Sunday, November 27, 2005

Sun, Nov 27, 2005 - Advent 1 - Waiting for the Lord

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Cor. 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Well, it's here. Advent, that is - not Christmas. Although if you believe the advertising we're bombarded with these days, you'd think that Christmas was happening tomorrow and that you better get your shopping done Right Now. But, no, it's not Christmas yet - it's only the first Sunday in Advent, and that means that for church-goers like us, we are about to embark on a tension-filled four weeks.

Now why would I say tension-filled? Well, for one thing, Advent is one of the only times when we as a church are so completely at odds with the culture around us. Here we are, making preparations for Christmas, reflecting on the life-changing event of the Messiah's birth two thousand years ago, looking forward to the coming again of the Messiah, getting ready for the big day while, as I already mentioned, culture is telling us that that day is already here; Christmas is upon us now. While we are busy singing Advent hymns, lighting our Advent wreath, opening our Advent calendars and steadfastly trying not to rush towards Christmas too soon, we are bombarded with Christmas messages, Christmas hymns, and yes, Christmas decorations. So we are in Advent on one hand, while society around us is already in Christmas, having no idea that there is even an Advent. There is reason that there is some tension.

But it's there for another reason, too. And that is the tension between looking back and looking forward that we experience in Advent and also in Lent. You see, Advent is not just about preparing to celebrate the coming of our Lord two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. It is partly about that, which is why we have partly filled in nativity scenes, and calendars that open finally on the 24th with pictures of the baby Jesus. But if Advent and Christmas are only about the past, we would be celebrating a dead religion, where we do not expect God to make any changes in our lives now. But Advent is also about looking forward to the coming of the Lord in the future, the coming of the kingdom of God fully on this earth. Advent is about Christ coming again, into our hearts, into the world, and changing things in a very real way. So, again, on the one hand we have the celebration of the past, while on the other hand we have the anticipation of the future. There, again, is reason that Advent carries some tension.

And finally, there is the tension that comes from the fact that we are waiting for the promised kingdom to come - we are told to stay awake for it - and yet we have no idea when it's actually coming. We are in a perpetual state of waiting - two thousand years now, and we don't know when it's going to happen. So, naturally, talking about this great day that's coming, focussing on it, getting ready for it - and having no earthly clue when it will be - we have some tension.

Because this is a big day that's coming - the day of the coming of the Lord. It's a day that echoes throughout our entire Bible, Old and New Testaments - and it has a profound influence on almost every single Biblical writer. In Isaiah, the day of the Lord is a day when God will come down with all power and might, causing the earth to shake and the nations to tremble - poetically speaking, of course - but more important than that, it is a day when God will come down and right all wrongs. God will carry out the justice that is long overdue, rescue the victims of oppression, bring the people of Israel home from their exile, and make the world the way it is meant to be. Although mountains quaking and heavens tearing open sounds frightening, for the listeners of Isaiah, the day is something to be looked forward to, something to yearn for, because it means that nobody will suffer any longer under the hands of someone else. It means that people will finally be rewarded for their good deeds, and not laughed at and scorned by the people around them. For the people of Israel at Isaiah's time, this day is a good day.

It is, as our Psalm says, a day of restoration with God. The long, painful, tear-flooded days of alienation from the Lord will be over, and we will be reunited the God who is our light and life. If you've ever been separated from someone you love and who loves you for a long period of time, you'll have experienced the anticipation and yearning for their return that the Israelites felt as they thought about the return of their Lord. That day is nothing about a good day.

And then, of course, there's the day of the Lord according to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. Again, poetically speaking, it is described as a day of awesome natural display - the very cosmos - the sun, moon, and stars, will be affected by the Son of Man coming again. The world will see how truly glorious he is, and with the power of God, he will send for his angels to bring the faithful together in his care. For the faithful, that is for us, it will be a good day.

