1 Advent A December 1, 2013
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Isaiah 2: 1-5 + Psalm 122 + Romans 13: 11-14 + Matthew 24: 36-44
Stir up your power among us, O Lord, and come. Amen.
The message in my email was short and to the point. The time is now, it said. Of course, this message was on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, letting me know that somehow it would be too late to shop the Black Friday sales on Friday and I should shop the Black Friday sales on Thursday. I suppose it was just some weird time warp related thing. I’ve noticed that time has been doing odd things as I get older….somehow, it moves much more quickly now than it did when I was a child. MUCH more quickly. Come to think of it, it even moves more quickly than it did five years ago.
For the Church, this day is actually the first day of the new year. The church year begins anew on the first Sunday in Advent, so we are out of sync with the Black Friday sales, because it’s New Year’s….or something like that. But we light our Advent wreaths to remind us that, even in these darkest days of the year, the Christ child is coming again, and coming soon.
This preoccupation with the timing of Christ’s return has been present throughout the ages. On multiple occasions, beginning with the earliest followers of Jesus, predictions were made….when would he come again? When would he return? When would the Kingdom come on earth as in heaven?
Jesus himself did little to help dispel the confusion. In the Gospel reading for today, we are reminded that no one knows the day and hour, not the angels or Jesus, but only God. Be ready! We are told. Like the email declaring that the time is now, Matthew’s Gospel says…We don’t know when the time is, but be ready! The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Paul, in writing to the believers in Rome, in our second reading this morning displays equal urgency. Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep. Lay aside works of darkness, Paul says, and live in the light. Now. Now is the time!
Advent comes to us under the cover of darkness, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere. In these days the sun waits to rise until we have risen and sets long before our work is done. Many days the lamps in our homes and businesses and offices burn all day long. We have the choice to dispel the darkness in this way, by turning on lamps, by lighting candles. It is the privilege of place that we enjoy. In fact, in this century, we can keep ourselves entertained in the midst of the darkness, we can watch a movie or peruse Facebook or simply read by lamplight. If we so choose, we never have to consider the darkness at all.
What Advent invites us to do is to name the darkness in our world and to imagine what difference it might make for Jesus to enter into that darkness.
Both the prophet Isaiah and the Psalmist in our readings for this Advent morning name the darkness. In Isaiah the people take their weapons and turn them into farm implements. They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Imagine, if you can, taking items of warfare – swords and spears, that in ancient times were used to kill and maim, and re-crafting them into tools used to tend the earth.
This is stunning to consider – that in the midst of the darkness of violence, we might actually take what we know as inherently violent weapons and turn them instead into something used to tend to God’s creation.
The Prophet Isaiah adds that the people will not learn war anymore, or as the spiritual sings “ain’t gonna study war no more.”
The Psalmist continues the message of peace, praying for the peace of Jerusalem, the spiritual home of the God’s people Israel. The metaphorical gathering place for all believers. The Psalmist’s prayer for Jerusalem is that there would be peace within the walls of the city and quietness within her towers. Both of these places would be actively engaged in a time of warfare, particularly the towers, used for watching for the enemy. Instead the Psalmist asks that the peace of God would reign within the walls of God’s most beloved city and her people.
These texts offer a strong argument against war. It could even be argued that the Isaiah text is the first argument for weapon regulation.
But in the darkness of these Advent days, we do well to ask ourselves, as we hear the words of these texts, what the darkness asks of us. How do I, as an individual, wield weapons that would be better used to tend to what God has created?
Because I don’t own any weapons….no guns or swords or spears. But every time I turn a blind eye to injustice; every time I support something that does not serve the common good, I am not supporting God’s creation. I am wielding weapons of privilege and indifference. Every time we neglect the earth, every time we say that it doesn’t matter what we do to this planet we’ve been gifted with as our home, we wield weapons of neglect and abuse.
And this is when Matthew’s Gospel reading this morning rings in our ears: Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Now, this is the point where it’s important to look at this with a very Lutheran lens. Because the return of Jesus is not a threat. It is not something that should send us scrambling to make sure our house is in order. It is safe to assume, just from the sheer annals of history, that our houses will not be in order. Throughout time, we have managed to somehow fall short of what God intended for us. Through our own greed or neglect or foolishness, we have bungled it badly. And because of this, the coming of Jesus into the world again is good news! It is a promise! It is hopeful! It is good news of great joy!
Because we are waiting in darkness. Some of that darkness is of our own making and some of it is not. But it is darkness, all the same. And into that darkness, Jesus comes, the day star, and night flies away.
This Advent season invites us into a liminal space – a space between this and that – a space between where we are now and where we hope to be. We know that Christ has come into the world, as a babe in a manger and a savior on a cross. And we know that he will come again.
What is it then, that we hope to do with the time in between? The poet Mary Oliver asks it this way: What is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? You might be tempted to say that it’s too late to do anything that matters, but every day is filled with the same number of hours and what we do with them is up to us. Whether we wield our weapons or whether we tend to what God has given to us, it is up to us. What we do won’t affect our salvation or our eternal life in the Kingdom, Jesus has already seen to that.
But what we do with what we’ve been given is a response to the gift and the giver. What we do with what we’ve been given is a response to the gift and the giver. It is true on every level. When I was a little girl my beloved grandfather gave me a riding toy car for Christmas. I used it for a short time and then lost interest in it. When my grandfather came over one day, my mother suggested that he give it to my cousin as I no longer cared for it. I was devastated. (This was the one and only time I tried to pack up and run away; I was so sure he was deeply disappointed.) He did not mind, though, for I had behaved as any five year old might. He loved me all the same. But what I did with what I’d been given was a response that I was not proud of.
We have been given the greatest gift of all – the promise of abundant life, a future filled with hope, life in the Kingdom that is as close as our very breath. And the best news, the news that awaits us in the darkness of this Advent season is that Jesus has come into the world and is coming again. Thanks be to God. Amen.