Online Sermons
The First Sunday in Advent : November 29, Martha Rogers
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsAll of us tend to develop different ways of marking time. The school year begins in September, for instance, while the fiscal year may begin in January or even July. Our own individual years begin on our birthdays, while Old Man Time celebrates his at midnight on December 31.
What all of these beginnings and ending tell us is that we tend to organize time in cycles around major events in our lives, and that the events we choose say a great deal about who we are and what is important to us.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ways we mark religious time. Each major world religion observes its own calendar, organized around the dates that distinguish it from other religions and from the world at large.
The Hindu New Year begins with a harvest festival in mid-November; Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is observed on the first day of Tishri in the fall, when the birthday of the whole creation is celebrated.
By choosing its own distinct way to measure time, each religious tradition says, in effect, “We are different. Here is what is important to us.” The Christian liturgical year begins today on the first Sunday of Advent, the season dedicated to preparation for the birth of our Lord.
By organizing our year in this way, we declare that our notions of time hinge on the birth of this unparalleled child--that we see the past, the present, and the future differently because of him and his life among us. That is what make us different, and what is important to us.
But it is not quite as simple as pausing each year to remember what happened in that shed at Bethlehem, because the Lord who came to us in the past as a babe has promised to come again in the future as our judge.
Today’s lessons remind us of that Second Advent, (the 2nd Coming) beginning our new year with visions not merely of the past but of the future, when the Son of man will come in a cloud with power and great glory.
The prophets know this. They know the most important things. They know that something incredible is about to happen in us and for us and point the way for us to go. Today's words from the prophet Jeremiah aim us right towards God and to the promise of God to give to the world saving safety who will execute justice. Saving safety. Executing justice.
While such words may unnerve us these days, is it important to remember that this was a hopeful vision for Jeremiah and his people, one that affirmed God’s dominion over both nature, humanity and history.
According to today’s second lesson, the Second Advent was good news for Paul as well, an occasion for the church at Thessalonica to anticipate by increasing and abounding in their love for one another. But Jesus’ own words about his second coming in the Gospel seem the most alarming. There will be distress and perplexity in that day, Jesus says, even though redemption is on its way. People will faint with fear and foreboding of what is coming on the world, he says, even though what is coming is the very kingdom of God.
Jesus seems to understand that we can fear what is good for us, as we fear the dentist’s drill or the surgeon’s knife. But there is a great deal of comfort in the fact that it is God who will preside over our judging, that our judge is also our advocate, that the one who will come again is the one who has already come as one of us: the one who will come again is the one who has already come as one of us.
According to Barbara Brown Taylor, the vision of Advent, then, is bifocal vision: we look forward to a birth that happened in the past, even as we look back at ancient image of what will happen in the future.Throughout it all, we are reminded that the one common denominator of all time is Jesus the Christ: a baby, our brother and our Lord. Today’s lessons seem to know a lot about our bifocal vision. Today’s lessons seem to know how much time we spend looking backward and forward for meaning in our lives, for the Lord who is behind us and ahead of us, in our history and in our future. As we learn of his first coming in Bethlehem we hear about his second coming at the end of time, and the whole Christian calendar lies spread before us, beginning to end.
But what about the days in-between?
What about all that time between Bethlehem and the Kingdom? While we are cherishing our memories of the past and nourishing our hopes for the future, what is left for us now?
In his book A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, author Truman Capote recalled one Christmas he spent in the deep south when he was ten, with a dog named Queenie and an elderly cousin whom he refers to simply as “my friend.”
His friend, we come to understand, is still a child herself, limited both physically and mentally by some unexplained illness in her youth. She has never “eaten in a restaurant, “ he tells us, “traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, never worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, [or] let a hungry dog go hungry.”
She and Capote, whom she calls “Buddy”, become best friends, and together they prepare for Christmas, baking 31 fruitcakes in an old coal stove, tramping through the woods for the perfect tree, and making bright kites to give to one another on Christmas morning. The long-expected day finally arrives, and they spend it in a pasture below the house where they live, flying their kites and then lying in the grass and eating rare winter oranges while dog Queenie buries her Christmas bone. Capote is enjoying a state of near perfect bliss when his friend speaks to him, and this is how he tells it: “My, how foolish I am!” my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven.“You know what I’ve always thought?” she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. “I’ve always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark.
And it’s been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feelings. But I’ll wager it never happens. I’ll wager at the very end a body realizes that the Lord has already shown Himself. already shown Himself. That things as they are--her hands circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone--’just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.’ ” (Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory, 1956)
She's a prophet, Capote's friend is. when she discovers and invites us to discover, too, is that the Lord does not come once in the past and a second time in the future but that he comes again --and again and again and again, every blessed day of our lives; that he is known to us not only in his miraculous birth some 2000 plus years ago, or in his shattering return at the end of time, but also in all the kites and pastures, oranges and friends of our own ordinary times.
The kingdom of heaven is not something we must wait for; by God’s grace it is open to us now, whenever we look deep in to the time of our days and recognize what is really there, the fullness and opportunity and promise that blossom inside every single moment of time.
When we understand that, perhaps we will understand what Jesus meant when he said to stand up and raise our heads, that the kingdom of God is near, that it is among us--and so is he. Stand up, take part, look around! Happy New Year!
Today we are given the chance to begin another new church calendar year of living with our Lord; remembering how he came to us in the past, looking forward to how he will come to us in the future, and celebrating how he comes to us every single day of our lives.
Today, this very day,
God is busy, making history,
making the future--today.The prophets have told us about this incredible God. They knew. They know.
Today, this very day,
God is busy, making history, fulfilling promise, making the future—today.What God wants to know is, will we join in? Will we, too, follow?
Amen.