1 Advent

 

November 29, 2020

 

1 Corinthians 1.3-9; Mark 13.24-37

 

+ Well, it is the first Sunday of Advent.

This season in which we, as the Church, turn our attention, just like the rest of the world, toward Christmas.

It is a time of preparation.

 It is a time to remind ourselves that our time is limited.

 It is a time in which we realize we need to get our affairs in order.

 And there are many ways we can do that.

 In my life, I had an interesting situation arise over the last few months.

 I have shared this with many of you.

 And in Friday, on Facebook, I shared a bit more about it.

 It involves my sister.

 So, in case you didn’t know, for many years—for most of my adult life—my sister and I were estranged from each other for various reasons.

 This past summer, following the death of my brother (from whom I was also estranged), we realized that we needed to get past our differences.

 And in doing so, we realized that the reasons we were at odds with each other had to do with a manipulative third party in our family.

 I won’t get into all of that ugliness.

 But it was a great lesson for me.

 I realized that so much of what happened, so much pain and sorrow and suffering in our family occurred because of one person who could wreak so much discord and unhappiness.

 And that the two of us, who prided ourselves on being “smart” and “seeing through people,” failed to do so in this situation, and as a result, we lived with division and anger.

 Which only makes reconciliation so much sweeter!

 For me, the reconciliation with my sister is a great story to carry with me as we enter the season of Advent.

 We are forced, during this season, to realize that in God’s own time, in God’s own ways, everything will one day be made right.

 The imbalances of this life will one day be balanced.

 And that those things that divide us will one day be healed.

 And that when all of that happens, there will be a true and abiding joy.

 I am grateful on this first Sunday of Advent for the reconciliation in my own life.

 I am grateful to have a relationship with my sister that I never had before.

 Life seems a little less lonely now.

 Life seems a little less dangerous and dark.

 And, for me anyway, that is the real message of Advent.

 We go through Advent as a way of preparing, spiritually,  for Christmas, for the birth of the Messiah.

 We do so by striving to shed ourselves of those dark things in our lives.

 We do so by striving to shed darkeness and division and anger and fear.

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

 That is what Advent is like.

 We know this joyous event is coming, but to truly enjoy it, we need to prepare for it the best we can.

 To truly enjoy this great Day, we need to try to shed those things in our lives that prevent us from feeling true joy.

 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.

 We are hoping for something

 Something.

 But what?

 Well, our scriptures give us a clue.

 But what they talk about isn’t something that we should necessarily welcome with joy.

 In our reading form Isaiah this morning, we find the prophet saying to God,

 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence--

as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil--

to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

 That doesn’t sound like a pleasant day to be anticipating.

 Even Jesus, echoing Isaiah, says in our Gospel reading:

  In those days, after that suffering,

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.

 

Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 

Well, that’s maybe a bit better, but it’s still pretty foreboding.

 However, it doesn’t need to be all that foreboding.

 Essentially, all of this is talk about “the day of the Lord” or the day when the Son of Man will come in the clouds” is really  all about waiting for God, or for God’s Messiah.

 It is all about God breaking through to us.

 That is what Advent is all about.

 God breaking through to us.

 God coming to us where are we are.

 God cutting through the darkness of our lives, with a glorious light.

 For the Jews in 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.

 And for those hearing the prophet Isaiah, the God who came in glory on that day would strike down the sinful, but also raise up those who were sorry.

 The fact is, as we all know by now,  God doesn’t work according to our human plans.

 We can’t control God or make God do what we want.

 And if we try, let me tell you, we will be deeply disappointed.

 The Messiah that came to the people of Jesus’ day—and to us—was no solider.

 There was no sword in his hand.

 The “Son of Man” that came to them—and 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.

 But, what we are reminded of is that God’s Messiah will come again.

 It is about what happened then, and what will happen.

 This time of Advent is a time of attentiveness to the past, the present, and the future.

 Attentiveness is the key word.

 Actually, in our Gospel reading for today, 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 in our 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 no more 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 sometimes simply responses to being spiritually alert.

 

For those of us who are tired, who are worn down by life, by pandemics and political strife, who spiritually or emotionally fatigued, our sluggishness sometimes manifests itself in our spiritual life and in our relationship with others.

 

When we become impatient in our watching, we sometimes forget what it is we are watching for.

 

We sometimes, in our fatigue, fail to see.

 

For us, that “something” that we are waiting for, that we keeping alert for, is none other than that glorious “day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” that we hear St. Paul talk about in his epistle this morning.

 

That glorious day of God breaking through to us comes when, in our attentiveness, we see the rays of the light breaking through to us in our tiredness and in our fatigue.

 

It breaks through to us in various ways.

 

We, who are in this sometimes foggy present moment, peering forward, sometimes have this moments of wonderful spiritual clarity.

 

Those moments are truly being alert—of being spiritually awake.

 

Sometimes we have it right here, in church, when we gather together.

 

I have shared with each of you at times when those moments sometimes come to me.

 

There are those moments when we can say, without a doubt: Yes, God exists!

 

But, more than that.

 

It is the moments when we say, God is real.

 

God is near.

 

God knows me.

 

God loves me.

 

And, in that wonderful moment, in that holy moment, the world about us blossoms!

 

This is what it means to be awake, to not be lazy.

 

See, the day the prophet talks about as a day of fear and trembling is only a day of fear and trembling if we aren’t awake.

 

For those of us who are awake, who truly 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 the clay, 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 to form us and make us in God’s image.

 

It is a time for us to maybe be kneaded and squeezed, but, through it all, we are being formed into something beautiful.

 

The rays of that glorious day when God breaks through to us is a glorious day!

 

And it is a day in which we realize we are all God’s loved and accepted children.

 

In this beautiful Sarum blue Advent season, we are reminded that the day of God’s reaching out to us is truly about dawn upon us.

 

The rays of the bright sun-lit dawn are already 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 the pandemic, despite politics, despite the pain each of us has had to bear, the ray of that glorious Light breaks through to us in that darkness and somehow, makes it all better.

 

But this is doesn’t happen in an instant.

 

Oftentimes that light is a gradual dawning in our lives.

 

Oftentimes, it happens gradually so we can 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 somewhat basic.

 

I’m not saying it’s easy.

 

But I am saying that it is basic.

 

Our job, as Christians, especially in this Advent time, is to be alert.

 

To be awake.

 

Spiritually and emotionally.

 

And, in being alert, we must see clearly.

 

We cannot, when that Day of Christ dawns, be found to lazy and sloughing.

 

Rather, when that Day of our Lord Jesus dawns, we should greet it joyfully, with bright eyes and a clear mind.

 

We should run toward that dawn as we never have before in our lives.

 

We should let the joy within us—the joy we have hid, we have tried to kill—the joy we have not allowed ourselves to feel—come pouring forth on that glorious day.

 

And in that moment, all those miserable things we have been dealt—all that loss, all that failure, all that unfairness—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” you have been longing for all your spiritual life is about to happen.

 

It is about to break through into our lives.

 

And it is going to be glorious.

 

Let us pray.

 

O God of glory, our God and parents, we are longing for you in the darkness of our lives to break through to us; to come to us in this place and shed your Light upon us. And we know that when you do, it will truly be a glorious Day. We ask this in the name of your Messiah, Jesus our Savior. Amen.