A: Bad Advent (my bad attempt to follow the Episcopal calendar)

It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and for me, the start of Bad Advent, my annual-slash-seasonal reflection as a nonconforming, irregular Christian. And the Gospel reading on the Episcopal calendar this cycle was a humdinger, Matthew 24:36-44, in which Jesus sneaks into your home and you never see him coming, as if the web was down and your Ring Camera failed to pick up His Holy Footpad; there’s rapture, “then one will be taken and one will be left.” Scary stuff. The passage terrified my wife as a child, who as a Southern Baptist grew up under heavy handed fundamentalist threats.

But that's not really my issue. It's the prolapses I personally struggle with, this ending before the story has even started. I mean, Mary is not even presence yet, we’re not even to the Annunciation, yet here we are at the end of the world. And that’s the problem with prophecies, the finality. 

Lately, for other reasons, I’ve reading some of the prophets—Jeremiah, Daniel, Isaiah. And one thing that strikes me about prophets, even as they predict an Absolute End, mostly these prophets are interleaving the words of other, prior prophets. So Christians take their prophet, Jesus, to mean the last word, when it’s clear that the Bible really is nothing but a bunch of nutjobs, each proclaiming one Revelation after another.

You see, the act of prophecy is ongoing. Matthew proclaims: “you almost must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” But if we’ve learn from each predicted Apocalypse (most recently, this year’s, last September 23^rd) is that the predicted End never comes.

And to my point. During Advent we do not prepare our spirit because the end is near. Rather, as if the end were near. Hence, the room for multiple and successive prophets. Emily Dickinson, another prophet, wrote how “mylife had stood a loaded gun.” Adrienne Rich, still one more prophet, pointed out to me the word “loaded.” Expectation empowers the loaded gun. Jesus said to his disciples: “But about that day and hour no one knows ….”

We enter the season to take stock of our lives. What works for you in this life? Where have you been led astray? Listen to your kid. Call your mom. Buy a present for a friend. Contemplate: In what small way can you derail political tyranny? Mend an estranged relationship? What can you do to bring more light intto this world? 

Not for fear of your immortal soul. Not for the Second Coming. Because it's doubtful this Second Coming will come in your lifetime. Far more likely, this is the only world you will ever get.