This past week, on Thursday evening, I started an Advent class. It’s on Zoom, as many gatherings are these days. (For those of you who may not have experienced Zoom, or something like it, that means that I’m leading the class through the Internet, on a computer, and we can all see and hear each other from little squares on the screen of a computer or a phone.)

The class continues on Tuesday this week. If you want to join, let me know.

Last week we looked at some of the readings for the First Sunday of Advent. They talk about God tearing open the heavens and coming down, so to speak, and about a huge upheaval that will take place, but we don’t know when.

I ended the class by asking whether people found these readings comforting or disturbing. I won’t say what other people said, because that’s their business, but I can tell you what I said. I said that to me they are both: both comforting and disturbing.

Before I say why, I will say that this week’s readings are similar. They talk about the coming of the day of the Lord, it’s called, and again, they tell us we do not know when this will be. The Letter of Peter says it well. He writes, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”

Wow! Do you want to see that happen? To me, that sounds disturbing.

And Isaiah says something similar, though perhaps in sweeter language:

“Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low; …
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

It sounds nicer, even comforting, but it might be rough to watch.

And so I find such passages disturbing. They describe events that would shake us up, because everything we have known would be changed.

But that’s not the only thing that is disturbing. Perhaps what is even more distressing is being told that we need to get ready for such events. We need to be prepared. That does not mean to get ready by sitting around and worrying that such things will happen. It means to get prepared by preparing ourselves to meet God. As Peter says in his Letter, “Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness. … while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish.”

In other words, get your spiritual act together, because the Lord is coming — you don’t know when — and you want to be ready.

That’s more than a bit disturbing, if I think about some of the ways I act and think, and some of the things I say. Am I ready for the coming of the Lord? I’d like to think so, but perhaps it would be better if the Lord held off for just a little while longer.

Yet why would I want that? Why would I want the Lord to hold off from bringing about God’s kingdom of righteousness and peace just because I need a bit more time in getting my spiritual act together? For what I find comforting about these passages, as I said in the class the other night, is that they speak truth. There is something about them that strips away all the superficial nonsense that we live with day to day, and gets down to the basic lessons and the truth of God’s word. They say that so much of what we pay attention to is, as Isaiah says, like grass: “The grass withers, the flower fades.” It all just goes away, it’s dross, or like the chaff of wheat — the useless part that blows away, or it’s vanity and a chasing after wind, as the Book of Ecclesiastes says over and over again — whereas, as Isaiah says, “the word of our God will stand for ever.”

And these passages are comforting also because at their heart they show God’s care for us. It’s not really like tough love, like a parent saying, “I’m scolding you so that you learn and do better, because I care for you.” It’s not like that. It’s more like God clearing the decks of what comes between us and God, and inviting us into a new heaven and a new earth, a new way of looking at things, a new way of living.

Here’s another way to put it. We human beings are always looking for material solutions to our problems. We want to throw money at problems, or we want to reorganize things (I’ve seen that happen lots in churches), or to blame someone else for our problems. There’s the geographical fix, or the relationship fix, or the job fix — where we get rid of the old, thinking the new will be so much better. That’s not the new way of living that I’m talking about. These are all material solutions.

Instead, God offers us a spiritual solution. Get our heart right. Change our lifestyle. Slow down. Focus on our relationships. Above all, focus on our relationship with God.

Recently I read someone who wrote that we have been in an Advent-long lockdown. In other words, our lockdowns during Covid-19 have been like Advent: a time of waiting, a time of expectation (Is there a vaccine? Will it just go away?), a time of waiting for a new heaven and a new earth. What I hope for is not returning to life as it was. It may have been the status quo, but it was not at all normal, for there was much that was wrong about it. Instead, I want to emerge from Covid-19 into a new heaven and a new earth, where, to use the Psalm’s words,

“Mercy and truth are met together,
righteousness and peace have kissed each other;
Truth shall spring up from the earth
and righteousness look down from heaven.”

I want to emerge from Covid-19 not just with all of us vaccinated and returning to what was, but instead awakening to a new way, by taking a spiritual outlook on our lives, where we trust not in ourselves but in God’s mercy and grace, where we forgive each other and know that we also have been forgiven, where we are at peace with God, with ourselves, and with one another.

I want to hear these words of true comfort from the Lord, paraphrasing what the prophet Isaiah told the people of Jerusalem centuries ago:

“Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to the nations,
and cry to them
that they have served their term,
that their penalty is paid,
that they have received from the Lord’s hand
double for all their sins.”

Two millennia ago, into a situation of tumult and disease and oppression, came John the Baptist, speaking God’s words of both upheaval and comfort. He quoted the words of the prophet Isaiah that we have heard, to prepare the way of the Lord, and he called people to repentance, to change their ways. And he also promised that another would be coming, one more powerful than he, one who will fill us with God’s Holy Spirit. And this one who was coming, the Christ, would not return the land and the people to the status quo, the old normal, but instead would usher in a completely new way of living, a new way of being, by awakening our spirits and showing us the ways of God’s kingdom.

And so it happened.
May it happen again.
Come, Lord Jesus.