The Lo-Fi Gospel Minute | Nov. 24, 2025
Many of you probably know this already, but this is the turning of the liturgical year. Sunday was Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the liturgical year. The Sunday after Thanksgiving is the first Sunday of Advent and thus the first Sunday of the liturgical year.
I don’t know about you, but I am entering this new liturgical year tired. I don’t know that I have it in me to “wait for the LORD.”
The relentless news cycle, which simply highlights the relentless news, exhausts me. What the President has done, what the President has not done, and the political foolishness and even cruelty of those who follow him so closely, is a constant assault.
And yet, this is a time much like other times. This is a time of madness.
During Advent, we hear a great deal from the eschatological witness within Christian scriptures. John of Patmos figures prominently in the lectionary. Depending on one’s theological and interpretive lens, John was writing about the end times. And he was writing about all times. All times, you see, are end times. John was writing about Rome and Israel and other powers and principalities of his day. He was writing about the Church and its complicity and complaints. He was writing about martyrdom and sanctification in the midst of political turmoil. He was writing about the King who always returns, the Lamb that was slain, and who rises again.
This is the thing about eschatology. It is the deepest truth about every present moment.
Jesus returns. That’s what he does. He returns. He is nailed to the cross. He is victorious in resurrection. This cycle is an ongoing reality within Christian cosmology. There is no date far off in the future where Jesus will come back and everything will be shiny happy people holding hands. Rather, Christian eschatology is about living in the present moment completely.
God does judge us. Have no doubt. But God is the judge whom you desire.
God is merciful and just. God is love. You want no other judge. No other judge will see you for the complexities that you are. No other judge will know your heart in the same way.
And, thank God, we are judged every day and found to be loved. This is the heart of eschatology. Damnation is real. But salvation is more so.
I am stumbling toward Advent because I am struggling to live into the promise of the Gospel. I am struggling to live into hope. Hope is a muscle but I am tired.
God does judge us. Have no doubt. But God is the judge whom you desire.
I want to believe that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. I want to believe in the prophetic witness of Micah and Amos. I want to believe that Isaiah is the highest form of truth telling. But I am finding it very difficult these days. And yet…
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. — Martin Luther King Jr., “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” sermon given at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, May 17, 1956.
I cannot rest on privilege. There is work to do. Reality checks help.
Calamity abounds. Statistics demonstrate that our world is less violent than it used to be. Yes, less violent. But that does not mean it is not still violent. Violence, too, abounds.
It is in our failure to respond to the climate crisis. It is in our global economic malfeasance. Billionaires should not exist.
It is in the intentional starvation of entire peoples. Genocide is still considered a viable political option by the powerful.
Even in places like America, where we thought ourselves immune to such violence, we are seeing a rise in the reality of and the promise of political violence. ICE is abducting anyone they desire. We are on the verge of political collapse. And the poor become more poor while the rich become richer.
The Beatitudes are all but forgotten in the most popular form of Christian expression in our country, American Evangelicalism. Blessed are the poor? Blessed are those who mourn? Woe to those who have much? No longer. Jesus carries a gun, not a cross.
Image Courtesy of Tripp Hudgins
Maybe Jeremiah Wright was correct in his abjuration several years ago. Our chickens have come home to roost. We have to wake up if we are going to do the work of healing the soul of America.
Well what’s John a writing? Ask The Revelator. What’s John a writing? Ask The Revelator. What’s John a writing? Ask The Revelator. A book of the seven seals.
I pray for judgement. I pray for God to come again in Jesus. I will wait.
I can be tired. But I cannot give up the work.
Advent approaches and I am stumbling.
The Rev. Tripp Hudgins
The Rev. Tripp Hudgins, who describes himself as "Anglo/Baptist," is pastoral director of Richmond Hill, a retreat center dedicated to racial healing in Richmond, Va. This post is republished with permission from his Substack blog. Subscribe.