Dec. 1 | Advent 1, Year C
Jer. 33:14-16
Ps. 25:1-9
1 Thess. 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
The late Robert Webber, in his Ancient-Future book series, developed the concept of refreshing our worship by looking back at the early Church and the Bible, including the Old Testament. We are not to seek an ancient form of worship to venerate a particular time or practice, but to allow each epoch to inform our worship experience. Webber always maintained that biblical worship emphasized the corporate nature of the Church and its concern for justice and acts of mercy. Webber taught us how to worship by using the historical and biblical church as an analogy of how God would have us worship, rather than a set-in-stone pattern for worship.
An analogy is a comparison based on a similarity in some respect between things that are otherwise quite different. In fact, the more similar one object is to another, the less useful it is to help us understand the unfamiliar object. Of course, the key to understanding the analogy is our knowledge of the object being used to explain the unknown. We take what we have not yet experienced fully and try to explain it by comparing it to something we have experienced. For example, we approximate the experience of weightlessness by being submerged in water or we try to explain the Trinity by talking about water, steam, and ice.
Jesus used analogies to teach human beings about God and his kingdom. In our Gospel reading from St. Luke, Jesus tells us that the events surrounding his return in glory will be like a fig tree putting out leaves (21:29-31). The image we are given is common to the experience of his audience. But the kingdom is not a plant. In fact, it is quite different, except for a particular aspect. Altogether, however, this image helps us understand something about the kingdom.
You could see the whole Bible in this manner. Rather than treating the Bible as 66 different books, or even as a story in two volumes, it could be thought of as a unified story composed of a series of analogies through which human beings might come to a working knowledge of God and his love. From the story of creation, through the call of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and the prophets, to the Incarnation, we are presented with finite events and experiences that help us obtain knowledge about our infinite Father. Each analogy, however, is given in the context appropriate to the experience of the people. The story of the Bible is the story of God pointing us toward the fulfillment of his eternal promise. God spoke that promise when he said, “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Lev. 26:12).
For Jeremiah, the task was to describe to the people, who were in exile, how God would make his promise a reality. To do so, the prophet pointed the people back to the greatest leader ever known in Israel — King David. David was the analogy used to describe the coming Christ. He was not only their greatest ruler, but he was a descendent of Abraham, the one chosen and anointed by God, the just and wise king who ruled the united kingdom, the king who saved Israel from the Philistines, and the one who gave her stability and security. The One to come will be like David — but much, much more. He will fulfill the divine promise. He will be God with us. He will live with us. He will call us his people. And all this he will do for all eternity. His presence and our experience will be greater and grander than anything we have ever dreamed or can even contemplate. We are to expect One who is like David, but as different from David as the sun is from a match.
Look It Up
Mark 13:28-29
Think About It
What analogies to the return of Christ can we discern in our contemporary experience?