O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Amen.
So today is the first Sunday of Advent. What is Advent you might ask? I’m sure all recognize it as that season that the Church does between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but seems disjointed and has nothing to do with the rest of the world. After all, it’s Christmas already, right? Shopping lists are made, perhaps you braved the crowds this weekend and did some shopping. Santa Claus has come down 34th Street in the parade. I’ve noticed that many of my neighbors have had Christmas decorations up for over a week now. Maybe the Church should just concede defeat and go ahead and celebrate Christmas for the whole month of December since no one really pays attention to Advent anyway.
But maybe not. What if Advent was the key to having a joyful Christmas, a Christmas that truly fills us instead of just giving us stockings filled with things we could live without, a Christmas where we really proclaimed the birth of the Messiah in our world? What if we put as much energy into Advent as we did Christmas? I encourage and charge you all to celebrate Advent this year.
So, what is Advent? Advent comes from a Latin word which means “coming.” Advent is the season where we anticipate Christmas. It’s a tough season because we are celebrating the already but not yet. Already Christ was born in a manger nearly 2,000 years ago, but it’s not yet time to be celebrating that right now. Advent is a wonderful and splendid season. It has been said that if Christmas is the season where we celebrate the rebirth of hope, that Advent then is the season where we hope for rebirth.
Advent is a time to slow down and reflect. There is a reason why December seems more stressful than the rest of the year: shopping to do, parties to plan, holiday gatherings that you have to suffer through, extra stress at work because co-workers take time off. Plus, it gets dark earlier, which just makes it feel as if there are fewer hours in the day. Let Advent be your excuse to slow down. Use Advent as the chance to take the proverbial “chill-pill” and relax. This is not only good for your health and sanity, but will also all you to truly prepare your heart and mind for Christmas when it comes in four weeks.
This sort of high stress and anxiety level is right where we find ourselves as we walk in on Jesus and the disciples this morning. Earlier in chapter thirteen, Peter, James, John and Andrew privately ask Jesus “tell us, when will this be, and what will be the signs that these things are about to be accomplished?” They were referring to Jesus’ comment that the Temple will fall. And Jesus warns them about following false prophets and he says “when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” Jesus talks about earthquakes and famines, and says “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” So the question we might ask ourselves upon hearing these words is- “are we there yet?”
And Jesus says “no.” Mark was written around the year 70, when the Temple did fall. When there were wide spread persecutions, when there were wars and rumors of wars. And Jesus tells the disciples “hold your horses, this isn’t it.” Our reading today picks up here. Jesus says “in those days” referring to the real coming of the Son of Man, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” Last I checked, the sun still shines and the stars still fill the sky. Jesus wants to make it clear- when it is time, you will know it and it will be painfully obvious. So are we there yet? No. Well, when will we get there? “But about that day or hour no one knows.”
What is this all about? What in the world is Jesus talking about? A few years ago when I was in the Diocese of Washington, we had an Advent clergy gathering and the session was led by author Jon Meacham. He said to us “I have a room full of clergy and I’m going to ask the question that I’ve always wanted to ask. If Jesus talked like this, that the end of the world was coming before that generation passed away, and it didn’t, then what does that say about the credibility of everything else that Jesus said?” We all sat there in silence. Eventually, one poor soul tried to piece together an answer which was going nowhere fast, so he concluded by saying “just don’t mess with my Jesus.” But it’s a serious question. There is that famous proposition made by CS Lewis about Jesus- either that he was a liar, that he is Lord, or that is was a lunatic. In this particular passage, to us, 2,000 years later; lunatic might seem to be a valid choice.
Maybe there’s more to it than that. Jesus died in roughly the year 33; and as I said, Mark was written in 70. When Mark wrote those words, those of Jesus’ generation were already dying. And Mark clearly didn’t think Jesus was a lunatic, so maybe Mark is talking about something bigger than the “end of the world,” and we’ve just been misinterpreting this text for too long. Perhaps Jesus was talking about something else.
Advent is the beginning of the church year, and as we change our liturgical calendar to a new year, we focus on a different Gospel. The way the lectionary works, in Year A, which was last year, we read Matthew. This is Year B and we’ll be reading Mark. Next year we’ll read Luke. John doesn’t get his own year, but is sprinkled in throughout the other three. So in preparation for a year of Mark, I recently read a book called Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark by Marcus Borg. It’s a very approachable and short book which gives a solid overview of Mark. In reading it, I was reminded that Jesus rarely, if ever, talks about Heaven, the nature of the soul and the afterlife, or the end of the world. But what Jesus does talk about more than anything, is the Kingdom of God. Mark is sixteen chapters long, and the Kingdom of God is mentioned twenty-one times. The Kingdom of God is the reign of God’s glory, where peace, love, servant hood, and joy abound.
We all know that Jesus used parables and metaphors. What if we’ve been taking Jesus literally when we should have seen him pointing to the Kingdom of God instead of the end of the world? Well, my brothers and sisters, I hope that you can see that would make all the difference in the world. Jesus and the writers of the Bible didn’t get it wrong; we did. The Kingdom of God is clearly coming, we see signs of that all around, but it’s not here yet. It’s already, but not yet.
So what do we do with this reality? As Jesus says, we keep awake, or watch or be ready, as other translations put it. Let’s take a look at three important questions about watching and waiting. What is it? How do we do it? And why do we do it?
