Advent 1 Year C

Here is my sermon from Sunday December 2, 2012. It is the first Sunday of Advent. It also followed on the heels of a memorial service for Bob Hecht, a beloved member of our parish. The preacher at Bob's memorial service helped me finish my sermon for Sunday. I had been working on it, but feeling stuck for a few days-but the memorial sermon helped me to understand something I had been struggling with. 

I was also very glad that we had a wonderful collection of children who took part in our 11:00 am service. They were readers, intercessors, crucifers, announcement givers, and choir singers. And they didn't seem to mind my slightly too long sermon. 

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    I don’t know about you, but when I come to church for the first Sunday of Advent, I come anticipating hearing “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.” I know I should know better. I have been attending church for my entire life, and really should know by now that one has to wait until Christmas time, rather than the season of Advent. But you know, we live in a culture that as soon as the Halloween decorations are down, the greens start coming out, as I leave work here during the week, the lights on the trees along Montague street always seem to leave me singing Christmas carols. I know, I know Advent it not the time for that. We are taught that Advent is the time to prepare.  Advent is a time of thoughtful anticipation. Those of us who have been around the block, well—pretty much everyone here—we know what is coming. We know when Christmas is. It won’t surprise us. The schedule for our Christmastime services has been set and is in your bulletin today. So we are readying our selves for something we are familiar with. I perhaps come to church on the first Sunday of advent preparing to prepare.

            You might know how I felt then when I was reading the texts for today. Rather than, “in those days a decree went out” we hear the prophet Jeremiah telling us that “in those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” Hmm, I thought okay. That’s alright. Then when I got to the gospel, in my spirit of preparing, I was a little jarred by being faced with Jesus, not as an swaddled infant, but rather close to his death. And then rather than talking about our quiet, unassuming preparation, Jesus instead decides to say to us “Be on Guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day will catch you unexpectedly like a trap…” Instead of the be prepared, we hear, Be alert at all times. How are we to understand all of this? How do we understand the differences between preparation and being alert? And then too—how does the preparation of Advent differ from the preparation for Christmas that our culture as a whole does?

            To begin to answer these questions about Advent and preparation, I want to remind all of us that Advent is not just a new season of the liturgical year, it is the beginning of a new year. So happy new year to us all. New Year in the church does not begin with a ball drop preceded by a countdown, it doesn’t begin with resolutions and marking more time. Rather Advent starts with out a bang. Maybe advent starts with the lighting of the candle. Perhaps new year is really the wrong way to think about advent. Unlike new years where everything starts fresh- the first day of the first month with a fresh start to live life differently—instead we start advent by counting up. We count Sundays until we arrive at the moment of God incarnate, the moment of the birth of Christ Jesus. Kids count too—often in advent calendars, counting the days until Christmas is here. The new church year does not begin with a big event, but rather begins with some time to contemplate- what does it mean that God is with us? How do we get ready for God’s self to be among us?

            I think the answer to some of that is to appreciate the season of Advent. Here in church, of course, we mark the season with changes to our liturgical garb, changes in our prayers, the presence of the advent wreath. Unlike Starbucks, CVS and Keyfood you won’t be hearing any Christmas Carols until we reach Christmastime. This reminds us, I suspect, to appreciate the present moment. When we think of Advent as preparation, we perhaps have our eyes too much on the horizon. We have them a little too tuned into Christmas. And it’s not our fault. Everyday we are reminded of Christmas, and that is the thing that is coming. But as much as we need to make sure we are shopping for everyone on our list, pulling out our decorations, and sending off cards, there is something missing in all this busyness, in all this preparation that misses the spirit of the preparation of advent. And I think the thing it might miss is that Advent is not about Christmas. It’s about wanting God to be with us. As our Children’s Choir sung so beautifully this morning, when we hear O Come O Come Emmanuel, we are really truly asking God to be with us. It is in the coming of God, that we understand God’s love for us, and understand the meaning of not just this life, but the life to come through our faith in Jesus as Lord. So how then do we prepare for God to be with us rather than preparing for Christmas?

