ADVENT Sunday stretches the human imagination beyond individual experience. So, the Gospel begins with a cosmic warning. The “powers of the heavens will be shaken” at the coming of the Son of Man, Luke says. Commentators suggest that he is following Mark 13.25 (inspired by Isaiah 34.4), in which the stars fall from heaven. This is a reference to the end time in general.

But the warning is more than a dramatic backdrop. We must take into account these “powers of the heavens”. If they are shaken, is it because the Son of Man wants to destroy them? Surely anything connected with “the heavens” relates to God; so why should it fall?

We could point to other New Testament writings. In Revelation 21, the ending of the first heaven is a necessary prelude to the coming of Christ. Ephesians 6.12 is a warning against “the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”.

Apparently, not everything in heaven is heavenly. Even the highest realms of the created order are finite, imperfect. So, the coming of the Son of Man will not just perfect this earthly realm by purging it of bitter things (in the words of the hymn): it will begin anew. What comes after Christ’s appearing, judging, and reaping will be beyond anything that we can ask or think (Ephesians 3.20).

Now we turn to the “easier” part of the Gospel — easier, that is, inasmuch as it speaks of human existence, in which we all share, both through personal experience and by means of empathy. Because we cannot understand the apocalyptic truths revealed in verses 25-28, Jesus makes a concession to our limitations. He follows those truths with the parable of the fig tree; so now we can reason from a place of familiarity to a place of imagination.

Sometimes, I point out examples of a translation resisting the straightforward sense because of an assumption about what the text ought to mean. In verse 34, though, the translation is sound, but the logic is puzzling: “Be on your guard that your hearts are not weighed down with intoxication, drunkenness, and cares.” How can it make sense to lump together “drunkenness” and “cares” as things that obstruct our awareness of the second coming?

Drunkenness is easy to understand as burdensome. It dulls the mind. Drunks are not usually alert. Cares and worries, on the other hand, are things that we think of ourselves as suffering, not choosing. Anxiety for the well-being of family, say, or the future of the planet, cannot in itself be sinful. But this passage suggests that this first day of the Christian New Year is an opportunity to reflect on our cares and worries, and ask ourselves how they may be hindering us.

Intoxication is a way of avoiding reality. It precipitates disintegration, because we can run from reality, but not outrun it. It provides a fake refuge from the truth of existence because none of us can hide for ever from who we are, and there can be no real happiness in a life of self-delusion.

Christians ought to know this. Our habit of confession exposes us to the weekly — even daily — necessity of acknowledging that “we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and done those things which we ought not to have done.” But, when it comes to the “worries” or “cares” that the Gospel sweeps into the same category as drunkenness, there is a danger of misunderstanding the message in a way that could cause guilt or distress.

The word translated as “cares”, or “worries”, merimna, refers to what is trivial and fleeting; unworthy of our focus or brain-time. When scripture tells us to set our hearts on what is above, not on what is on the earth (Colossians 3.2), it does not mean that being anxious is a sin. In a step forward for humankind, anxiety has come to be regarded as an affliction that, if not curable, is certainly manageable.

Jesus was condemning preoccupations as a form of idolatry, because they tempt us into pushing our energy and attention on to things that do not deserve them. At heart, this is the emotional equivalent of drunkenness: to use material goods or temporal objects of desire to switch off our capacity to see ourselves — and the world — in godly, righteous, and sober truth.