O
God be in my mouth as I speak for you and fill this place with your great grace
that we may leave this place less of what we use to be and more of what we
ought to be, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Keep
Awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
All
right time for personal confession….
I
use to be a complete and utter Advent snob…..
you
know the kind of person I mean…always pointing out to people in the middle of Jingle
Bells that it isn’t really Christmas …..
that
the real Christmas Season actually starts on the day of Christmas….not
before……..
I
was the kind of person that couldn’t believe that the whole commercial world
was so blind to the church’s liturgical calendar……
My
snobbery started when I was a child in third grade….Mrs. Jelks “our church
choir director” explained to us that the Christmas season lasted for twelve
days through Epiphany…
Instead
of jumping the gun on Christmas, the Episcopal Church celebrated an important
four Sunday season called Advent…..that instead of “lords a leapin and ladies
dancing” had its own set of powerful symbols….
There
was the advent wreath set up in church and in some of our homes with five
candles; three purple, one pink and a large white candle in the middle that was
lit on Christmas Eve….
My
personal favorite as a child was the good old Advent calendar…open a window
each day and Santa’s annual visit to our house got closer and closer….I
especially liked the ones that came with chocolate…..
Advent
also had special carols…, O Come O Come Emmanuel…Come thou long expected
Jesus which use to the be the very first hymn in the old Episcopal hymnal….
Of
course, the one problem I found with being an “Advent snob” is that even though
you get on your soap box each year….you find after awhile that no really one
cares…
and
if you are not careful the Advent snob can easily become an Advent scrooge….
So
fortunately in the past few years I have managed to get over myself…..and join
lustily into the singing of “Winter Wonderland”…..
However
I still love Advent and the stories that we hear in Holy Scripture this time of
year….
There
are Zechariah and Elizabeth a childless couple waiting for the birth of their
Son, John, who will announce to the world the arrival of God’s son.
We
hear about a young woman living in a small town called
On
the banks of the
These
are different stories than what we traditionally hear this time of year…. and
that is another reason, I appreciate Advent so much, it is a church season that
staunchly resists commercialization…
John
the Baptist is not yet an action figure….nor has he showed up as a lighted
figure on someone’s lawn….
So
although Advent comes without the trappings of our commercial Christmas, the
stories that we hear during the next four weeks, remind us that Advent is a
time of great hope…a time of great expectation for the coming of our savior…..
Advent
is about waiting….Advent is about preparing ourselves……
At
the same time….Advent has a much darker side….
This
is a theme that we see played out in scripture and in our collect for this
First Sunday….
and
on the surface this Advent theme might seem to many of us less optimistic…
In
our collect we hear, the words, In the last day, when he shall come again in
his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead..
Or
in the Epistle, For salvation is nearer to us now then when we first believe…
And
in our gospel lesson from St. Matthew….
Watch
therefore for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming….therefore you
must be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect…..
All
of these selections from scripture highlight an aspect of Advent that doesn’t
seem to mesh with the joyous preparations that go along with the Christmas
season.
It
is the theme of Christ’s return, the end of time, and Christ’s final judgment
of humanity that is set before us on the first Sunday of Advent…
The
end of the world is a popular cultural image for us. Hardly a year goes by that
Or
we see it featured on supermarket tabloids that tell us that someone somewhere
has finally solved all the puzzles of notradamus’s sayings and they alone know
when the end of the world is actually coming.
Despite
our own good-natured scoffing at these more outrageous claims, I have come to
believe that before we can really celebrate Christmas, the birth of God’s son,
we need to remind ourselves that one day we will be judged by the returning
Christ.
Advent
is a time to term with our own sinfulness, our own brokeness, and ultimately
the simple fact that each of us one day will die.
This
theme of final judgment found the in advent season is really about Christians
coming to terms with their own mortality.
And before we can know the joy and hope that the angel brings to Mary, we have to face the Good Friday days of life. We have to acknowledge that most of us to quote a popular writer are “both functional and lost”.
In
this sense, Advent is an invitation from God to start to find our way home like
the prodigal son or daughter. Advent is about acknowledging the pain of human
life, the burden of our past failures, and the anxieties about what the future
holds for our lives.
Thomas
Merton put it this way, when he wrote, Advent is the beginning of the End of
all that is in us that is not yet Christ.
In
order to understand the joy that Christmas will brings into our hearts, we have
to understand that Advent starts with how things are going to end.
God
created this world…and one day God will bring this world and our lives to final
completion…
This
might seem pessimistic for a season based on hope but we should remind
ourselves that Christianity first arose in a time of great persecution…the
Romans were suspicious of this new cult that claimed to have a new king….
and
the Jewish religious leaders of the first century…were unsure what to make of
this group of men and women that claimed Jesus a man crucified by the Romans
was alive and was in fact the long awaited Messiah…
The
response of these early believers to persecution was to remind themselves that
one day Christ would return….Christ would vindicate his followers and punish
those who did not believe.
This
probably strikes many of us today, as vindictive or petty….but for those who
were suffering….this image of a returning Christ was not a symbol of fear,
instead it was a story that gave them hope and inspired their dreams about the
future.
Many of you have probably seen the Christmas cartoon, Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer. Remember the island of misfit toys. Remember the toys waiting around the fire on Christmas eve, wondering if Santa has remembered to pick them and to find a home for each one of them….
Remember
what the doll tells her friends around the fire, when she is at her lowest
point, when she thinks that Christmas has once again come and that they have
been forgotten, she says to the others, “I haven’t any dreams left to
dream.”
Advent is the time of year where in the midst of our fears….in the darkest night of our own souls, we look confidently to the future and say, as a church our hopes and dreams come from our reliance on God alone…
This
trust is precisely what Jesus took with him to the cross on Good Friday…..he
did not have any guarantees from God about what was to come….but what he did
have was absolute trust and faith in God’s plan for his future…..
For
on the First Sunday of Advent we are reminded that God’s promise is not only
found in the birth of a child, but is also found in the hope and the dreams we
share as a church about the kingdom that is to come….
This
Advent season I want to encourage prodigals like you and me, to come back home,
to rediscover the dreams that God has for each of our lives….and ask ourselves
the most important question of all…are we ready for that kind of dream…..
Keep
awake my friends for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…..