November 28, 2010

Advent 1 A

Matthew 24:36-44

Speed Waiting

The church looked wonderful last weekend at the fair, didn’t it? All the decorations were so pretty and cheerful. Yesterday the flower committee worked their magic with sprays and the wreaths and the Advent candles. They sure did bring the Spirit of Christmas alive.

At the Diaconate meeting on Tuesday night we were talking about the Advent Wreath, and the Christmas Eve Candlelight Services, and the poinsettias, and the Tree Lighting and Christmas party, and suddenly I was PSYCHED! I am READY! for Christmas. Not so psyched that I went shopping this weekend. There is a limit....

It is soooooo easy to flip from Thanksgiving straight to Christmas and ignore Advent altogether. But I got straightened out pretty quickly when I read today’s Gospel lesson. In Year A in the lectionary, the, reading for the first Sunday in Advent throws us a curve. I’m thinking about Christmas—the promise of God coming to us in person as a baby. I’ve never been much of a history buff, but Christmas is one of very few historical events that I get excited about. And I’m excited about Christmas. Matthew, on the other hand, is on another page altogether. Instead of looking back at a baby born far away and long ago,--isn’t that what we are all getting excited about?--Matthew tells us—yes, the Lord is coming--but not in retrospect, not in a re-living of something that happened once upon a time long long ago. Advent is the time when we prepare for the Lord who is coming in the future. Fred Craddock says it this way: “Advent proclaims the coming of the Lord, but that is not at all the same thing as saying Christmas is coming.” [i]

Matthew turns our attention to the future. Not Christmas Day with is 4 weeks in the future, but the forever-future. Certainly remembering what God did in Nazareth and Bethlehem helps us remember who God is, and how God works in the world and in our lives. The whole point of remembering is to give us a much better sense of where we—and God—are headed, and what the promises of God will bring. Advent points us to the beginning of the world in the future, not the end. Not only do we remember a baby that was born; we uncover the hope that has kept God’s people going for thousands of year, and that will keep us going for as long as it takes each of us and all of us—not just Christians, but every single child of God--to live in such a way that love and joy and peace describe the fulfillment of God’s plan. THIS is our Advent hope.

It’s going to take awhile. That’s why Jesus spends so much of his time teaching us how to live in the meantime. His major point is that we much be prepared at any and every moment to meet our Maker. God is and has always been unpredictable. God can afford to be unpredictable. But WE like to ORDER our lives. Make them predictable. Hectic, maybe, but predictable. We may not know what God is going to do tomorrow—or even later today, but BY GUM.....THIS year, when Christmas comes in 27 days, we are going to be READY. We are. We have LISTS! WE are on schedule. But God, well, God is another story. God “wakes” us up, suddenly, most unexpectedly, sometimes with good things, and sometimes not, but in any case, the “intervention of God in human affairs CANNOT be managed or scheduled the way we schedule our calendars, all neat and tidy. God’s advent—the literal translation is God’s “coming to” us--is as manageable as a heart attack or falling in love. Either way, you know you are not in control.” (Mary Hinkle Shore, New Proclamation 2007)

Tom Long, one of my favorite preachers, is SOOOOOO perceptive when he reflects on God’s unpredictability. He connects God’s unpredictability with deep human need. Listen to what he says:

When tomorrow is just more of today and all labors of love

seem poured into a bottomless pit of human suffering, indifference,

and cynacism...in the face of the crushing needs of the world, the ONLY

way to preserve hope...is to trust that we ~~may~~ (will) be surprised by the

sudden presence of God....We ~~may~~ never know when we (might)

encounter the living God waiting for us around the next bend. Indeed,

each unexpected meeting, each moment of holy surprise, is but an

anticipation of the great climax of all human history and longing,

when the world, seemingly spinning along in ceaseless tedium, will

find itself gathered into the extravagant mercy of God. (Matthew. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 1997. p.276)

Advent—a time when we prepare for the fullness of God’s kingdom-- happens to coincide with our preparations for Christmas. But our preparations for Advent are definitely not the same as our preparations for Christmas. Christmas involves decorations, Christmas cards, gift lists, menus, excited children, parties, caroling, and Santa Claus. Christmas preparations tend to be hectic, frenetic, demanding.

In contrast, Advent is our opportunity to set aside all the rushing and impatience that have come to define our every-day lives. We are rushing and hectic all the time, not just Christmas. Tweeting and texting and living with those little cell phone thingies attached to our ears so we can drive and eat and talk and keep our eye on the kids in the back seat all at the same time. If God is here right now, and if God has something to say to us right now, God help us, because we’d never hear it. And I’m right in the mix with everyone else. This past week I was frantic to the point of being overwhelmed. I could barely function. But then as I read about the real meaning of Advent. I took a deep breath and opened myself to this season of light over darkness, hope over despair, gentleness and compassion over might and power. Not the chaos and Muzak of the Mall, but celestial peace and comfort and hope. The Normal Rockwell Christmas has never made it to my house. But God’s promise and presence always arrive. [ii]

Matthew reminds us that when Jesus arrives in OUR time, in OUR generation, in OUR lives, when He comes to OUR table, the story will almost certainly not be about a baby born in Laurel Atwood’s shed with angels fluttering around and shepherds in the corn field across the street singing “Joy to the World.” God’s arrival will not be published in the Calendar of the Willimantic Chronicle. Like a thief in the night, God will slip in when the house is a mess, when we are short-tempered and distracted, when all hell is breaking loose. He will come without an invitation and like as not he will come when we have no food fit for a king, or worse yet, he’ll show up on the doorstep just as we are expecting REAL company—and he will certainly not be dressed for the occasion.

The church has appointed the season of Advent to give us breathing room, room to focus, space and time away from all the distractions of the secular and materialistic Christmas that floods our senses. Time to listen to our children. REALLY listen to them. Time to listen to our own hearts. Time to rethink our priorities. Advent is our opportunity to make space to hear God whisper a word of hope, to see that God is leading us straighten a crookedness in out paths, to shiver with comfort when God fills as emptiness in our hearts.

On Christmas, we do look backwards to the long-ago day of Jesus’ birth in far away Bethlehem. But during Advent, we look forward, not backward, and our looking is not merely a passive waiting for God to get here and DO something. [iii] Advent is the time when we reclaim the patience that allows us to live lives of preparedness, so that when the God of love arrives, we will recognize the moment.

As we long for a new heaven and a new earth, we are necessarily focusing on living our lives right here, right now, trusting God. Barbara Brown Taylor talks to us about how she tries to do that: “Every morning when you wake up, decide to live the life God has given you to live right now. Refuse to live yesterday over and over again. Resist the temptation to save your best self for tomorrow.” [iv] There’s no need to get lost in the technical details of God’s timing, trying to know something that even Jesus and the Angels did not know. Instead, we should focus on how to live today. "Live a caught-up life, not a put-off life, so that wherever you are….you are ready for God….Ours may be the generation that finally sees him ride in on the clouds, or we may meet him the same way generations before us have – one by one by one, as each of us closes our eyes for the last time. Either way, our lives are in God's hands.” [v]

And so, today, we wait, we hope, we trust in the extravagant mercy of God.