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"Ready or Not, Here He Comes"
This is an exciting Sunday – the first Sunday in Advent, the first day of the new church year, the first glimpse at the Chrismon tree and the other decorations of the season, a special worship festival from Bach – an exciting Sunday and that’s even before we get to this afternoon’s events. In fact, the whole season from Thanksgiving through Christmas is full of excitement. I remember a particular excitement when I was a little girl, the anticipation of this time of year, especially about the coming of Christmas morning. On this morning, we saw the tree for the first time and sitting under it dolls, one each for my sister and me and each clothed in coats and dresses made by loving hands, finished, if truth be known, just hours before we woke.
It’s an exciting and special season for many reasons – for memories like mine to be fondly revisited, for memories for others that have yet to be made. We need to remember, however, that above all the excitement and sentiment about family, friends, presents, parties and pageants, this season is about something pretty earth shattering. We are reminded in this season that we are waiting for God to come to us. We are reminded that, in one point in history, God came to earth and actually pitched a tent among us; and, we are reminded that this God of history comes again. This is exciting stuff and not just now in these wonderful seasons of Advent and Christmas. This is amazing, powerful stuff for anytime. The 20th century Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, Annie Dillard bemoans the fact that most of us probably don’t have an idea of how exciting, how really powerful it really is for God to be in our midst. She says that if we really knew this, then at worship: "we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; [and] they should lash us to our pews." [1] Really, think about it for a moment. We signal a time today of waiting for God to come into our world. We wait for the God of all things, times and places, all universes – the God we really can’t even begin to imagine, much less adequately describe – to come into our world. We prepare for the coming of this God as the baby in the manger, whom we also know to be the King over all powers and the Lord over any other loyalty. We wait and prepare for our Savior - the one who brings hope and meaning to both our living and dying. Today is more than an exciting day. It’s an extraordinary day. This is the time in our church year when we prepare for God. We prepare with music, greens, gifts, pageants, feasting, family and friends – yes and we are grateful that they are ours to share. We prepare more importantly, though, in prayer, study, worship, service so that we can be a part of the earth shattering event that is ours in Christ’s coming. We all, me included, love the light-heartedness of the season and will continue with our fuzzy red Santa hats. All this is great, as long as we remember that this isn’t really a season of fuzzy hats; it’s a season of crash helmets. For it is in this season that we prepare not only for the birth of a baby, we prepare for the end of the world as we know it. And, that is just exactly why the lectionary begins this very special season with a gospel passage in Jesus’ own words about the end of the world. These lectionary passages for the first Sunday in Advent, from Matthew, Mark or Luke (ours coming this morning from Matthew), remind us of the power of the event we celebrate with Jesus’ coming. We are reminded that, as we prepare for the coming of baby Jesus, we are preparing for the coming of the world’s end. We will leave for another time a discussion about the when’s and how’s of this end. Suffice it to say that since the very early church of Paul and the first disciples, Christians have been discussing these issues with little or no clear resolution. We may be able to agree on several things though: first, the end time is God’s business, not ours; and, second, if any of it is even slightly our business, it is only in our role to be ready. Finally, we may even agree that the coming of the Jesus of the manger, the Jesus of the cross and the Jesus of the empty tomb were exactly the kind of earth shattering events that signal the end of any world other than God’s world. William Willimon put it this way:
And, so the lectionary reminds us as Advent begins, through these end time gospel readings, that we are waiting for the coming of an earth shattering event. We celebrate that, in the coming of Jesus Christ, the end of the world has come, is coming and will continue to come. We wait for this coming, and we are told to be ready… So, let’s get ready. Yes, let’s get ready as we pray, study, worship and serve. Let’s also get ready by recognizing and giving up all those things we hide behind to keep Jesus from coming into our lives – all those loyalties and commitments that take priority over him, all those hurts and doubts that numb our hearts to him. Let’s get ready by living a world of hope and peace instead of fear and violence. Above all else, let’s get ready by living a world of self-less and God-centered love instead of self-interest and self-sufficiency. It’s Advent. Wait and prepare, be ready for the earth shattering, life-changing event that is coming. We do indeed need our crash helmets instead of our fuzzy red hats. We need to prepare because ready or not here he comes. Jesus is coming into our world and longs to come into our lives to end the world we have known without him. And, for that, I say: Thanks be to God; he’s coming. Amen. "Let it be so." _________________________ |
Darla
Blatnik