1 Advent
December 3, 2023
1 Corinthians 1.3-9; Mark 13.24-37
+ Well, it is the firstSunday of Advent.
This season in which we, as the Church, turn our attention,just like the rest of the world, toward Christmas.
It’s important to remember: it’s NOT Christmas yet.
Advent is its own season.
But this season is a season of waiting.
It is a time ofpreparation.
It is a time toremind ourselves that our time is limited.
It is a time in whichwe realize we need to get our affairs in order.
And there are manyways we can do that.
We are forced, duringthis season, to realize that in God’s own time, in God’s own ways, everythingwill one day be made right.
The imbalances ofthis life will one day be balanced.
And that those thingsthat divide us will one day be healed.
And that when all ofthat happens, there will be a true and abiding joy.
I am grateful on thisfirst Sunday of Advent for the reconciliations in my own life.
I am grateful to havea relationship with others that have been healed.
Life seems a littleless lonely now.
Life seems a littleless dangerous and dark.
And, for me anyway,that is the real message of Advent.
We go through Adventas a way of preparing, spiritually, forChristmas, for the birth of the Messiah.
We do so by strivingto shed ourselves of those dark things in our lives.
We do so by strivingto shed darkness and division and anger and fear.
And in this way, Ithink the Church year reflects our own lives in many ways.
That is what Adventis like.
We know this joyousevent is coming, but to truly enjoy it, we need to prepare for it the best wecan.
To truly enjoy thisgreat Day, we need to try to shed those things in our lives that prevent usfrom feeling true joy.
Advent then is also atime of deep anticipation.
It is a time of waiting.
And in that way, Ithink is represents our own spiritual lives in a way other times of the churchyear don’t.
We are, after all, apeople anticipating something.
We are hoping forsomething
Something.
But what?
Well, our scripturesgive us a clue.
But what they talkabout isn’t something that we should necessarily welcome with joy.
In our reading formIsaiah this morning, we find the prophet saying to God,
O thatyou would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
aswhen fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil--
tomake your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
That doesn’t soundlike a pleasant day to be anticipating.
Even Jesus, echoingIsaiah, says in our Gospel reading:
In those days, after that suffering,
thesun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
andthe stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see “the Sonof Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory.
Well, that’s maybe abit better, but it’s still pretty foreboding.
However, it doesn’tneed to be all that foreboding.
Essentially, all ofthis is talk about “the day of the Lord” or the day when the Son of Man willcome in the clouds” is really all aboutwaiting for God, or for God’s Messiah.
It is all about Godbreaking through to us.
That is what Adventis all about.
God breaking throughto us.
God coming to uswhere are we are.
God cutting throughthe darkness of our lives, with a glorious light.
For the Jews inJesus’ time, waiting like we are, for the Messiah, they had specific ideas ofwhat this Messiah would do.
Oppressed as theywere by a foreign government—the Romans—with an even more foreignreligion—paganism—, they expected someone like themselves to come to them andtake up a sword.
This Messiah woulddrive away these foreign influences and allow them, as a people, to rise up andgain their rightful place.
And for those hearingthe prophet Isaiah, the God who came in glory on that day would strike down thesinful, but also raise up those who were sorry.
The fact is, as weall know by now, God doesn’t workaccording to our human plans.
We can’t control Godor make God do what we want.
And if we try, let metell you, we will be deeply disappointed.
The Messiah that cameto the people of Jesus’ day—and to us—was no soldier.
There was no sword inhis hand.
The “Son of Man” thatcame to them—and to us--was a baby, a child who was destined to suffer, just aswe suffer to some extent, and to die, as we all must die.
But, what we arereminded of is that God’s Messiah will come again.
It is about whathappened then, and what will happen.
This time of Adventis a time of attentiveness to the past, the present, and the future.
Attentiveness is thekey word.
Actually, in our Gospel reading fortoday, we get a different way of stating it.
We get a kind of verbal alarm clock.
And we hear it in two different ways:
“Keep alert.”
“Keep awake.”
Jesus says it just those two ways inour reading from Mark: It seems simple enough.
“Keep alert” and “keep awake.”
Or to put it more bluntly, “Wake up!”
But is it simple?
