Advent 1
A 2016
Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
November
27, 2016, St. John’s Sharon
Waiting. Advent is a season of waiting. The very word Advent means that something is
coming, that something is moving toward us, that something will be here.
But not
all waiting is the same, not even all waiting during Advent.
We know
the waiting we will do for Christmas.
Not for the first Christmas – it is hard to wait for something that has
already occurred, although we can prayerfully and liturgically enter into that
first incarnational event. But we wait
for our next Christmas, December 25, 2016.
The season of preparation and waiting for that day really began a few
days ago on Black Friday, but we can transfer the feast to this First Sunday of
Advent. This waiting for Christmas is a
particular kind of waiting because we know when and what we are waiting
for. In four weeks, there will be a
beautiful Christmas service at church, there will be celebrations according to
our own family traditions, and there will be exchanges of gifts. Depending on our age and our particular
outlook, we may wait for those events with different degrees of excitement, preparation,
or even trepidation.
Part of
waiting for Christmas is knowing what we should be doing while we are
waiting. Make the Christmas lists. Buy the presents. Send the Christmas cards. Bake the cookies. Wrap the presents. Put up the Christmas tree. Decorate the house. Take some cookies to the priest. Go to Christmas services. Box up all the cookies and gifts and go to
the Christmas party.
All of
these preparations can be overwhelming, but we know how to do them. And we know what we are expecting when
Christmas comes, at least generally. Sure,
some Christmases are better than others, but we always hope for the best
ones. When we get the toys that we
want. When the snow is beautiful on the
grass but not on the streets so all the family can get home. When uncle Joe comes to dinner before he
started drinking instead of after. When
everybody gets along and the food doesn’t burn and the little ones are happy
and we hear our favorite carols and all seems right with the world, at least
for a while.
This
Christmas waiting is important and takes place during the Advent season, but it’s
not the same as Advent waiting. Advent
waiting is a different kind of waiting. Advent waiting is waiting for a day
that we can’t mark on our calendars.
Advent waiting is waiting that doesn’t steadily rise to a peak of
excitement and get cleanly resolved like a Hallmark Hall of Fame holiday movie. Advent waiting is not waiting for the child’s
gift but waiting for the deepest longing of mature hearts that have become all
too familiar with the world’s brokenness and pain.
Advent
waiting is the waiting for the Messiah to return, and such waiting is the work
of nothing less than a lifetime.
We
practice this waiting in a particular way during Advent, because the
preparation of God’s people for the first coming of the Messiah is the same
kind of waiting we are called to do today. As we read the prophets poetry
describing the details of the great Day of the Lord, we can see parallels of
our own deepest desires. For four weeks,
we focus on stoking the flames of our imaginations as we hear holy language
pointing our hearts in that heavenly direction.
This
morning Isaiah lays out a particular longing of his people preparing for the
coming Christ. Looking around at the
wars laying waste to the house of Jacob, as well as all the nations of the
world, Isaiah envisions a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares and
spears into pruning hooks. When the
Caesars and the Pharaohs, the despots and dictators, and all those relying on
violence to consolidate power and privilege will come to Jerusalem to attend
Sunday School classes. Well, maybe
Sabbath School classes, and maybe not the way we think about them, but Isaiah
depicts them coming to the Mount of the Lord for instruction on how to live
according to the God’s commandments so the world aligns with what the prophets
are waiting for. For the time, as the
prophet Amos describes, when justice will roll down like mighty waters and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream or the time when, as the psalmist writes,
the needy will not be forgotten nor the hope of the poor be taken away. This vision of the great day of the Messiah’s
coming is the deepest longing of people who have seen violence and war and
injustice and oppression, where cities are destroyed, the innocent killed, and
the needy sold for a pair of sandals.
Those of us who have seen war or lost loved ones in war or have been in
countries under the control of violent dictators know the longing for the
coming of the day of the Lord that Isaiah and the prophets describe. With that longing comes the knowledge that
treaties come and go, alliances and cease fires come and go, prosperity and
what passes for peace come and go.
