Advent Sunday
The night is far spent. The day is at hand.
Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness
and let us put on the armor of light.
Let us walk honestly as in the day.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today marks the beginning of the season of ADVENT, a time of preparation, a time of going toward the coming again of the Messiah, a time of great expectation and great anticipation. But exactly what is it that we anticipate? What are we getting ready for? What do we expect to happen? Do we anticipate the end of the world, as some religious cults always do at this time of the year? Are we preparing our hearts and spirits to receive again the coming the coming of the Christ child into the world? Or are we preparing for yet another month-long shopping spree that some have called "economic first-degree murder" – willfully and with malice aforethought murdering our bank accounts? Or maybe we’re getting ready for the seven to ten pounds the average American will gain during the season (Lord, please let me be an underachiever this year!)? Or are we preparing for the suicidal traffic jams at Pinnacle Point Promenade Mall in Rogers, or the general atmosphere of surliness and desperation? (A couple of days back I remember hearing on the local news that some where shoppers were actually coming to blows for the right to buy a Play Station III!)
Are we getting ready for the depression, the anxiety, and even the rage that accompanies the secular holiday season? If we allow ourselves to get caught up in the consumer Christmas – and I firmly believe that we in America celebrate two separate events on December 25 – we can easily find that instead of preparing to sing "O Holy Night" we will find ourselves living out one holy nightmare.
For the many who faithfully observe the consumer Christmas, ADVENT is the inevitable prelude to disappointment. For the majority of these folks, Christmas somehow hardly ever measures up to their fantasies. Even for those who manage to have some of their Christmas wishes fulfilled, the season is over so quickly that the need to make New Year’s resolutions to lose those added pounds, or to be more patient with all those idiots who somehow managed to get a driver’s license bears down on them even before the decorations come down.
But the ADVENT we celebrate in the church – the one that has nothing at all to do with the number of shopping days left until Xmas – is altogether different. The hanging of the greens, the placement of the poinsettias, the lighting of the first ADVENT candle – all these invite us to dream dreams of a better world, to allow expectant visions that have nothing to do with sugar-plum fairies to dance in our heads. ADVENT invites us to fill the cup of today with a full measure of tomorrow.
What sort of images come to your mind when you think about ADVENT? Maybe you remember a classic work of art showing the journey to Bethlehem, the nativity, or the adoration of the Christ Child. Or maybe your traditional symbols of the season include the huge, brightly-lit tree on the White House lawn, or the one in Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The way we see ADVENT and Christmas will determine our approach to the celebration. Is the essential work of ADVENT hanging decorations or is it more about opening our lives to the coming Christ and learning to live in peace? Will Christmas come only if we do all the right things to get ready for it? Or, is Christmas a gift from God that arrives whether we’re ready for it or not?
Even a casual reading of the Bible reveals that the ADVENT of God is much more about surprise than predictability, more about revelation than decoration. Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I think it’s wonderful that we place poinsettias in the sanctuary in memory of loved ones that are no longer here with us and hang the greens and place candles in the windows and maybe even put up a Christmas tree. But the message of ADVENT is not "Put up the decorations! Here I come!" but "Watch and wait! You must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."
Christmas will come whether we get ready for it or not. You need to hear that again: Christmas will come whether we get ready for it or not. Christ will come whether we’re ready or not. How many times have I heard folks say things like, "It can’t be ADVENT already – I haven’t even made out my shopping list yet!"? "Christmas can’t come yet! I haven’t even brought the decorations up from the basement!" Why do we assume that Christmas can only come if WE make all the proper preparations?
The truth of the matter is that God’s entrance into our lives in the person of Jesus Christ occurs at God’s initiative and not ours. Christ arrives in our midst not as a reward for our careful preparation for his coming, but as a result of the love and compassion of God. Christ comes to us whether we’re ready or not.
In the Gospel reading for today from St. Matthew, we see Jesus entering the city as a true king, a conquering hero amid the cheers and adoration of the masses. It is with his triumphant entrance into the city and the latter cleansing of the temple that he knowingly sets into motion the chain of events that will lead him to Golgotha. All this will come to pass because of the birth of the Savior of all mankind as small defenseless babe in a humble stable in Bethlehem.
ADVENT invites us to look to the future, but its most demanding challenge and most exciting promise come in the announcement that the present is Kingdom time, too. The incarnation – God coming to dwell in human flesh – declares that the cup of the present is filled to overflowing with the presence of God. Whether we consider the present to be sunny and bright, fair to partly cloudy, or dismal and gloomy; God sends the Messiah to come to life in it. Elsewhere, Matthew describes the gift of the season of ADVENT with a single word, my personal favorite of all the "Christmas words" – Emmanuel, God with us. Not God HAS BEEN with us; not God WILL BE with us; but God WITH us, right now, TODAY!
The message of ADVENT is that each moment has eternal significance, that the God of all things past and things future, is also the God of the here and now. God invites us to live in the present in expectation and awareness of the fact that eternal realities can and do break in at any moment.
And so this morning ADVENT is here, and now is the time to look at the quality of our waiting. Are we passively waiting, or are we "walking in the light of the Lord" while we actively await his coming? Jesus has told us that the kingdom of God is "breaking in" (an interesting choice of words). All of Jesus’ preaching and teaching has been aimed at helping us to understand what the kingdom of God is like. Those who take seriously the kingdom of God as Jesus teaches it must know clearly and well that our work is not over when we have preached "repent and be saved."
"Jesus is coming soon" is not the whole message. There is much more to the Gospel than that. Christian living is not a simple matter that can be summed up in a cliché or pious pronouncements.
ADVENT challenges us to hear and believe the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. That challenge doesn’t call us to be so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly good, to become so starry-eyed over the future that we overlook the present.
ADVENT reminds us that God often breaks in to our lives unexpectedly. We cannot know the time or the day of our next encounter with the holy. Neither can we predict whether that meeting will be a joyful experience of forgiveness and peace, a call to repentance and responsibility, or some combination of the two (as I suspect it will be). But we can realize that it will come and attempt to be ready and actively waiting.
So now, the greens have been hung, the candles have been placed in the windows, the poinsettias are in their proper places, and the first ADVENT candle has been lit. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the song says. But are we ready for Christmas yet? I don’t think so. I think that’s why there are FOUR Sundays in ADVENT.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
