Church on Morgan
November 29, 2015 | Jeremiah 33:14-16
Our first reading is from the Old Testament, Jeremiah 33, 14 through 16. "The days are surely coming," says the Lord, "when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days, Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called. The Lord is our righteousness." And this is not a joke, please stand for the Gospel reading. Our Gospel reading is from Luke chapter 21. "There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations, confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. Then he told them a parable, "Look at the fig tree and all the trees. As soon as they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves, and know that summer is already near." So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Beyond guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Well, undoubtedly some of you got ready for worship this morning in homes already decorated for Christmas. If your family is anything like mine, you can hardly wait for thanksgiving to be over before you bound down to the basement or climb into the attic to pull the decorations from their precarious place on the shelf. For some of you, the tree has already been cut down, shaken, and stood up. For some of you, the lights have been untangled and sorted into piles that work and piles that should have been replaced years ago, right? Some of us have already started listening to our favorite Christmas songs, and we're just beginning to feel that stirring of nostalgia and warmth that comes with the holiday season. But just as you begin that cultural ascent to these feelings of good tidings and great joy, we find this passage from the electionary in Luke 21. So our scripture this morning is not as you might have anticipated a nativity scene. In it we find no angels singing, no shepherds kneeling, no wise men worshiping, no Christ child sleeping. Instead, we find this very adult Jesus talking about distress upon the earth, people fainting from fear. You find dissipation and drunkenness, the worries of life. When I found out what our text was for this morning, I realized this is why Justin chose to be on vacation this week. Today, the electionary wants me to talk about signs in the sun, moon, and stars. But if I'm honest, I'd rather just have a steaming glass of hot chocolate and not think about those things. The electionary wants me to talk about distress on the earth in days of vengeance, but really, I just want to put on a warm sweater and being Crosby's white Christmas and not think about those things. But in the midst of this strange language and apocalyptic imagery, perhaps there might have to be a word of good news for us this morning. So before we dive in, will you pray with me? Living God, speak to me, speak through me if necessary, speak in spite of me, but always beyond me. But as you speak, give to us open ears, soft hearts, and courageous minds that we might be shaped by your word, and our lives might be justly ordered according to your wisdom, which orders all things for good. You pray these things the name of Jesus Christ who was, who is and who is to come. Amen. Well these days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they form a season of the year in which most of us are acutely aware of and supremely concerned about time. Perhaps it's because there are so many things to do between now and Christmas that we feel like we don't have enough time. Or perhaps it's because of the end of the year work projects and the parties we've agreed to go to that we feel like everyone wants a piece of our time. Or perhaps it's because as the days literally grow shorter, it feels like we're running out of time. But Christians have always been concerned with time. So the church in its creativity and wisdom decided long ago to create its own Christian calendar as a way of marking time by the story of Jesus, following Jesus' birth in ministry and death and resurrection, and it assigns to us these passages for each season. And so this morning our passage doesn't sound like Christmas because according to the Christian calendar, we're not quite to the Christmas season yet. Today is the first day of the new Christian year, it's the first Sunday of Advent. An Advent is a season of preparation, so over the next four Sundays we will not be hearing scriptures about shepherds and wise men, instead we'll be hearing scriptures that hopefully offer to us some instruction about how we're to prepare ourselves during Advent if we are truly ready for Christmas. And as time itself ripens towards this due date of Christmas, our hearts, God willing, will also ripen and burst open ready to accept the good news of God's arrival among us. So what is this strange passage from Luke's Gospel have to offer us? What can we take away so that we can live lives this Advent that are worth imitating? In this passage, Jesus says, "raise up your heads," later he says, "be on guard." Finally, he says, "be alert at all times." In the message translation, it says, "don't fall asleep at the switch." Raise up your heads, be on guard, be alert, keep awake. I don't know about you, but as an over-caffeinated graduate student, rarely do I need reminding to stay awake and keep alert, but perhaps the problem is not that we're literally asleep, but that we're distracted by or preoccupied with the wrong things. So I want to suggest that Jesus isn't really interested in our ordering an extra shot of espresso with our morning coffee, instead, Jesus wants us to watch. He wants us to look at the world around us and to see what's really there, and it's this urgent work of attentiveness that I think is at the heart of our Gospel passage this