Advent is not Linear
Advent 3 B 2011
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Have you noticed how odd the Church’s sense of time becomes in Advent? Just think about this…it’s really strange. We begin Advent by thinking of the Second Coming of Christ—which may be far off into the future, or it may be 10 minutes from now…in any event it has yet to occur.
Last week and this week we focus on the work of John the Baptist as the herald—the forerunner—of the adult Jesus. He’s the one who testifies that the One who comes after him / is Light from God. The Light is coming soon and will bring with him the Kingdom of God. So repent and clean your own inner house, because he’ll be among you in a flash. Prepare your house for a guest. Prepare your hearts for a guest.
Then next week we go backward even more as we hear the story of the Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will bear God’s son. Jesus is not even conceived yet, at that time. We go back in time before the birth.
Then one week after that, we move forward 9 months to celebrate his birth.
Even more dizzy-making is the fact that in the midst of all the jumping around in time, today’s readings also speak of the Second Coming of
Christ in the Epistle. And the Gospel gives us the words about John, which are centered in the story of the pre-existent Christ before the cosmos was brought into being.
One commentator says that “time collapses” in these Advent readings. Everything gets squished together and we can forget about any linear, progressive sense of timing. We are transported backwards and forwards until we may be a little dizzy from it all.
That’s because our meditations in Advent cluster around various themes, not a logical timeline. Themes.
[Sermon Brainwave Podcast for December 11, 2011, www.workingpreacher.org from Luther Seminary inspired this reflection so far]
And what are the big themes of Advent?
Here’s one: Christ is coming—either for the second time or the first time or the umpteenth time when he comes into our lives over and over again. We see it in today’s epistle where Paul prays that we be kept sound and blameless in preparation for the coming of Jesus. We are reminded in the Gospel that Jesus was and is coming into the world / in order to bring the Light of God to a people who are walking in great darkness. John the Baptist reminds his people and us that it’s time to prepare for the coming of the Light of God. And of course this shouldn’t be a surprise: we know that the word “Advent” means a “coming toward.”
Here’s another theme of Advent: God is acting already and God will act in the future. God WILL intervene in history because that’s God’s nature. God intervened by sending Jesus. God will intervene again when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. God acts within and around our lives each day.
We see this theme strongly today in our reading from Isaiah 61, which is toward the end of the book of Isaiah. The exiles have returned from Babylon and they are striving to revivify and rebuild Jerusalem. But they’re still in a kind of exile—they are exiled from God and exiled from each other in a spiritual sense. Things are not going well as they attempt to mirror heaven in Jerusalem. And so they wear ashes and the clothes of mourning.
Yet the prophet tells them to rejoice, to be thankful and joyful because God will intervene and will restore them. God does this just like a garden restores its plant life once the winter ends. Take a look at verse 11. Just as a sprout breaks out of the ground in the spring, so God comes to the aid of God’s people—over and over. It happens just because that is what God does. It’s natural.
And we gather here week after week, counting down the time till we get to the Holy Birth. And week after week we go home again. We get back into our cars and return to worries about the tabs we’re running up on our credit cards. We worry about how we can take care of all the obligations and the demands of friends and family in this busy month. We watch the news and our hearts bleed and maybe feel guilty when we see our incredible wealth compared to how most of the rest of the world is living.
We sing a lot here about Jesus the bringer of Peace into our hearts but our lives are not always very peaceful. We yearn here for the Light of God who was and is coming into the world. But our lives sometimes feel filled with the dark.
It’s a paradox of sorts, the contrast between what’s inside our walls here at Christ Church and what awaits us outside. And it’s our calling as Christians to help the world outside to see what we’ve found in here—inside the walls.
Like John the Baptist, we’re called to testify to the Light. We’re called to tell people about where we find Light and peace.
So why not reach out to a friend who’s lonely and bring him to dinner and then to church on Christmas Eve? Why not give to help other people live a little easier so they might feel some of the warmth of promise that we feel at this season? Why not clean our own hearts out to prepare for the first coming and the second coming and the daily comings?
Our Epistle selection maps out a thorough response to the promises and the themes we celebrate in this season.
Paul tells the flock in Thessalonica, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” [1 Thessalonians 5: 16- ] It’s packed with advice and we could wring a good 100 or more sermons out of that passage. But let’s look at it broadly today and take it as encouragement that there is still time to prepare.
And that first word “Rejoice” is so important. Even as we struggle with the paradox of good news versus difficult reality, we are called to rejoice. We hear the word all over our readings today. This is God’s world and God is in charge. We’re not. So rejoice.
That’s the meaning of the pink candle in the middle of all the purple on our Advent wreath. In the middle of the hard work of preparing the way and listening and responding to the Word, we’re encouraged to feel the lightness of it all. Rejoice.
God is in charge. We are not. God is on the way and God is already here. And God is love. So clean the house of your heart! Rejoice!
Amen.
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