Sunday, November 28, 2021

Year C Advent 1 2021 New Year’s Waiting: Before, Today, & To Come

 

Year C Advent 1, 28 November 2021

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“New Year’s Waiting: Before, Today, & To Come”


Collect: Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


Jeremiah 33:14-16

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.”


1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.


Luke 21:25-36

Jesus said, “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.

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day 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 the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”


Happy New Year! Today is Advent 1, the first day of our liturgical calendar. Advent literally means The Arrival, Old English, from Latin adventus ‘arrival’, from advenire, from ad- ‘to’ + venire ‘come’. As simple as the meaning, Advent is a conflicted time.


We look back to the Hope we, as the human race, had. 

We look around in Thankfulness for what is. 

We look with anticipation to what is to come again.


More than just both/and, it is This/And That/And That, Too.


Today I will be referring to all three of our readings, and you may want to keep them out. They work together on this New Year’s Day.


But like I said a few times, most recently a couple of weeks ago, Fear Not. Fear Not, even when you do not know what is coming. But in this Arrival, we do. We know what we are awaiting.


When Sojo was a wee one, I know, hard to believe now, she was told early on Thanksgiving that her grandma, my mother, from Newport News was coming. So she got her wee toddler chair and sat it by the front door, maybe a foot and a half away from it. And she sat there the whole morning. All the way through Macy’s Parade, every hour of it. She was well into the Dog Show when my mom arrived. She had been there, in rapt attention for almost 4 hours. Quite the dedication for a toddler. Jesus may stand at the door and knock, but Sojo sat at the door and waited. And waited. And waited. She knew what she was waiting for. 


So do we.


We know how this story ends, but every year in our liturgical tradition we walk ourselves through Christ’s life. The Anticipation with baited Breath. The Birth in holy silence. The Epiphany with Awe and Wonder. The Life of teaching and serving and healing. The Road to Jerusalem of sacrifice and dread. The Holy Week filled with so much passion and heartbreak. The first day of the week when the world was made new. The emerging implication when we as the Church takes his role onto ourselves to bring light and healing and grace into a lonely and hurting world. Then we remind ourselves that Christ is King and always will be, and we start it all over again. 


We do it every year because we need it. The Gospel of Christ is so counterintuitive to the ways the world still works, that the training of us is incomplete. We still try to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and rely on works instead of that amazing Grace we sing and talk about but rarely drink ourselves.


Advent is a penitential rite, a time of stripping away the excess, so that when the excess comes it is stupendous and a change. Easter is not as glorious as it could be without Good Friday. Christmas is more Christmas-y when we clean house and step away from the norm in Advent. We prepare our hearts so that they can beat even more and more fully on that sweet morning to come. 


Advent is holy waiting. For centuries people desired a Messiah, a Savior. We look back to the Hope we, as the human race, had. 

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.” Jeremiah 33:14-16

Yahweh Tsidkenu in Hebrew. We sing carols speaking of the longing for the day to come. [In a Paul Harvey voice] “And now we know the rest of the story.


One of the gifts of Advent is taking the time to not take the Incarnation and the time of the Incarnation, Christmas, for granted. We are intentional in our recreating that emotion in heart lest we take this cruxpoint in human history for granted. And speaking of the heart, it is not just about emotions, it is about preparation. Some friends of mine are about to have a baby, and once again I hear the story of painting the room, building the crib, preparing for the life-changing wonder of the son that is to come. I smile, thinking back to the hope and fear of my two children coming. Collectively we do that as well, thinking back to the days when “at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land” was still in the future.


But Advent, when the anticipation builds in our hearts, we also pause to look around. We look around in Thankfulness for what is.

...May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

We are gathered together because Jesus already came. We are one, because he made us One. And together we await his coming again.


This is more than just words we say in the Creeds. And so often we use it as a punchline, because after two thousand years we are tired of waiting. I saw a button once in a store in Carytown that said, “Jesus is Coming! Look busy.” Is that all this is to us? Were we to live like the parable of the 10 bridesmaids, 5 keeping their wicks trimmed in their lamps, and 5 not. Which are we?


Are we like Sojo at the door, vigilant, constant, unwavering? Or like me, “Ooh, parade! Wow, look at that dog on the Dog Show.” One of us was ready. One of us was not.


Jesus was clear, even while he was still with us that days would come when times would be dark, and evil would abound.

“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.”


Were we to live our lives in the Anticipation that this was real, what would that look like for you in your life? Will you “faint from fear and foreboding”? I think we think on this the way we think on the Afterlife. It is much the same for many.


If you are living today like Jesus is coming tomorrow, what worries could you have? You might be concerned for your friends and neighbors who are not ready, who are not prepared, who might “faint from fear and foreboding.” That is why it is so important never to write anybody off, and as one can, offer Grace and Hope and Forgiveness. We are never promised another day to do the right thing.



And how do we live today like Jesus is coming back tomorrow? Listen to his advice…

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day 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 the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Or to sum it up, Live your life in such a way as to Fear Not. I started with that, and I finish with that. Live in Faith, Hope, and Love, and Not in Fear. Perfect Love drives out all fear. Amen





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Blessings, Rock