Sermon - The Day is Coming – are we ready? (Advent 1C)

1^st Sunday in Advent, Year C                                             November 28, 2021

Luke 21:25-36, Jeremiah 33:14-16                           Panzer Liturgical Service

As a society, we are terrible at waiting. We want what we want, and we want it NOW! I would be willing to guess that many of us spend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and even money to avoid waiting. And in general, that’s not a bad thing. GPS helps us to avoid traffic problems and sends us to the most efficient route. Maybe you weren’t here for the day when the Garrison put online appointments up for important tasks like vehicle registration and ID Card renewal… many cheers were sent up for not having to spend hours waiting in line. But recent events have also shown that there are often more people wanting appointments NOW versus the available numbers. When the recent online appointments went up for COVID-19 booster shots, all of the appointments for December were snatched up in a matter of hours, and now many of us are looking for other ways to avoid the wait for more protection. And why do we want this so badly? Not just so that we don’t get sick, but we are tired of sitting at home, waiting for life to return to normal. We hope that maybe this will help reduce our time of waiting.

And how many of us were sitting on go, waiting until after Thanksgiving to start our Christmas celebrations. We are sucked up in the whirlwind of holiday preparations with our Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, free shipping, and in the past, we have spent great time and effort to visit Christmas markets and celebrations galore… and have the gluhwein mugs to show for it. And while none of these things in and of themselves are bad, the question remains, are we focusing our energy in the right places?

I dare say that many Christians don’t understand what the season of Advent is all about. I think of it as a prequel… the story that comes before. It sets the stage for the momentous event of Jesus’ coming, ironically told in the voice of Jesus just before his arrest, trial, and execution. “Surely the days are coming…” he said. “Take care… be prepared… stay alert…” Never have those words felt more needed than in these days when the world seems to be turned upside down.

I know we’ve talked about this before, but at the beginning of Advent – the beginning of the new church year – we have an important opportunity to remember something important about time. In early Greek biblical manuscripts, there are two words for “time.”  Each day we count down to Christmas, each door we open on our Advent calendar is measured in Chronos… clock time: we count down the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and weeks until the day. But what if we were counting down in Kairos… God’s time? What if we experienced this season as preparation for the coming of his kingdom? How do we think about God in this eternal time of Emanuel… the time of God with us…? How do we expand our thinking and our living in this way?[i]

The season of Advent allows us to prepare for the amazing news of Jesus Christ. It offers us time to place the birth of the infant savior into a historical and cultural context and to be reminded that the coming of Jesus is not just a past event, but one which we look forward to in the future.

That’s why today’s gospel reading is not from the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke – we will get to those soon enough. Today’s lesson comes from the end of Jesus’ ministry, Luke’s version of Mark’s Little Apocalypse, which we just heard two weeks ago. Luke speaks with Jesus’ voice to a community struggling with persecution from the Roman authorities. This is a message of hope… do not fall for the solutions the world is giving you - keep being hopeful, stand firm in trials, and know that the pain of life will not defeat us. Jesus says, “Take care that your hearts are not dulled…” He is saying that this isn’t the time to give in to the temptation or distraction or fear.

We see the news and we are tempted to throw in the towel. It’s not just that the news is negative. It’s disheartening. It makes us wonder if there is anything at all that can turn the world around. When we look at the headlines, we see stories of people in conflict over religious and national identity, with questions about migration and racial and gender equity at the forefront. We wonder if there is anything we can do to make it better… are our current efforts in vain? In this season of Hope, we wonder if there is anything to be hopeful for.

The reading from Jeremiah tells us YES, there is reason to be hopeful. The biblical story shows us that God is faithful, even when those in the world around us are not. Even when we don’t understand how the journey of God’s people has often played out, we must trust in the everlasting promise that God has repeatedly made… hope is not lost. God will restore the world.

Have you ever participated in a trust fall? You know, the one where people gather around you, promising to catch you when you fall… have you allowed yourself to tip back into the waiting hands below? If you have, I hope it went well. I’ve instructed others in such activities over the years and even participated once myself, surviving with only a small head bonk from the process. The two poor youth who were catching my shoulders were so apologetic, saying, “It was just so much harder than I expected it to be… that’s a lot of responsibility!”

