Lectionary blog for Dec. 1, 2013
Advent I
Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122;
Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44
In our Gospel lesson we read, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” That day? What day? When is that day? What’s going to happen then?
Several years ago on Thanksgiving weekend my father told me about an incident late in World War II when his company spent a night in an abandoned village in Germany. The squad had bedded down in a large, two-story house. The officer had posted guards in the doorways. About 3 a.m. the guard at the front door walked away from his post, down a central hall to the back to get a light from Daddy, who was the other guard. Just as he reached the kitchen, a shell exploded in the doorway where he had been standing five seconds before. Only five seconds between life and death.
Truth be told, the question we face is not, “When will Jesus come back?” The question is, “How does the fact that none of us lives forever change our behavior?” The Scriptures continually remind us that one day God shall, as Isaiah puts it — “… judge between nations and shall arbitrate for many people.” In light of which we are reminded by Paul that “… it is now the moment for [us] to wake from sleep” and “put on the armor of light” and “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus reminds us that “about that day and hour no one knows,” so we must “keep awake therefore” because “you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” and “the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
In short, on this First Sunday in Advent, we are called upon to take our God and ourselves seriously. We are called upon to recognize that life can be snuffed out in an instant and to live accordingly. We are to stay awake, to watch out for signs of God’s activity in the world.
This is a difficult thing to do in the midst of modern, secular, consumerist Christmas. After 2,000 years, we’ve sort of stopped looking for Christ to come, and we’ve settled for a pale, weak, neon-lit imitation. We schedule office Christmas parties and celebrate family dinners. We buy presents for our husbands and wives and children and significant others. We decorate our homes with lights and trees and ornaments. We send out holiday greeting cards to people all over the country, and we hope that our sanity and our bank account will hold out until New Year’s Day. The church’s plea during Advent is that in the midst of all the “holiday hoopla” we will remember to look for Christ, to seek signs of his coming, to be alert for his presence “in, with and under” all the giving of gifts and decorating and partying.
Sometimes in the midst of our very modern, secular, materialistic world, it’s hard to find signs of life in an old faith. Sometimes it feels like God is either dead or sleeping. This is not a new problem. Isaiah preached for 40 years to a people who mostly ignored him. He preached in a world full of war, economic uncertainty and political upheaval. He continually balanced his prophecies of destruction with promises of hope, but the people ignored him because the promises of hope were so seldom fulfilled.
Many of us have for many years held onto a vision of a hopeful future, a future in which no children starve or fall victim to curable diseases, a future in which people lay aside their differences to worship a common God at a common altar, a future in which peace reigns, where military budgets are empty and schools and hospitals are fully funded, which is what I believe swords being beat into plowshares and spears into pruning forks really means. And yet we wait, and we wait, and we seek to stay awake, and we seek to trust and hope and believe that God is coming; God is really coming. And we continue to look for signs that God is just around the corner.
Let me suggest that, instead of looking for signs of Christ’s coming, our more important invitation is to be a sign of Christ’s coming: in our families, in our communities, in our world. I am inviting us to a season of active waiting, of busy anticipation, of involved preparation, of participatory readiness.
As we enter this season of Advent, I invite each of us to not only see the signs, but also to be the signs.
- Take five minutes every morning and make a Christmas list. Not a list of things to buy, or things to do, or things you want but a list of blessings in your life, a list of people you love and who love you in spite of yourself, a list of the signs of God’s presence in your life. After you’ve made your list, pray a prayer of thanks for each thing on the list
- Take another 10 minutes and read a chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. There are 24 days until Christmas and 28 chapters in Matthew, so you should be able to finish it. By Christmas morning, we will be reminded of why Jesus came and of what he did for us. By Christmas morning, we will be ready to celebrate with thankfulness and praise the coming of the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us.
- Pick out five names from your Christmas card list. Pick out five people that you have almost lost touch with, five people you seldom see or speak to. Call them up or write them a personal letter or send them an email and tell them how much they mean to you and why. Thank them for being a sign of God’s presence and love in your life.
- Perform a totally new act of charity this year. Reach out and surprise someone with the unexpected love of God. Give a part of yourself to someone in gratitude for the fact that Christ gave himself for you.
- And finally, spend the last five minutes of every day asking God to come into your life in a fresh, new, unpredictable way this year.
But I must warn all of us to be careful. Watch out! God just might explode into our lives at a time and in a way we would never expect!
Amen and amen.
