God of peace,
we ask for your guidance as we prepare for the coming of the Messiah, Emmanuel,
Jesus, God with us. Help us to hear your word, to absorb it and reflect on it,
and to let your word guide every action of our lives. Amen.
This is the time of the year when we are all
encouraged to be good Boy Scouts. Be prepared!
During
the season of Advent, as we prepare for the coming of Christ, the Bible readings
warn us to look for the signs and to remember the prophesies that will indicate
the coming of the Messiah.
Watch out for the signs of what is to come!
The days are surely coming, says the Lord…
Be prepared!
Maybe you remember those popular t-shirts and bumper
stickers from a while back… Jesus is coming. Look busy.
Well, the
Bible readings tell us that we are
supposed to be prepared for the
coming of the Messiah, but looking busy
as we prepare for the birth of Christ is really not the problem that most of us
have.
The bigger challenge for most of us is being able to
honor the third commandment – remember to observe the Sabbath, to take the occasional day of rest from our busy work and holiday prep schedules
– that is the more difficult challenge
for most of us as we prepare for the holiday season.
Somehow, we have taken “be prepared” to the extreme,
and created ways to keep ourselves extraordinarily
busy during this season of Advent.
Sending
cards, shopping for presents, cooking or baking special dishes, figuring out
which family members or friends we can visit and when…
Dealing with year-end workloads in our day jobs or
even looking for an additional source of income so that we can afford to
celebrate festively…
Finishing
handmade gifts, or wondering whether there will be enough money to pay for the special
food or gifts this year…
Realizing that we have no way to be in touch with some
of our family or friends and working hard to cover up our frustration or grief
when others talk about their upcoming celebrations with loved ones…
There’s no doubt, this is a stressful
month for just about everyone.
Advent is the season in the church year that is dedicated to
the preparation for the coming of Jesus on Christmas. Contrary to the secular
holiday season, Advent is meant to be a season of reflection, of preparation
for the coming of the Christ child, of pondering the holy mysteries in our
hearts.
Advent is
sort of the antithesis to Black Friday – instead of running around trying to
find the best deal on things that we want or on presents for others – instead
of avoiding even the grocery store because we don’t want to fight with traffic,
or simply out of protest against consumerism – instead of being self-indulgent
or judgmental, Advent is about being self-aware and reflective, and focused on
our relationship with the divine.
The season of Advent is designed to focus on hope,
joy, peace, and other values that herald the coming of God’s Messiah, in the
person of Jesus.
So we’ve got society’s holiday season and the church’s
Advent season.
Here’s something interesting, though.
Whether
we are frantically trying to meet everyone’s expectations for gift-giving,
card-sending and holiday celebrations, or whether we’re simply reflecting on
holy things during Advent, we still need to take a pretty big leap before we
can be prepared for the coming of Jesus as it is described in the Bible
readings today.
The coming of Jesus promises to be pretty traumatic,
if you believe the Scriptures.
There will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars… there
will be distress among nations… people will faint from fear and foreboding… it
will be a time when justice and righteousness are executed.
That’s
how the Scriptures describe the coming of Jesus.
It’s a far cry from Silent Night, Holy Night.
On this
first Sunday in the season of Advent, we don’t get to hear peaceful stories
about shepherds or sleeping babies. Instead, the Bible readings foreshadow a
pretty distressing series of events to come.
OK, I can guess what some of you are thinking. And you’re right. Today’s
Bible readings are talking about the next
coming of Christ. During the season of Advent, we prepare for his first coming, for his birth as a baby in
Bethlehem.
But remember, the first time that Jesus
came, things didn’t end so well.
Jesus lived a rather nondescript life until he was a
couple years younger than I am now, at which point he started his public
ministry.
His
teachings and miracle working got the attention of the authorities, and they
started to plot ways to get rid of him.
Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest friends, was
arrested and put on trial, and even though the authorities didn’t have a good
reason to execute him, they decided to do so anyway in order to please the
crowds.
Jesus
was put to death in a terribly painful manner, after nearly all of his
followers had abandoned him.
The first time that Jesus came, when he was born as a
baby and placed in a manger, it didn’t end so well for him.
Except, for us,
that first time, it did end well.
God, the
creator of the universe, took on human form in the person of Jesus, an
otherwise normal first century guy living in the Middle East.
This simple Middle Eastern man secured the salvation
of all of humankind.
God took
on the burden of everyone’s sins, and our guilt died with Jesus on the cross.
We no longer need to fear death, because the death of Jesus guaranteed that you
and I have access to eternal life with our creator.
