Pet peeve rant: Truncated pericopes for the first Sunday of Advent

The first Sunday of Advent is always a challenge to the careful homiletician and disciplined lectionarian. Whether it is year A, B, or C, the Gospel text is a portion of one of the synoptic accounts of the Olivet Discourse, specifically that portion in which Jesus addresses the subject of "the coming of the Son of Man." Perhaps more than any other week of the Christian year, this over-arching theme forces the preacher to read the text in a manner that is historically and contextually dubious. Over the centuries, the Christian community has come to understand "the coming of the Son of Man" in a manner quite different from that of the first century Jewish community out of which the earliest Christians came. This is due, in large part, to the failure of succeeding generations of believers to allow Scripture to be its own best interpreter.

Within a strict biblical context, "the coming of the Son of Man" is a relatively easy concept to grasp. Daniel's vision of "one like a son of man" who came "with the clouds of heaven" (Daniel 7:13) is the key here. It is a vision of one entering into the presence of "the Ancient of Days" to be "given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him" (Daniel 7:14a). At Olivet, Jesus foretells the cataclysmic events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem and the ordeal his disciples will be called upon to endure for their faith. But it is his own ordeal of suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of the Father which will put all of those events in proper perspective. What Daniel foresaw in his vision, Jesus brings to fulfillment. Following his ordeal of suffering and death, he will be vindicated as the true Son of God and Son of Man by being raised from the dead and taken up "with the clouds of heaven" to be seated at the right hand of the Father until his coming again in glory.

The whole of Scripture paints a multi-dimensional picture of God's Anointed One coming first as one of us, born of a virgin in the humblest of surroundings, suffering, dying, and rising again; being taken up to heaven and sending the Holy Spirit to empower the church to continue the work he began; and finally coming again to restore all things in himself to the glory of the Father. It is precisely this multi-dimensional understanding of "the coming of the Son of Man" that is supposed to be the theme of Advent. But the truncated pericopes of the first Sunday do not tell the whole story.