I learned a lot from the process about what it means to trust others to catch you when you fall. And I also learned about what it means to have that trust placed in your hands. After my experience, I taught that exercise differently. I didn’t focus on trust from one perspective. Yes, it takes trust to be the one falling, but there is also great responsibility entrusted to the ones helping, to make sure the person makes it safely to the ground. In the same way, being a member of the Kingdom of God is also about being trustworthy, and actively present with people who need God’s love the most.

In the gospel, Jesus tells us to stay alert. And these days I don’t think that’s just about making sure our spirituality is in order. I think we are also called to look for the places where the good news is needed. We can’t wait until we have a good handle on our own faith journeys… serving others is one of the best ways to work out our faith questions and concerns. When I look at my faith journey, I see that stepping out on faith to participate as a lay volunteer in youth missions over 35 years ago sent my life in a different direction – one that I did not ask for, and sometimes did not want. But being with people so different and yet so alike, I realized that God would use me if I was only willing to take the first step forward. And because of that, I stand before you today… in this place, doing this thing.

The Christian life is not about speculation or observation. It is not about living outside the fray and watching it all unfold before us. It is about behavior and relationships, living with faith that God is with us, even when we aren’t sure where we’re going and what it will all look like in the end. Jeremiah reminds us that Emmanuel is coming – God is with us. We sang this morning, “O come, O come, Emmanuel…” We know that Jesus is that Emmanuel. He is the hope amid despair, the light during darkness… this is the enduring message of the gospel.

So in this season of Advent, remember that hope is all about waiting. Hope is active patience, working while we wait, reaching out even despite our fear, and expecting that God will show up. And to remember that to wait faithfully is one of the hardest and most important things that we can do.[ii]

I hope that each of you is incorporating some kind of Advent practice into your life. Maybe it’s an advent calendar, or lighting an advent wreath at home, or reading an advent devotion each day, or planting amaryllis or paperwhites. But in addition to those things, I ask you to consider digging a little deeper and looking at how God is calling you to take the next step.

Over the next four weeks, I hope you’ll think about how you or your family or we as a community can live in expectation of his coming. We know that Jesus came before, and we have his promise that he will come again, we just don’t know when it will be. It could be an hour from now, next month, next year, or long after we are gone from this world. But what we do know is that God wants us to spend the time we have making sure that we are ready for his coming – that we have lived in such a way that others want to know and follow him, too.

In that process, we can ask ourselves these questions:

     1.    Am I willing to examine my life, celebrating the good and repenting and turning away from the things that are not life-giving?
2.    Am I living in the ways that Jesus has asked me to live? Am I taking the lessons that Jesus taught and applying them regularly in my life?
3.    Am I participating in the healing of the world?
4.    Am I offering the hope, peace, joy, and love that Jesus was born into this world to share? and lastly,
5.    Do I live as if I believe in the promise of everlasting life?[iii]

Today’s Psalm 25 is about trust. It is a reminder that God keeps God’s promises, just not always in our timing and not always in the ways that we expect or prefer. But even more importantly, let us remember that God chose us to be the fulfillment of his promises - We are his hands and feet and voice in the world, and with them, Advent calls us to live that promise. “The day is coming,” says the Lord. Are we ready?

Amen.

Peace, Deb

(c) Deb Luther Teagan, November 2021

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[i] David F. Sellery, This Week’s Focus, “As Time Goes By,” November 27, 2015, http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=dbffd2070718c7bb6a1b9b7e0&id=987d4ee8f9&e=880e8ae56e.

[ii] Robb McCoy & Eric Fistler, Pulpit Fiction podcast, http://www.pulpitfiction.us/show-notes/143-advent-1c-nov-29-2015

[iii] Dawn Chesser, Preaching Helps for the First Sunday in Advent, November 23, 2015. http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship/lectionary-calendar/first-sunday-of-advent-year-c