1 Advent

 

1 Advent

November 27, 2005

Gethsemane Cathedral

 Matthew 13.24-37

 In case you haven’t noticed, it is the first Sunday of Advent.

 

We have the beautiful blue frontal on the altar. We clergy get to wear the beautiful blue vestments given by the late Ellen Thompson in memory of her husband Charles several years ago.

 

It is a time in which we, as the Church, turn our attention, just like the rest of the world, toward Christmas.

 

But we need to be clear: it is not Christmas yet for us Christians.

 

As many of you know, I am an Oblate—or an associate –at Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, South Dakota—a Benedictine monastery. At Blue Cloud, the Christmas tree and the Christmas decorations don’t go up until Christmas eve, when Christmas officially starts.

 

For now, we are in this almost limbo-like season of Advent.

 

All the major Church feast days—namely Christmas and Easter—are preceded by a time of preparation.

 

Before Easter comes, we go through the season of Lent—a time for us to collect our thoughts, prepare spiritually for the glorious mystery of the Resurrection.

 

Advent of course is similar. We go through Advent as a way of preparing, spiritually,  for Christmas.

 

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Advent is as much of a penitential time—a time in which we should spend time fasting and thinking about our shortcomings—as Lent is.

 

In this way, I think the Church year reflects our own lives in many ways.

 

In our lives, we go through periods of fasting and feasting.

 

We have our lean times and we have our prosperous times.

 

There is a balance to our lives in the world and there is a balance, as well, to our church lives.

 

We will feast—as we do on Christmas and on Easter—but first we must fast, as we do during Advent and Lent.

 

Do you ever notice how, when you know you’re going out to eat with friends at a nice restaurant, you cut back on your food during the day?

 

You maybe eat a little less at breakfast and only a very light lunch. You avoid snacking between meals, just so you can truly enjoy the supper that night.

 

That is what Advent is like.

 

We know this joyous event is coming, but to truly enjoy it, we need to hold back a bit now.

 

Advent then is also a time of deep anticipation.

 

And in that way, I think is represents our own spiritual lives in a way other times of the church year don’t.

 

We are, after all, a people anticipating something.

 

If we weren’t, none of us would be here this morning.

 

More importantly, we are a people living in the dark and gloom of life.

 

In a sense, that is what Advent is as well.

 

It is the recognition of the darkness we all collectively live in without Christ.

 

But we are anticipating something more—we are all looking forward into the gloom and what do we see there?

 

We see the first rays of the dawn.

 

We see the first glow of what awaits us, there, just ahead of us.

 

That light that is about to burst into our lives is, of course, Christ.

 

For the Jews before Jesus’ time, waiting like we are, for the Messiah, they had specific ideas of what this messiah would do.

 

Oppressed as they were by a foreign government—the Romans—with an even more foreign religion—paganism—, they expected someone like themselves to come to them and take up a sword.

 

This Messiah would drive away these foreign influences and allow them, as a people, to rise up and gain their rightful place.

 

But God doesn’t work according to human plans.

 

The light that came to them—and to us—was no solider.

 

The Light that came to us was a baby—a child who was destined to suffer, just as we suffer to some extent, and to die, as we all must die.

 

In the gospel for today, Jesus warns us—“you do not know when the time will come.”

 

We don’t know when God is going to come to us.

 

But we can take comfort today in one thing: as frightening as our times may be, as terrible as life may seem some times and as uncertain as our future may be, what Advent shows us more than anything is this: we already know the end of the story.

 

We might not know what awaits us tomorrow or next week. We might not know what setbacks or rewards will come to us in the weeks to come, but in the long run, we know how our story ends.

 

God as Christ has come to us as one of us and with a voice like our voice, Christ has told us that we might not know when it will happen, but the end will be a good ending.

 

God has promised that in the end, there will be joy and happiness and peace.

 

The key word in today’s gospel is a simple one—“Watch!”

 

To watch means more than just to look around us.

 

It means to be attentive. It means, we must pay attention.

 

There is a story I read once in book about St. Anthony of Egypt, a monk in the early Church.

 

In the book,  the author relates an interesting story—one I never heard before—about how the early desert monastics used ostrich eggs in their worship.

 

In some of the churches that they built, they hung ostrich eggs from the ceiling as a “symbol of spiritual dedication.”

 

A visitor to one of the monasteries, wrote later about this practice:

 

When it intends to hatch its egg, the ostrich sits not upon them, as other birds, but the male and female hatches them with their eye only; and only when either of them needs to seek for food, he gives notice to the other by crying; and the other continues to look upon the eggs, till it returns…for if they did but look off for a moment, the eggs will spoil and rot. [1]

 

Whether this is scientifically true or not, this is a perfect illustration of what we, as Christians, are doing during this Advent season and, really, during all of our spiritual lives.

 

Like these ostriches, which gaze almost agonizingly for the hatching of the egg, so too should we be waiting, with held breath, for the realm of heaven to break upon us.

 

So, yes, Jesus’ message to us to wait is a very important of our spiritual lives.

 

But it is also a message of hope and longing. It is a message meant to wake us from our slumbering complacency. His is a voice calling us to sit up and take notice.

 

The kingdom of heaven is near. In fact it’s nearer than we can probably ever hope or imagine.

 

So, be prepared. Watch.

 

Christ our friend—our brother—our companion on the way—has come to us and is leading us forward.

 

Christ—the dazzling Light—is burning away the fogs of our day-to-day living and is showing us a way through the darkness that sometimes seems to encroach upon us.

 

Our job is simple really. Like those ostriches, we simply need to watch. In our case, we need to look anxiously for that light and, when it comes, we need to be prepared to share it with others.

 

This is the true message of Advent.

 

As hectic as this season is going to get, as you’re feeling overwhelmed by all sensory overload we’ll all be experiencing through this season, remember that one word Jesus says to us.

 

Watch.

 

Take time, be silent and just watch.

 

For this anticipation—this expectant and patient watching f ours—is merely a pathway on which the Christ Child can come among us as one of us.