December 2, 2007 Sermon
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Advent 1 - A
December 2, 2007 Allan Conkling
"You're just going to have to wait." How many times have we heard that said? Ask any group to make a quick list of things that they have had to wait for in their lives and you will come up with as many answers as there are people. Sometimes the event is joyful--like a child's birthday or Christmas morning. Sometimes the event is frustrating: "When can I get my driver's license? Can I go out on Friday night? Can I take the car? We have all had those times when waiting is an eternity: for a wedding less than a week away...a spouse coming home from the war...saving enough to buy your first home...graduation...going on vacation...the birth of a baby. If the wait is for something like a biopsy or CAT scan it can seem forever. We can cry out like the Psalmist, "How long O Lord?" But the answer is always the same: "You're just going to have to wait." Are you waiting for something right now? If so, what are you doing in the mean time? How are you preparing yourself emotionally and mentally for the event?
Today begins the new church year. Advent, as the first season of that year brings us, as it always does, to the intersection of God's time and our time. Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter: a time of thoughtful preparation; a time to make ready; a time to anticipate history's most important event, the Incarnation. It is also a time of waiting.
More and more we Episcopalians find ourselves out of step with most other Protestant churches. Most churches don't do Advent at all, which is always strange to me. Most Protestant churches you go into this morning will either be singing Christmas carols, or doing nothing. It may be a bit of arrogance on my part but I think that if we were to lose Advent we would lose Christmas. In spite of all of the holiday rush-- and please don't hear me say that I am criticizing the retail business, since this is their big time of year--we in the church need to step back, remain calm, and let this season guide us toward the deeper meanings of Christmas. I feel like a parent when I say, "You're just going to have to wait."
Today we are
counting down until the end of time. Advent is about the end, the
gathering in of all history into God. This seems out of place, but in
reality, the "final coming" is not so much about the end of the world as
it is the beginning of our life in Christ. Paul in
"You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep."
The Peterson translation says it this way:
"Make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can't afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers..." (Rom. 13:11-13
Advent's purpose in the grand scheme of things is to help us remember our place in the grand scheme of things. It serves to remind us that we are forever dependent not upon our selves or our own resourcefulness, but upon God, our Creator and Sustainer. We are planted firmly in the present, and since the shape of our future is sure, we can focus our concern for living this life "in the meantime" trusting in Christ that the future will take care of itself.
And this is how we wait: by walking in the light of the Lord (Isa. 2:5). "I do believe..." says one writer,
"That life here is but a limited and finite image of a full life, which is limitless and infinite. I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be...and to call people into the depths of their own capacity to believe."
When the world around us is in high gear it may hard to slow down and wait on the season of Advent to unfold. On the other hand, it can be a blessing:
One who thus
endureth bright reward secureth,
Come, then, O Lord Jesus, from our sins release us;
Let us here confess thee till in heaven we bless thee.
(Hymn 53, v.4)
"You're just going to have to wait."
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