2 Peter 3:8-15a

Advent 2 - Year B

2 Peter 3:8-15a

When the expectation of a quick eschaton fails to appear - there needs to be an explanation. So it is that we hear about the mutability of time. Somewhere between today and a millenium from now, what we believe will actually become what happens. So strong is belief that it will look to change the very structure of creation and demand the impossible.

So it is not that G*D lost the track on an endless plain of no valley nor mountain, it is that that G*D has deliberately not asked the way so you can have sufficient time to repent, since you obviously haven’t yet gotten it right or G*D would have come. It can’t be that we got the start of Paradise re-entered wrong (that it will come when G*D is good and ready) or that we misunderstood our part in Paradise (claiming its presence through our interactions). No, the delay is intentional so we can get right with G*D.

If we take the justification of G*D and time out of our calculus, it will become clearer that we just don’t want to take on the principalities and power, to hone ourselves against them, and reshape our current time and circumstance into a desired Paradise. It is so much easier to await some future change done to us. So we claim a delay in Paradise is G*D oriented, when it more accurately is about our delay, not some patience of G*D.

Advent is not just four weeks before Christmas or some indeterminate time before an eschaton. Advent is our present opportunity to incarnate Paradise. Whether hinted at or embodied in wholeness, Paradise is our goal, not just a moment known as Christmas.