Dear Friends:

In our reading from the gospel of Mark for this first Sunday in Advent, we are given an image of the “end times” –

The sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light,

and the stars will be falling from heaven,

and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

—Mark 13.24

It used to come as a jarring surprise to me: that a season commonly perceived to be about joy and peace always begins with the end of the world. Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gives the “Little Apocalypse”, the name often given to Jesus’ discourse on the Mount of Olives, where he describes to his listeners the events that will take place as he returns.

This time around, as Advent approaches, Jesus’ apocalyptic talk comes not so much as a surprise as it does something that feels right on target. In many ways, this year has marked an end to life as we know it. The COVID pandemic has become our own “little apocalypse,” a word that means “to reveal.” It has revealed the fragility of the things we so long took for granted, things like gathering with friends and family, attending church on Sunday, receiving a monthly paycheck. This “little apocalypse” has also laid bare realities that were previously hidden to many of us, inequities and injustices embedded in the very fabric of our shared life.

I am aware that the ending of our “personal world” is not the same as The End of the World that Jesus describes here. Yet the first Sunday of Advent invites us to recognize how these endings are related; that the Christ we await somehow inhabits each ending we experience in this life. Every year, Advent calls us to practice “the apocalypse” - to look out for the presence of the One who enters into every loss, who comes to us in the midst of devastation, who gathers us up when our world has unraveled, and who offers the healing that is a glimpse of the wholeness that God is working to bring about--not only at the end of time but also in our time, in our place.

As Advent begins, is there something in your own life that is ending? How might you be on the lookout for the presence of God who comes to you in that place? Will you let your heart be open to receive what is revealed, leading you to a fuller and truer life as the world begins again?

With Advent Hope,

Amelie+