But - but Jesus warns us, as Isaiah and the Psalmist and Paul in his letter to the Corinthians already know, there is no way of knowing when that day will be. Not even Jesus knows - a line that has, admittedly, been a source of great confusion for people. This isn't like Y2K, or Christmas Eve always falling on the 24th of December, or when taxes are due. The fact is that we don't know when this day is coming. The Bible writers didn't know when the day was coming. They made guesses - the writer of Mark thought it would be soon, Paul initially thought it would be in his lifetime but then had doubts when that didn't seem to be happening. Throughout history people have thought the day was coming when it wasn't. Martin Luther thought it would be in his lifetime, influential Christians called Millenialists thought it would happen at the turn of the last century - in 1900. But they were all wrong. For two thousand years they have been wrong. And that makes us all a little anxious.

Because the secret thought that lurks in the back of people's minds - the thought that they worry about but would never admit - is what if that day never comes at all? What if God has abandoned us? What if God is so disgusted with our behaviour that all deals are off and we are left to our own devices? It's a terrible thing to think - because we all know what the world would look like if God left us to ourselves - but it has been thought, by faithful people, for as long as this day hasn't come. The people of Isaiah's and the Psalmist's day, the faithful children of Israel, really were concerned that God would abandon them in exile in Babylon and not return for them because they were so sinful. And so they cried out to God to remember them, and to forgive them, and not to leave them to die.

We might wonder the same thing - is the Lord returning? Will we really have justice on this earth, will the oppressed really be free, will the marginalized really be welcome, will the hungry really be fed? Will our Advent hope for Christ's return be fulfilled?

Well, all we have to rely on that that will happen is the past acts of God and Christ's promise to return. It doesn't sound like much to people who have been waiting for two thousand years, but that's actually all we need. Because the past acts of God and Christ's promise to return are pretty darn overwhelming, too much in fact to go over all of it now. But I will highlight two moments in particular.

The first is the return of the Israelites from exile. Aside from the saving of Noah and his family from the flood, aside from the rescue of the Israelites from Egypt, two very well-known stories, we also have the rescue of the Israelites from Babylon. Isaiah did indeed cry out to God on behalf of the exiles, begging that God would remember them and return them to their home and to their temple, and God responded. God brought them back, restored them to the land God had given them, and rebuilt the relationship with them that they had broken. God did indeed act, as God promised, coming to God's people through Cyrus of Persia who liberated them, giving them a glimpse into the kingdom of the Lord.

The second moment is one of pivotal importance to us Christians - and that was the moment two thousand years ago when a baby was born in a stable in Bethlehem. I won't get into the story because, of course, we all know it, and I don't want to pre-empt Christmas Eve, but here again we have God's promised act fulfilled - to come to us, to be with us, in the flesh, undeniably God-among-us. It didn't happen the way it was expected to happen, or involve the people one might expect to be involved, but it happened nevertheless - the fulfillment of God's promise, and the beginning of the coming of the day of the Lord.

But it's not just moments in the past that convince us that God is trustworthy and that Christ will come again. While it's true that we're waiting for one big day, for the day, it's also important that we not overlook the small, yet still meaningful, ways that Christ comes to us today, and tomorrow, and every day of our lives. In quiet, humble ways, the Lord comes to us in our baptism, blessing the vulnerable, fragile bodies of infants. The Lord comes to us in Communion, in those brief few seconds of receiving the undeserved gifts of bread and wine, body and blood. And the Lord comes to us in the acts of graciousness and mercy that take place everyday in the community of believers. In those moments when you forgive someone without them asking, or are forgiven yourself, the Lord has come. In those moments when you donate money or food or clothing to charity or a person in need, the Lord has come. In those moments when you reach out to the stranger across from you and offer a smile, the Lord has come. Just as he promised he would.

Now, we are still waiting for the unmistakable arrival of the Lord, and while we wait we live in the tensions that Advent brings. We celebrate the past and look to the future. And we wait without knowing for how long. But we have seen God fulfill God's promises, and we know that we do not wait in vain. So we live with the tension, and we proclaim with hope the anthem of Advent, "Come, Lord Jesus." Amen.

No comments: