Beginning Advent early, in the ruble

There are weeks when the lectionary readings feel uncomfortably close to home—like a “ripped from the headlines” TV episode. When Jesus talks about the destruction of the temple, the collapse of kingdoms, wars and uprisings, earthquakes, families divided, people betrayed—it can feel painfully familiar. There’s war and unrest. Political tension and distrust. People struggling to buy groceries or navigate a healthcare system that so often feels impossible. Families stretched to the limit, trying to keep it all together. And there’s this constant weight of anxiety that many of us carry daily.

So when Jesus speaks these hard words, it’s not abstract. It’s not distant. It’s familiar.

And for Luke’s audience, it was even more direct. They would have heard this Gospel after the temple had already fallen—after Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem, after the stones Jesus spoke of had been thrown to the ground. Luke isn’t predicting the future; he’s helping a community make sense of a world that has already fractured. He’s giving them a framework to ask faithful questions:

What do we do now? How are we to live? Where do we find our refuge?

Jesus isn’t offering a plan that will let them—and us—avoid hardship. In fact, he says the opposite. Life will include upheaval. Communities will fracture. Hard things will happen. There is really no such thing as getting through unscathed—no matter how carefully we plan or how tightly we try to hold our lives together.

But Jesus is teaching his disciples how to respond. He’s offering a way to live that does not collapse under pressure. And what he tells them is surprising:

“Make up your mind not to prepare your defense in advance.”

On the surface, that feels like the opposite of good advice. Many of us survive by preparing our defenses. We rehearse what we’ll say. We try to imagine every way things could go wrong. We stay vigilant, hoping to get ahead of the danger before it reaches us. Many of us have learned early in life that this is necessary—because the world is not gentle.

But Jesus is not asking his disciples to be naïve. He’s inviting them to be free. Free from fear that eats away at the soul. Free from the illusion that safety comes from self-protection. Free from the tightening posture of defensiveness.

Jesus imagines a different kind of readiness—one rooted not in control, but in presence. In trust. In paying attention to God instead of only scanning for danger.

Luke’s Gospel helps us see that Jesus isn’t predicting every detail of the future. He’s offering meaning and guidance in the midst of difficulty. He’s helping us understand how to live when life feels fragile and uncertain. Refuge, he shows us, is not in the temple, not in political stability, not in other people’s approval. Refuge is found in God.

Even though it’s not Advent yet, the season begins to glow faintly at the edges of this text. Advent is a season of watching and waiting, of staying awake. But it’s not about bracing ourselves against life. Advent invites us to look for the ways God is present, even in the middle of uncertainty. Jesus is forming this posture in his disciples in the unfolding rhythm of their life with him—teaching them, and us, to keep watch not out of fear, but out of hope. To experience the hope Jesus offers, we first have to face reality honestly—our fears, our anxieties, our uncertainties—rather than pretending everything is fine or ignoring the brokenness around us.

Many of us feel like the disciples must have felt: unsettled, uncertain, carrying more than our share of worry. Some of us are overwhelmed by the busyness of our lives—the week where the calendar feels full, the emails we keep meaning to answer, the doctor’s appointment that’s been rescheduled three times. Some of us carry the heavy anxiety that comes when money is tight, food is scarce, or healthcare is fragile. Some of us have lived through family ruptures or friendships that broke unexpectedly. And many of us are simply worn out by the relentless stream of bad news—the headlines that make your stomach drop before you’ve even finished your morning coffee.

So if you hear nothing else today, hear this:

Jesus does not say, “Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen.”He says, “When things fall apart—and they will—do not be afraid.”

And that is a different kind of promise.

It is not a promise that we will avoid wounds. It is a promise that we will not be alone in them. It is a promise that God meets us in the brokenness. It is a promise that even when the world shakes, God does not leave.

Luke’s community needed that assurance. They had lived through trauma. They were trying to figure out how to be faithful in a world that had already changed beyond recognition. And Jesus gives them a framework for meaning-making, not a prediction. He helps them interpret their experiences through the lens of God’s faithfulness.

“Not a hair of your head will perish,” Jesus says. Which does not mean suffering won’t touch us. It means God holds our lives, even in the hardest moments.

This is where defensiveness falls apart and trust begins.

Defensiveness says, “You’re on your own. You have to protect yourself at all costs.”Trust says, “God is with you. You are not abandoned. You do not have to carry this alone.”

This kind of God-centered trust shapes the way we live every day:

If you carry anxiety, Jesus is not scolding you for being afraid. He’s inviting you to release the pressure to manage the future alone. He promises that when the moment comes, the Spirit will give you the words you need.

If your trust has been broken, Jesus isn’t expecting you to pretend. He invites you to stay open—to avoid retreating so far behind your defenses that nothing and no one, not even God’s love, can reach you.

If life’s pace is overwhelming, Jesus invites you into a slower, steadier awareness of God’s presence right where you are—not in some imagined future where everything finally makes sense.

If you live with financial strain or food insecurity, hear this: your worth is not tied to material stability, and your struggle is not a sign of failure. Christ calls us to be a community of refuge for one another—to hold one another in tangible ways, to witness God’s care through our actions. 

If the world feels violent, cruel, or chaotic, Jesus reminds us our call is not to panic, but to bear witness. To notice peace where it exists. To notice love that refuses to vanish. To notice God present in places most people overlook.

This is the posture of readiness Jesus is shaping in us:

Not defensiveness. Not fear. Not frantic attempts to control everything.

But deep, grounded attentiveness to God.

So as we move toward Advent, toward the season where we practice watching for God’s arrival, maybe we can begin practicing now. Not waiting until the candles are lit, but starting here—in the rubble, in the uncertainty, in the world as it actually is.

Advent readiness isn’t about guarding ourselves from pain. It’s about expanding our capacity to hold hope alongside pain. It’s about letting God enter our vulnerability, not hiding it. It’s about trusting that even if we do not get through life unscathed, God gets through to us.

The core of Jesus’ message today is this: our refuge is not in defending ourselves. Our refuge is in God. The same God who held Luke’s community after the temple fell. The same God who held the disciples when they were brought before hostile rulers. The same God who comes to us still—in small, quiet ways—in the middle of our messy, fragile lives.

The world will shake, and things will fall apart—but God is not absent. Perhaps our work is to pay attention, to make meaning, and to recognize refuge when it appears, often in small, unexpected ways. We cannot escape all hardship, and we cannot control everything. But we can pay attention—notice where God is at work, and watch for love, care, and hope quietly showing up around us.

So we watch. We wait. We stay open. And we trust that in the space between fear and hope, God is present with us, guiding, sustaining, and holding us along the way.

And so we pray, may it be true, may it be real among us. Amen.