there has been a shift from a single cause to a renewed appreciation of community of an earthly creation or paradise with which the heavenly "we" is well pleased and claims is good.

So thanks can be given, not just for creator(s) but creation(s). Our wait for revelation shows creation called into fellowship with creator, not constantly manipulated by same.

Having now come through Isaiah, Psalmist, and Paul we turn to Mark to solidify our keeping awake to new connections. Fig leaves are connected to summer, not as cause and effect but as a community of revelation. In one we can now see the other.

In like manner, in a generation we can mark a moment that more clearly reveals a shift that has moved us from whatever stage of immaturity we are in to a next step of maturity. We keep awake for such connections are life as we move from bated breath to next breath. To keep awake is to keep breathing.

- - - - - - -

Whew, I have every spiritual gift.
Oh, I am strengthened to use each in its time.
Ahh, fellowship shines in remembering, in anticipating, in medias res.

Whew, I am blessed.
Oh, I am blessing.
Ahh, simply Ahh.