Sermon on First Advent, Year B: How should we greet Advent?
Today begins Advent, which we all know starts a new calendar in the Church year and the season in which we are to prepare for Christmas. These things should put us a bit at odds with the rest of our culture. Christmas has transformed out of recognition from something that Christians of long ago have recognized. Especially since about two hundred years ago, stories and ideas based on Santa Claus and “A Christmas Carol” and German Christmas trees, and candy manufacturing and consumerism generally have given us a season of enjoying lights and decorations and anticipating presents to a degree unimaginable before modern times.
These cultural practices are fun and entertaining, and I’m not saying we should not participate. But our real goal, not just during Christmas, but always, is living the live which Jesus proclaims. The Old Testament reading of Isaiah explains why. Because the Hebrews experienced a brokenness between themselves and God. They ask him to restore them, to drop his anger, to save them, that “we shall be saved.”
In our faith, we believe that Christ’s having been born into this world as a babe, which we semi-arbitrarily celebrate on December 25th, is the solution to that brokenness. We never have to feel disconnected from God, worried about His anger, fearful of our enemies, if we trust in our faith in Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and return. That is the point of the New Testament readings. Paul writing to the Corinthians is reassured in the grace of God which they have received. He is confident they will be “blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” meaning his return, the Second Coming.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus himself explains how the elect, the chosen faithful, will be gathered up to heaven. Unlike Christmas, the incarnation, we do not know when the day will happen. It did not happen in Paul’s generation. It has not happened since. It may happen in a few moments, or in many years to come.
But our challenge is to metaphorically “keep alert; keep awake.” And that is not just a passive standing around. The examples he gives are slaves working and doorkeepers watching—actually doing their jobs, not just standing around. Of course, we can sleep when we need to. It is the job of the doorkeeper to wake the slaves when the master approaches, so that they are awake. We are not all doorkeepers. But when the slaves have awakened—and we all could be slaves, they have done their proper work for the day, so that everything is in order and ready for the master’s return.
Is everything in order in the world today and ready for the master’s return?
I would say far from it.
There is much that can and should be done. Maybe some in our own personal lives; maybe some in the lives of our neighbors; certainly, much in the greater society in our country and around the world. That is our ongoing challenge. Not merely to “be awake,” but to properly prepare the world for His return. Much of the spirit of secular Christmas could help in that, as it does call for people to be joyful themselves, be kind to one another, and be cheerful givers, even to strangers.
May our own sense of Advent foster those attitudes, to which we add our own Christian duties, to properly make our world a fit place for Jesus.
Written for the parish of St. James & St. George 2020 November 29
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