So first, what does it mean to be ready and wait? It’s sort of like the difference between a person standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus and that same person standing on the side of the road waiting for a parade. In waiting for a bus, it’s a passive sort of waiting. You’re just there, hanging out, not doing much, maybe playing with your phone or reading a book. But in waiting for a parade, you’re expectantly waiting. You work hard to listen for the sounds of drums and trumpets. Maybe you’re standing on your toes to see over the crowd or look around the corner. So to keep awake as Jesus suggests, we must be expectant, looking forward to something, to the rebirth of hope in our lives. A good exercise might be for you to make a Christmas list to help you figure out what you’re staying awake and being watchful for. And I’m not talking about new clothes, videogames, or a tablet. I’m talking about what you hope for, what you yearn for. Maybe peace in your family, maybe a job offer, maybe a cure from a disease, maybe end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe for the return of civility in politics. But one thing is for certain, you can’t expectantly wait for something if you don’t know what you’re waiting for.
Jesus’ words are difficult for us. Do we really need to be told to “keep awake?” Americans are sleep deprived. I’m so glad to see you all this morning, but I know that there are plenty of St. Francis folks who are in town this morning and are taking today to sleep in and recover from Thanksgiving. We don’t need to stay awake, we need to get some rest. Furthermore, it’s not easy to keep awake in the spiritual sense when we’ve been doing it so long. Advent comes around every year, and every first Sunday of Advent, we get a similar sort of reading- be ready, stay awake. But if this Advent is no different from the one before it, and the one before that one, and the one before that, then why bother staying awake?
Jesus’ call might be better translated as “focus.” Advent is a time to be intentional, to not simply go through the motions. Most of us can do December in our sleep- we know where the decorations go, the same place they do every year. We have our shopping routines, we have our recipes that we follow. December is not a month of innovation, but Jesus is inviting us to focus on what we do. And as we focus, consider how it is that we can participate in the things that you hope for. Maybe you take some time to volunteer at the shelter, maybe you pick up a religious book, or even the Bible, and read some to feed your soul, maybe you only write 20 Christmas cards, but you send them with personal notes to people who have truly changed your life. Change it up a bit, but whatever you do, focus on it.
So how do we wait? One of my favorite books is The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. In this book, Screwtape, a senior demon, writes to his younger nephew, Wormwood, counseling him on the ways to lead humans away from God. In one letter, Screwtape writes “our business is to get them away from the present…it is far better to make them live in the future…Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.” That’s another reason not to get caught up in reading this passage as a prediction of the future. When we look ahead to the end of the world and try to understand it, we become obsessed with it and we cease to live in the present, which is the only time we can experience love and God. But it also speaks to how it is we can stay awake and be watchful.
It is a similar point to my previous one about the need for focus. You all know about Advent calendars- those little calendars where you open a door each day and find a chocolate. If you open them all on December 1, you then feel depressed about not having any more chocolate. And don’t save them all for December 25, or you won’t enjoy them throughout the month. But if you open them a day at a time, you get a daily treat. Maybe those calendars have some wisdom in them that we can use for our own celebration of Advent. Instead of worrying about the stuff to-do this holiday season, perhaps we can enjoy the things we do. Take it a bit a time and focus on finding the little chocolates of the day- the moments of grace, the moments of love, the moments of the Kingdom of God.
The thing to remember in answering “how do we wait,” is that we need to be active. There is a great word play in Spanish that we don’t have in English. In Spanish, the word for wait is esperar, which is the same word for hope, and the word for breath is espirar. These ideas of breathing, of hoping and waiting are so linguistically intertwined that there is hardly a difference between them. As you live and breathe, you wait with hope. You can’t do one without the other. Waiting for the Kingdom of God doesn’t mean sitting around and twiddling your thumbs. It doesn’t mean just keeping an eye out for it. Waiting means making ourselves and our world ready for it. Next Sunday we’ll hear John the Baptist proclaim “prepare the way of the Lord.” That is how we wait, not passively, but we actively work for the Kingdom of God as we expectantly hope for it’s coming.
And finally, why do we wait? Don’t we have enough to do already? The simple answer is because there is work to be done. There is a great story that comes from New England during the colonial age. As the story goes, there was an unexpected lunar eclipse. It might have seemed that the sun really was being darkened. There was a state legislative meeting going on, and several people panicked and moved to adjourn the meeting. But one person stood up and said “Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I should choose to be found doing my duty. I move, sir, that candles be brought in.” We actively watch because we have a job to do. The task of the Gospel- of loving others of serving God, of making this world reflect the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
Advent is a tough season, a season of the already, but not yet. This year, let’s make Advent different. Let’s not just go through the motions. Let’s not just skip Advent and go straight to Christmas. Instead, let’s expectantly wait and hope for the rebirth of the Messiah in our world. Let’s stay awake and focus on what really matters this Advent. Pay attention to the signs of the Kingdom of God which surround you each and every day. Find ways to build up the bricks and roads of the Kingdom.
And should I be wrong about all of this, and sun really does become darkened and the moon stop giving light, then let us be found hard at work this Advent season- preparing our homes, our hearts, our minds, our relationships, our church, our world for the coming of Christ.
Amen.
