1 ADVENT, YEAR C
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
29 NOVEMBER 2009
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Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 29:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36
“Happy Birthday!” we might say today. And why not, since today is the first day of the new church year, the first Sunday of Advent, Year C, the year of Luke’s gospel, when on Sundays we hear more from Luke’s gospel than from any other? Happy New Year.
But if this is the beginning of something new, why are we hearing about endings? Why is Jesus talking this way? Why do we hear every first Sunday in Advent, about the end of the world and natural disasters and weird things going on with the sun and moon and stars, and wars and other distress? Signs, perhaps, of the coming end of things?
When Jesus talks like this we sit up and take notice. As did his contemporaries. We notice because Jesus seldom talked heaven, much less about the end of the world.
The focus of Jesus’ ministry was on the here and now. The importance of life lived now. Not some future end-time event that even he didn’t know the date of. So when Jesus does talk about the end times, people pay attention
People in Jesus’ day did think the end was right around the corner. Jesus knew the air was full of the subject, in the public square, in households, in synagogues. Even he, it seems, thought the end was near, although he didn’t dwell on it, nor did he know when it would be. By the time Luke wrote his gospel seventy or more years after Jesus died, though,it seemed that the end actually was closer than ever.
In Women’s Bible Study this past Tuesday, we poured over this reading. We pounced on it, the way people must have pricked up their ears when Jesus spoke to them on the topic. Jesus no doubt had figured that it was just a matter of time before the Roman occupiers would tear down the Temple and destroy the people. Political and religious conflicts were seething. And sure enough, at the end of that first century, Luke and the other gospel writers looked around them and saw that it had already happened: the was Temple in ruins, people were slaughtered. The nation was no more, not until 1948, and the Temple remains a ruin. Those were terrible times.
What was the world coming to? When Jesus more or less predicted such things and when the gospel writers wrote about them as current history, people listened. And so do we.
As we women did. We asked lots of questions and scribbled them down on newsprint. Check them out during Coffee Time—those questions might also be your questions! We wrote the questions down. A lot of the questions were about us, since if we are honest, aren’t we, like our ancestors, really interested in this business of end times? Even a little bit?
Advent reminds us that we are a waiting people. That even as we wait expectantly (no pun) for Jesus’ birth, so we also wait for the risen Christ to come again. Our lives are Advent lives, and we are Advent people.
We live in the meantime. Jesus is telling us that. The end is not yet here. We think we know when Jesus came for the first time, but we have no idea when Christ will come in great glory to restore all things to himself. We live in the meantime, in between Jesus’ two comings. And our “meantime,” in between life is what Jesus wants us to pay attention to.
One of the questions on our sheet was this: How can we manage to wait when there’s so much struggle in our lives, even now?
Priest-theologian Henri Nouwen, talks about that question. How do we live in our own chaos right now?
You can, each of you, name your own chaos. Just as people we don’t even know can name theirs, people in our communities, people far away, people pushed to the edges and shadows of the societies they find themselves living in, people not fully included even in the churches they have chosen to belong to. How do we live in our chaos?
We wait, says Jesus. We wait and we watch. We wait and stay alert. Be on guard, he says, so that your hearts are not weighed down.
Preparation and living is a daily project, you see. Waiting in preparation is an activity, not sleepy boredom. Waiting is an attitude, a way of life. And even in the middle of our own mess and struggles, the goodness of God’s presence shows up once in awhile, and sometimes we notice it. Glimpses of the nearness of God’s kingdom.
And Henri Nouwen says: “…stay tuned to the word of God, so that you will be able to stand confidently (con-fide=with trust) in the presence of God.
Here’s a thought from another good man, an Eastern Orthodox Christian who writes about this dark time of year, when the earth begins to seal over in the cold, and the leaves have fallen and have either been raked up or blown away. When the days are short and we turn our lights on at four in the afternoon. “Raise up your heads,” said Jesus. And this Albanian author says, yes, and look at the trees as they are etched against the sky (before 4 P.M.!). Find one tree and notice its branches and twigs. Can you see the crosses there against the sky? In a large tree, hundreds of crosses, signs of resurrection, with buds held tight on the tips of teach twig, waiting, waiting for spring?
We wait in Advent for the birth of Jesus: Christ has come. We wait in bold confidence for Jesus’ second coming: Christ will come again. And we wait in our lives now, in the middle of our own busy-ness and even chaos. We wait by finding ways to be Christ as we serve the world around us. Holy waiting , Advent waiting, is not passive; holy, fruitful waiting plugs us right into our world where we belong and where Jesus was plugged in also. Holy waiting helps us and helps us help others notice Christ-with-us even now, glimpses that peek at us when we least expect them. Like signs of resurrection life in the twigs and branches of trees. Like the gift of Jesus’ own Body and Blood, given over and over again in the bread and the wine.