morning. In these words, they don't sound like the beginning of a new Christian year, they sound like the beginning of the end, which is why this passage is often referred to as the little apocalypse. But when we hear that word "apocalypse," it often draws to mind these images of chaos and catastrophic destruction, right? But this word "apocalypse," it comes from the Greek word which means "to uncover," to reveal. So I want us to think about it as a tearing away of the veil, to see what is really there, to watch, to pay attention. But given the current state of world affairs, pulling back the veil and seeing what's there can feel a little scary. But maybe it's also a blessing in disguise. Seeing a way of the veil, seeing things as they really are, gives us permission this advent to tell the truth, to tell the truth that things are not always okay in our world, in our cities, and in our lives. It gives us permission to tell the truth that while many churches are lighting the candle of hope on this first Sunday of advent, some of us feel hopeless. Advent is a time in which we wait for the Messiah to appear. But some of us, at one time or another, have made our own quiet, desperate plea for God to appear, wondering if God ever will. It happened to the writer Anne Weems, when she lost her son Todd, after his 21st birthday. She was understandably overwhelmed by the pain and the unresolved grief. One day she began fuming through her Bible, and she came upon what we call the Psalms of Lament. Her discovery was a revelation. It was a pulling back of the veil that in these Psalms here were people who were willing to tell the truth. She started writing her own limits to God, and I want to share one of those with you. I believe we'll have it on the screen. She writes, "The sky has fallen, and no one seems to notice. Mountains have fallen into the sea, and people are oblivious. Oh God, my life is destroyed. People go to the bank in the store, they eat and drink, while I crumple under the weight of my own heart. Have mercy on me, for I am all alone. No one sees that the sky has fallen. No one, oh God, but you. All-knowing God, you are the only one who can put the stars back into place. Get pity on me and hold up the sky, I will walk by the river of hope, and you will find me there, and you will reach out your hand and push the heavens back into place. And I will kneel and give thanks, for you will be with me. You will put the stars back in the sky." And weems lament reminds us that as we watch for God to tear open the heavens, we also look within. When the stars from our own sky fall, when the ground beneath our feet begins to shake, when our own apocalypse happens, we often go deeper into a life we would not have known before. We see things in a new way. We see things more clearly. We gain a new perspective. We remember what is most important, and we let the distractions and the preoccupations go. We place our hope in a future we cannot see or know, and we wait. I think this is the second thing that we're called to do this Advent. We're called to watch, but we're also called to wait. Weems and weems offered up these laments she waited on God. And waiting is precisely what the early Christians reading this Gospel passage would have been doing. They're watching and waiting for the coming of Christ, but this time it's the second coming. Decades after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, things haven't gotten much better for Jesus' followers. So fearful of persecution, they're watching and waiting for God to come and save them. And Jesus says, "When this happens, watch for the signs. The heavens will be shaken, and you will see the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds." These early Christians were waiting. And here, 2,000 years later, in this space on this morning, you and I are still waiting. But there's something about waiting. Something about waiting that focuses your attention so that you cannot hear or see anything else. It's like a mother awake at night, waiting on her teenager to come home, listening for the sound of the car in the driveway, in the back door to open. It's an experience so galvanizing that she literally shuts out every other sound. And I know this is true, because I've been that young teenager coming home way past my curfew only to find my mother awake, waiting. But waiting is also this universal experience. All of us wait. We wait on delayed flights and in unanticipated traffic jams. We wait for job openings or for the market to improve. We wait on aging relatives who have slowed down, and we wait for the doctor to call with the test results. We wait to meet the right person, and sometimes we wait for our broken hearts to heal. Waiting is this common experience, common to all humans, but as Christians, we're called to wait in hope, looking for the signs that God is here among us. And so just a quick perusal of the biblical story will find that God's people are always waiting on something, right? Abraham is waiting for a homeland, Sarah is waiting for a child, the Israelites are waiting on a promised land, and the Jewish people for a Messiah were all waiting. Because God's history is so full of amazing acts, we're always waiting, anticipating what God's next big move is going to be in the world, right? What will it be? Will it be handing down justice? Will it be bringing peace? We're finally answering that prayer we pray so often, die, kingdom, come. Sometimes I wonder, are we really ready for that to happen? Are we really ready? Sometimes I wonder if the reason we sometimes obsess so much over the second coming is because we're really disappointed in the first one. I wonder if the reason we obsess