Events during the course of our life may be better or worse, but they
are not ultimately what we are waiting for.
We are waiting for the day Isaiah describes, but we can’t put that date
into our Google calendar and start a countdown.
Our waiting for that day is advent waiting.
Wednesday
our parish lost David Bricker. Friday
was the twelfth funeral so far this year, and a number of other parishioners
are currently in hospice care. Most of
us have lost loved ones – and some of us have lost spouses, children or others
whose deaths have taken a significant part of our own hearts with them. We know that life continues, that we can
still find moments of joy and love, and that new life continues to be born into
our families, but we also know a loss remains that will not go away. That pain and emptiness points us to the
longing for the new life of resurrection. Our deep desire for that resurrection directs
our hearts to that day when the trumpet sounds and the resurrected Lord
returns, bringing the dead up from their graves into the fullness of life in
the new and eternal Jerusalem. Yet our
own preparations can’t hasten that glorious day. Waiting for that day is advent waiting.
We could
all probably look deep inside and find those places where life has scarred us, scarred
our families, and scarred our communities.
Places where the brokenness of our physical bodies, of our emotional
health, and of our longed-for relationships seem impossible to heal. Places where we have done all we can do, yet
where undeniable damage remains. In
those places, we either give in to despair, or we learn the waiting of
Advent. We can open our minds and
hearts to the possibility of a power greater than ourselves who can actually
bring healing and new life. We can come
to trust in the promises of the power of God, not for the Pollyanna pleasures
of a time or a season, but for the recreation of the cosmos at the end of the
long arc that bends towards justice, for the forgiveness of sins that allow us
to live together in an eternal community, and for the resurrection of the body
that allows us to integrate our own scars and stigmatas into an imperishable
body living where there is no pain nor grief, no tears nor sorrow, but where
all eat of the fruit of the trees for the healing of the nations and drink from
the springs of the waters of life. We
can cry out with our entire being for this day of salvation, but we can’t order
it from Amazon Prime for two-day delivery.
We have to wait for it, and we have to wait for it without knowing when
it will come, what exactly it will look like, or how we will be changed as we
wait. But we will wait for that day
regardless.
Waiting
for that day is Advent waiting, waiting for a time we can’t know, for gifts we
can’t wrap, and with a guest list we can’t even imagine. Advent waiting is waiting for what is
entirely in the hands of our heavenly Father.
However,
while we wait with deep longing for that day, our readings advise us to do two
things. The first comes from Paul, who
tells us not to fill that space inside us that longs for Christ’s coming with
distractions. He says to put away
revelry and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarrelling and
jealousy. We are always tempted to fill
up the painful parts of our lives with food, drugs, violence, greed, and
anything else that provides a strong enough stimulant to dull our pain. Don’t do it, Paul says. Instead, wake up and actively wait for the
day. Let our longing propel us to pray
harder and get closer to Jesus. Let the
holes in our hearts be hollowed out into the shape of the Messiah such that no
one and no thing but Jesus could possibly fill them. Let us learn to reject anything less than the
final fulfillment of our Advent waiting.
Then in
the gospel today, Jesus says that people will be going about their daily lives
when he does finally come. People will
be marrying and working in the fields and doing all the various things we
do. We have to do all the stuff of life
while we are waiting. But he also tells
us not to forget to wait. The work of
this life is important -- it just isn’t a substitute for the Advent waiting for
the next life. We are to go about our
business, but not forget to practice waiting while we do so.
Advent
is the time for us to practice waiting.
We wait for the return of the Messiah.
We wait for the fullness of the Kingdom of God. We wait for the resurrection of ourselves and
those we love. We wait without knowing
the day or the hour or precisely what that day or hour will look like. We wait knowing we may leave this life before
finding the fulfillment of what we are waiting for. This Advent, however, ultimately we wait,
because we know that Christ is coming.
Come Lord, Jesus. We are waiting
for you.
