Banksy, Jesus, and Emergency Preparedness: The First Sunday in Advent

Over at the Ekklesia Project’s blog I have a new post reflecting on the gospel reading for this first Sunday in Advent.  Below is the start with the full text after the jump.

Preparing for Disaster

First Sunday of Advent, Year C (RCL)
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

We’ve become all too familiar with disasters and the whole genre of reporting them (is there a disaster TV cable channel yet?).  The reporter, looking like some alien that dropped from the sky, surrounded by a landscape of devastation. There are the stories about hope, the stories about good neighbors, the stories about this or that agency not doing enough, and then there seems to always be the guy who didn’t see it coming.  The “I was just going to wait it out” kind of guy.  You have to wonder about those people—every siren is going off, the new channels shriller than ever, big winds sweeping through and yet they decide to just sit there until the flood waters come in and they swim through their front door.  They just can’t believe that the way things were is all going away. Read More