First Sunday of Advent

Sermon for Hope Episcopal Church
The Reverend Martha Frances
Year C, The First Sunday of Advent
3 December 2006

RCL Text: Luke 21: 25-36

Other Readings: Jeremiah 33: 14-16; I Thessalonians 3: 9-13; Psalm 25: 1-9

Do you remember the movie The Titanic: a story of contrasts, of cataclysm, of young love beginning & an old world ending? A young debutante boards the luxurious ocean liner planning to fulfill her mother’s expectations that she marry well, thus saving the family name & reputation & providing for her own & her mother’s financial & social future. On this voyage, she meets her true love, the guy from the wrong side of the tracks, & chooses to forego fortune & security for the man of her heart & dreams. Meanwhile, the old world order, with its latest in shipbuilding genius & Victorian opulence, disintegrates into unbelievable disaster. For the folk aboard the Titanic, the apocalyptic prophecies of Jeremiah & St. Luke were coming true. For both the young society maiden personally & for the rather rigorously-ordered society in which she lived, the old was washed away & a vastly different world begun.

Our readings today depict the world’s end & the day when the Lord becomes King arriving for the listeners. Jesus announces the nearness of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God with cosmic signs of the sun, moon, & stars, the roaring & waves of the sea, & nations confused. People react with fear & foreboding because the powers from heaven will be shaken; then the Son of man will come in a cloud. Sounds a lot like a scene from The Titanic or another disaster film produced in the last several years, doesn’t it? What on earth is all this about? Movies like The Titanic, based on actual historical events, help make such Biblical prophecies more real to us. It’s possible that for most of us, events have happened which have turned our lives upside down, & our worlds as we knew them have come to an end.

At Thanksgiving of 1973, snug in our apartment in Munich, Germany, with my precious 11-month-old son & a mischievous 3-year-old, I was fulfilling a dream of living overseas. My husband returned from work one night to inform me he didn’t want to be married any more & was going off to take care of starving people in Ethiopia. My life as I had known it was over. He never made it to Ethiopia; we returned Stateside where we tried unsuccessfully to put our marriage back together. His heart was not in the marriage’s survival, & I found that God could do for my boys & me what we could not do for ourselves, so the 3 of us began a new life in Houston. Eventually, I met & married a wonderful man who adopted the boys, my soul-mate Bill who died just recently after our 24-year marriage.

Disasters happen in all our lives, yet God provides opportunities for new beginnings just as I had with Bill. You may be going through such an earth-shaking event right now. Just such an experience of endings & beginnings our scriptures illuminate today. How appropriate are these readings at the beginning of a new year! Remember that in our church year, our liturgical year, today is New Year’s Day. During Advent, we liturgical Christians are truly out of sync with the larger society as we begin the preparation time marked by 4 Sundays leading up to Jesus’ birth. Many centuries ago in Gaul—our present-day France—people found they needed time before the Christmas celebration itself to ready their hearts & minds for the birth of the Christ child. We now call this time Advent—Latin for “coming” or “arrival.” Now, we don’t just remember the birth of a baby in Nazareth 2000 years ago—give or take a decade—for we also ready ourselves for Jesus to arrive anew in our lives to dwell within us for the next year, & then we look forward to the time when Christ will return at the end of time to take us all to himself with God our heavenly parent.

Now we all know Christmas is going to come whether we’re ready for it or not. When our 4 boys were young (Bill brought 2 boys into the marriage also), they used to moan that they couldn’t wait until Christmas. Meanwhile, I was about to panic, feeling there wasn’t near enough time to do all that needed to be done before December 25th. As we headed to Midnight Mass every year, I would still be marking chores off my list & making yet another list to get done after church when the boys were safely in bed. Does this sound familiar? So why do we need preparation time for a festival that will happen anyway? Is Advent just another thing to DO during an already heavily-scheduled season? I declare today, on the 3rd of December 2006, that it doesn’t have to be. Actually, as I’ve begun to take Advent seriously over the past few years, this season has become simpler for me.