            Perhaps the passage from the Gospel can offer us a helpful hint. Once we get past the hyper-vigilance that it seems to be advocating, I end up getting focused on Jesus saying "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life,” When I read this to you earlier it was to point out the ways in which this text did not seem like the most advent-y passage of scripture. But when I think about it in terms of preparing for God rather than for Christmas—then I hear something a little more reassuring. I hear this passage reminding us of our dual citizenship as Christians. We live in this world now, but one day, we too will live in another one. If we get too caught up in the things of this world, we might miss the signs, the events, the beauty of what is to come. Perhaps it is helpful during this time of preparation to reflect on what it means for us to be people who live here, but have, by the grace of God, that citizenship to the life beyond too. When the tasks of the holiday parties, and the wrapping of presents, get too be too overwhelmed, perhaps this is a time to free ourselves from the weight of the worries of this life, and spend sometime meditating on the life to come.

            The other sort of helpful hint we get about how to live in this state of preparation is to consider Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. Paul’s letter reminds us of what to do in preparation for Jesus’ coming. His lesson is pretty clear: increase and abound in love for one another and for all. This brief snippet of Paul’s letter reminds us of the ways in which our human relationships, the love we have for each other and for all, we can restore each other’s faith through our relationships. He prays for time to see the Thessalonians to restore whatever is lacking in their faith. He won’t do this by teaching, nor by being an apostle, rather Paul renews their faith by being in a loving, mutual relationship with them. Paul’s letter reminds us this morning of how increasing our love for each other is the preparatory action of Advent.

It would be nice to end this sermon all about increasing our love, but I feel like there is still some unresolved issues with the Gospel. As we consider Paul’s love letter, and our dual citizenship, a final element into the mix is that as we consider Jesus’ second coming, we are reminded that we live in a time in between. As much as we can anticipate Christmas, even as we are trying to live fully in the present moment, we live waiting for something we do not know when it will occur. Jesus in this passage remarks that not a generation will come before he returns in Glory—but we know that didn’t quite happen the way we understand it. There was something about this passage and thinking about the passing of time that I was struggling with. As your preacher for today, I ordinarily like to have the sermon done with plenty of time to spare so that I can practice it, so that I am not stressed out, so that I don’t stress out my family with worry. But this week, I couldn’t get it together. It was a busy week in the office here, with plenty to do—but I can’t really blame the week. I think I just wasn’t understanding something about time. Yesterday at Bob Hecht’s memorial service, Barbara Crafton was our preacher. She said something that helped my thinking. To us, she explained, time has a before and an after, a past and a future. But for God, everything happens all at once. As Barbara preached yesterday, I began to think about what time might have felt like for Jesus while he was with us on Earth. When Jesus came down and shared in our humanity-time passed like it does for us. There were days, weeks and years. But when Jesus ascended into heaven, I wonder if he remembers what it was like to mark time here? Or is it the smashed together time that Barbara spoke about yesterday. It is interesting to think about church time, this new beginning, which is a time of the year anticipating an event that took place two thousand years ago. Thinking about it in the smashed together time—what was, what is, and what is to come—our Gospel passage about the second coming, our counting the weeks until we celebrate Jesus’ fist coming, and just the general mad rush of things at this time of year—helped me to understand the closeness of the birth of Jesus and the yet to come second coming.  We are the generation who live in this in between time. There is something about this In betweeness that is really what Christian discipleship is all about. Knowing Christ has come, knowing he will come again, and in this time getting to know him through the love we have in our human relationships, through the breaking of the bread, and through our gatherings as the body of Christ. And advent is the perfect season for in between  people like us. Something new has started- but it's also something we've experienced countless times and it is not the main event, rather getting ready for it.

And so we begin our church year together, counting four weeks, abounding in our love for one another, living as dual citizens, and considering the closeness of what was, what is and what is to come.