Our job as Christians is sometimes nomore than this.
It is simply a matter of staying awake,of being attentive or being alert, of not being lazy.
Our lives as Christians are sometimessimply responses to being spiritually alert.
For those of us who are tired, who areworn down by life, who spiritually or emotionally fatigued, our sluggishnesssometimes manifests itself in our spiritual life and in our relationship withothers.
When we become impatient in ourwatching, we sometimes forget what it is we are watching for.
We sometimes, in our fatigue, fail tosee.
For us, that “something” that we arewaiting for, that we are keeping alert for, is none other than that glorious“day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” that we hear St. Paul talk about in his epistlethis morning.
That glorious day of God breakingthrough to us comes when, in our attentiveness, we see the rays of the lightbreaking through to us in our tiredness and in our fatigue.
It breaks through to us in variousways.
We, who are in this sometimes foggypresent moment, peering forward, sometimes have this moments of wonderfulspiritual clarity.
Those moments are truly being alert—ofbeing spiritually awake.
Sometimes we have it right here, inchurch, when we gather together.
I have shared with each of you at timeswhen those moments sometimes come to me.
There are those moments when we cansay, without a doubt: Yes, God exists!
But, more than that.
It is the moments when we say, God isreal.
God is near.
God knows me.
God loves me.
And, in that wonderful moment, in thatholy moment, the world about us blossoms!
This is what it means to be awake, tonot be lazy.
See, the day the prophet talks about asa day of fear and trembling is only a day of fear and trembling if we aren’tawake.
For those of us who are awake, whotruly see with our spiritual eyes, the day of the Lord is a glorious day.
For us, we see that God is our Parent.
Or as Isaiah says,
O Lord,you are our Father;
We are God’s fully loved and fully accepted children.
And then Isaiah goes on to say that
we are theclay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Certainly, in a very real sense,today—this First Sunday of Advent— is a day in which we realize this fact.
Advent is a time for us to allow God toform us and make us in God’s image.
It is a time for us to maybe be kneadedand squeezed, but, through it all, we are being formed into somethingbeautiful.
The rays of that glorious day when Godbreaks through to us is a glorious day!
And it is a day in which we realize weare all God’s loved and accepted children.
In this beautiful Sarum blue Adventseason, we are reminded that the day of God’s reaching out to us is truly aboutdawn upon us.
The rays of the bright sun-lit dawn arealready starting to lighten the darkness of our lives.
We realize, in this moment, that,despite all that has happened, despite the disappointments, despite the losses,despite politics, despite the pain each of us has had to bear, the ray of thatglorious Light breaks through to us in that darkness and somehow, makes it allbetter.
But this is doesn’t happen in aninstant.
Oftentimes that light is a gradualdawning in our lives.
Oftentimes, it happens gradually so wecan adjust to it, so it doesn’t blind us.
Sometimes, our awakening is in stages,as though waking from a deep, slumbering sleep.
Our job as Christians is somewhatbasic.
I’m not saying it’s easy.
But I am saying that it is basic.
Our job, as Christians, especially inthis Advent time, is to be alert.
To be awake.
Spiritually and emotionally.
And, in being alert, we must seeclearly.
We cannot, when that Day of Christdawns, be found to lazy and sloughing.
Rather, when that Day of our Lord Jesusdawns, we should greet it joyfully, with bright eyes and a clear mind.
We should run toward that dawn as wenever have before in our lives.
We should let the joy within us—the joywe have hid, we have tried to kill—the joy we have not allowed ourselves tofeel—come pouring forth on that glorious day.
And in that moment, all those miserablethings we have been dealt—all that loss, all that failure, all thatunfairness—will dissipate like a bad dream on awakening.
“Keep alert,” Jesus says to us.
“Keep awake.”
It’s almost time.
Keep awake because that “something” youhave been longing for all your spiritual life is about to happen.
It is about to break through into ourlives.
And it is going to be glorious.
Let us pray.
O God of glory, our God and Parent, weare longing for you in the darkness of our lives to break through to us; tocome to us in this place and shed your Light upon us. And we know that when youdo, it will truly be a glorious Day. We ask this in the name of your Messiah,Jesus our Savior. Amen.