The 4 Sundays of Advent with their scriptures remind us to be vigilant & watch for the last days, to enter courageously into God’s reign to meet Jesus Christ, both as an enfleshed human being entering into our world to truly be with us, but also as the Lord of our lives as he comes to judge at the end of the world. Each week as we come to church & hear these great end-time prophecies heralding the beginning of another world order, as we sing of signs of endings all around us, we have opportunity to ask ourselves what we’re doing the other days of each week of Advent, especially this year when there are only 3 weeks. Are we so worried about preparations for Christmas, either figuring out what to give our loved ones or feeling bad that we can’t afford to give what we’d like to, that we miss the point of the whole holiday/Holy Day?

My years as vicar of Lord of the Streets certainly helped me rearrange my priorities for the Advent season. Somehow, getting just the right decoration for the tree or delicacy to serve at the Christmas dinner seems petty when one works daily with folks who need a warm coat to protect them & a safe place to spend a sober New Year’s when one is newly sober oneself.

We learn much from each week’s Advent readings about the God who calls us to repentance & new life as well as about who we are called to be. St. Luke tells us this God/judge has an expectation that good things will happen, that the fig tree sprouting leaves will soon bear good fruit, & that God’s reign is already coming upon us. Does this sound much like a judging God whom we should fear? Jesus calls us, the faithful, to stand & raise our hands in joy since our redemption is drawing near? Only in this passage does Luke use the word “redemption,” so we probably ought to pay attention to it. How many are old enough to remember redemption centers for Green Stamps? We saved books of stamps we received when we bought groceries or gas or something (double stamp day on Wednesdays meant a crowded grocery store), & we could get wonderful household goods in exchange for those stamps, almost as if we were getting free prizes! I didn’t like licking all the stamps to put in the books, but I was thrilled as a newlywed when I had saved enough stamps to get my maple table & chairs. Michael & Sara still use that table today though neither is old enough to remember Green Stamps!

During Advent, we await the coming of Jesus the King eagerly & actively, just like we used to stick those stamps in their books. We prepare our lives for the King’s arrival. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians—& tells us—he prays God will restore whatever is lacking in their faith, making them—& us—increase & abound in love for one another & for all others. Life was difficult for the early Christian community just as it is at times for us, & St. Paul urges us not to give up. He prays that God will strengthen our hearts in holiness so we might be blameless before God at the coming of Christ Jesus.

How may we prepare our lives for Christ’s coming at Christmas? I hope you ponder this question prayerfully this week, but I have some suggestions: We can make a commitment to Sunday worship & even perhaps to Wednesday healing service & the two special Advent events. We might reevaluate activities which clutter our lives between now & Christmas, choosing from the glut of busyness those events & activities which enrich our lives or those of others. We can wake up each day with an attitude of gratitude for our lives & then watch for chances to behave in a grateful manner to those we meet. We can respect the dignity of all the people we meet, even if they do something which irritates us. We can ask Jesus to show us ways to do something for others, to focus on what we can give instead of what we receive. We can buy gifts for the young men out at Boys’ & Girls’ Country, bring goods for the Christmas food baskets, & perhaps even catch up on our 2006 pledge &/or make one for 2007. In what other ways can you give this Christmas to those who cannot reciprocate with a gift for you?

St. Paul recognized the holiness of the Thessalonians, telling them they could be blameless before God. We can ask God to continue to create us so we can be all God intends us to be. Perhaps you can give some time as a volunteer at a shelter or to help feed the homeless, not just at Christmas, but perhaps on the 20th of March or the 15th of August. How about volunteering at MANNA? Harold or JoAnn will tell you what is needed there. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that one reason for such

charitable actions is that when we behave in such a giving manner toward others, we are doing good works unto Christ himself. However, during this Advent season, I urge you to undertake charitable deeds for the sake of the discipline which we develop as disciples. As our new year begins, may we be willing for Christ to enter the new nooks & crannies of our hearts that God’s reign may break into our hearts & lives & those of the Christian communities of which we are a part.

I pray that throughout the weeks of Advent, each of us allows God to cast the works of darkness out of our lives so we can be filled with God’s light as the Light of Christ enters the world once again at Christmas. I pray we allow that light within us to shine into others’ lives for God’s glory.

Let us pray:

Come as the wind & cleanse,
Come as the tie & bind,
Come as the fire and burn;
Convict,
Convert,
Consecrate,
Until we are wholly thine.

Amen.