over the second coming is because we're really disappointed in the first one. Who could have expected a helpless little baby? Who anticipated a Messiah that would go and get himself killed? What exactly are we waiting for this Advent season? Are we waiting for God to come crashing to the earth like a cartoonish superhero? Are we waiting for him to put our enemies in their place and right every wrong? What are we waiting for? I don't know what your list might include, but when I think about what I'm waiting for, I think about eradicating disease, stopping terrorism, fighting injustice and racism, and protecting the most vulnerable among us. But then I wonder, what if God is waiting on us? To this Advent, I see two options for us. We can wring our hands, looking anxiously at the sky, waiting for God to do something about our world, or we can tear back the veil, tell the truth about what we see, and we can go to work preparing this world, the coming of Jesus, for the coming of God's kingdom. That's a really lofty idea. And if that thought overwhelms you as much as it does me, then we can start small. We can think simple. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells us to feed the hungry clothes of the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger. I think that's a really great place to start. Just as you do unto the least of these, Jesus says, you do unto me. And maybe he's right. Maybe while we're doing the work we've been given to do instead of staring at the sky, waiting for God to come, we might just discover that God is already here at work among us. While in college, I would occasionally volunteer at this homeless shelter. On Friday nights during the winter months, I would go down to one of the old Episcopal churches in downtown Spartanburg. At some point, it occurred to them that they were heating this large basement that no one was using while men, cold and hungry would be sleeping on their doorsteps downtown. So they opened their basement. The men would come in, and we would give them a tiny mattress, a blanket, and a small pillow. About 40 men would sleep there for the night, and those of us who volunteered, we'd sit up and play card games or board games or read books just to stay awake to make sure everything was okay. It was one of the only shelters that would allow you in if you happen to be inebriated or on something. The only rule was you could not cause trouble with the other guests. Sometimes I would look at these men who came in with angry scowls on their faces, but while sleeping, they looked so peaceful. I'd be reminded that 30, 40 years ago, that was someone's precious sleeping baby boy. These men had stories that they loved to tell. One had been a jazz musician in New York City. Another always brought pictures of his grandchildren to show us. Another was the artist among the group, and if we promised to bring pen and paper, he would make these amazing pencil sketches. We enjoyed these Friday nights, but Saturday mornings were a struggle. We had to get them in up and out of the church by 7 a.m., out into the cold with no breakfast or hot shower. As I got into my car, I would drive past them all my way back to school. There I'd open up my door to a warm apartment, a soft bed, and a kitchen full of food. And that's when it hit me, the revelation, the pulling back of the veil, to see what was really there, to see the great difference between their world and my own. It would strike me in the chest each time and cause pain in my heart. And you know what I did? I crawled in my bed, pulled the covers over my head, and I went to sleep. A few hours later, I would wake up and everything would be back to normal. It's as if when I pulled the covers over my head, I was pulling the veil back over the truth, like there had been no revelation at all. But Jesus says don't fall asleep at the switch, keep awake, be on guard, be alert at all times because the truth is right before you. So this season of Advent, it's a season full of paradox. Yes, it is a time to celebrate the coming of Christ with family and friends, with parties and good food in the giving of gifts, but it's also a time for us to watch, to look beyond the superficial and face the reality of the brokenness that exists in our world. It's a time of waiting patiently for God to be revealed, but it's also a time of urgency for us to be about the work that we are all called to do. It's a time to celebrate the light that has come into the world-grown dim, but it's also a time to let the darkness of our world do its work of nurturing, like a seed beneath the ground or a child in its mother's womb. So as we move into this Advent time, as we enter into a new Christian year, let us not forget the ultimate goal. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Sometimes that can sound a bit fantastical, right? Sometimes it may seem absurd, but this morning I want to suggest to you that if we take Jesus' advice, if we stay alert, if we don't fall asleep at the switch, if we lift our heads high as we watch and wait and work together, we may just start to see some of the signs. We may just start to see our redemption drawing near. We may just see heaven descend a little bit more in this generation, arriving like a small, vulnerable infant whose redeeming cry ends the wails of his mother's birth pangs. Will you pray with me? Lead us, O God, this Advent, as we journey with you to Bethlehem, to a stable, to a newborn king. Prepare our hearts so when that we do see the star shining, when we hear the angels sing, we might be ready to receive and to share the good news of your being born among us again. Pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, amen.