day 1 / postures
Sunday, November 28, 2021
RCL Readings: Psalm 25:1-9 | Jeremiah 33:14-16 | I Thessalonians 3:9-13 | Luke 21:25-36
What posture does your body assume when you feel out of place or when someone or something tells you, You don’t belong here?
Do you crouch? Do you turn around and run to the nearest exit? Maybe you get into a fighting stance. Or you might alter your walk and talk to fit in.
Many of us have done all of these things at some point in life. Some people take on these postures daily just to get by in a society set up to exclude and mistreat them. Especially when we feel powerless to change the situation where we find our bodies unwelcome, we may call upon our bodies to shoulder the burden of changing until we are no longer treated as outsiders.
In Luke 21, Jesus paints a scene in which the beacons of stability in the world order are shaken from their places. Entities that seem invincible have their governance wrested from them. Suns no longer shine. Solid grounds quake. The world as people know it unravels.
Understandably, most people in the scene respond with fear. Bodies faint. Yet Jesus tells his audience that when they witness these things happening, they are to rise to their feet and lift up their heads. People whose bodies had been low to the ground, heads down, in postures expressing powerlessness are invited to get up and anticipate God’s redemption.
On this first day of Advent, we get a glimpse of a God who is coming for unwelcome, out-of-place bodies. God is coming to embrace the bodies that the social and political orders of the world have pushed to the margins. God is coming to disarm such orders of their power to tell any body that they don’t belong or aren’t welcome. God’s coming means the end of bodies being forced to sit down, stay low, and change themselves to fit in.
What posture do you want to take to greet this God this Advent?
What posture does your body need this Advent?
Updated: December 6, 2021
Notes
Image of “Advent candles” is by Robert Thiemann on the Unsplash website