The first time Jesus came, on Christmas, the birth
that ended in death for the sake of humanity, isn’t honored very well by the
excessive busy-ness or consumerism of our society at this time of the year.
So out
of gratitude for Jesus’ first coming, in
the church we take this time every
year to honor and prepare for his birth on Christmas.
But the reflectiveness of Advent doesn’t tell the
whole story either.
The other task for this time of the year, while we
remember and honor Jesus’ first time coming to earth as a human, the other task
is to spend time preparing for Jesus’ coming again, at an as-yet-undetermined time in the future.
You see, the question isn’t when or whether Jesus
will return – no one knows exactly when or how it will happen. All that we know
is that it’s coming.
So the question is, how do we prepare for the
coming of Christ?
One of my seminary
professors writes, the story in “Luke has shifted
the question from “when will these things happen?,” you see, to “how shall we
live in the meantime?” … [S]hifting the question from “when” to “how” invites
us to perceive … the most stunning part of this passage, when Jesus says, “Now
when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because
your redemption is drawing near.”
Davie Lose, …In the Meantime,
http://www.davidlose.net/2015/11/advent-1-c-stand-up-and-raise-your-heads/
Raise up your heads! Pay attention! Be prepared!
Jesus is coming, and we don’t know when, but it is time, now, to get ready.
Getting ready, that question of how to live in the
meantime, is a pretty important duty to figure out.
Jesus
seems to speak in riddles in the Gospel reading from today – pay attention to
the sun and moon and stars, to international politics and to fig trees, he says
– then you’ll know when God’s next big thing is about to happen.
Um… what?
Maybe one of you has a fig tree in your
yard, but I sure don’t.
And based on international politics or weather
patterns or meteor showers or eclipses, well, the second coming of Christ could
be tomorrow. Or it could be in 80 years. Or it could have been 800 years ago.
Those signs are pretty generic. How can we get ready for stuff that seems to be
ongoing?
Thankfully, again, we’re not trying to figure out when – we’re trying to figure out how to pass the time until then. What
should we do in between opening up squares on the Advent calendar, and between
Advent this year and Advent 20 years from now?
The
Thessalonians reading gives us a clue of how to pass the time. Live a life based on love.
May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and
for all … And may [God] so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be
blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.
(1 Thess 3:12-13 NRSV)
The best way to prepare for the coming of Jesus – 2000
years ago on the first Christmas and at an unknown time in the future – the
best way to prepare is to show love for everyone else in the world.
I like
this instruction, because it still allows us to send cards and buy presents and
bake cookies, as long as our motivation for doing so is love for someone else.
The instruction to prepare for the coming of Christ by
loving others also allows us to spend time in worship or quiet prayer, to go to
Bible study, to avoid all signs of commercialism, as long as those things are
done in love.
And this
instruction allows us – encourages us, in fact – to show love in all kinds of
new ways.
Write a card for an inmate at the jail on your way out
of church this morning, or write a letter to your legislator telling them that
you believe it’s important for everyone to have access to food.
Donate
your old winter coat for someone else to use, or donate that unopened can of
cranberries to the food pantry for someone else to enjoy.
Find a way to spend time with other people – connect
with our care team to visit our homebound members, or volunteer at a hospice
facility to help support people in their final hours of life.
Serve a
meal at Luke House or spend a night in a church with homeless folks who are
grateful for the shelter, or with our own confirmation students for a lock-in.
When Jesus comes
into the world, it will shake the universe to its foundations.
That’s what
those signs are all about, those signs that Jesus mentions in today’s Gospel
reading.
Jesus changed reality when he came at
the first Christmas – and Jesus will change reality when he returns.
The only way that we
can prepare for the coming of the Messiah – both on Christmas, and in the
unknown future – is to live a life guided by love.
How would our Christmas preparations change
if we thought of this year’s Christmas as the second coming of Christ?
I’m not talking about
a Jesus is coming, look busy theology
– but if we knew that Jesus was coming back tomorrow – or if we knew that we
only had 25 days to count down the return of the Messiah – how would that
change our holiday celebrations this year?
My encouragement to you, as we enter this
season of Advent, is to be sure that each and every holiday preparation that
absorbs your energy is guided by love for God and others.
Bake bread for the
glory of God. Go shopping for the love of others. Knit a sweater in prayer and
decorate the house with care and peace. Wrap presents lovingly and clean the
house for guests with a song in your heart.
The only way to prepare for the coming of Christ is
with a heart full of love.
And so, sisters
and brothers, as Paul says in his letter to the Thessalonians,
May the Lord make you increase and
abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.
And may [God] so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless
before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Amen.
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