This sermon was preached on Sunday, November 30, 2014 at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Isaiah 64:1-9, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37, and Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent. It’s the night when we light the first candle on our advent wreath and most importantly in my house, the day we can finally start singing Christmas carols. So why read a passage about destruction and the end of the world today? Why read the bit about Jesus explaining that the apocalypse will feature the sun darkening, the moon going out, and the stars falling from the sky?
So it turns out that Advent is not about extending the Christmas shopping season after all. Advent is a thoughtful season of spiritual preparation. We read this passage on the first day of Advent because it reminds us that we are waiting and preparing for two things: the coming of the Christ child on Christmas and the second coming of Christ.
In the passage we just read, Jesus tells us a parable about how we should wait for his second coming. The second coming of Christ will be like a man going on a journey, leaving his servants in charge of his house and commanding his doorkeeper to keep watch. But the master does not tell the doorkeeper when he will return. The doorkeeper must keep awake at all times, all through the night, so that the master will not come home to find him asleep on the job.
One of the things I love about Christmas is that it’s so predictable. Unlike Lent or Easter, I can be sure it will always fall on December 25th. I can count on watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas with my cousins every Christmas Eve, I can rely on stockings with my sisters, and candy canes on the tree. And I absolutely love all of it. It’s a story I’ve memorized from beginning to end and as my family can tell you, I don’t like it when it gets told even a little differently.
But then here’s this passage. Here’s Jesus telling us that a huge part of the Christian faith is about uncertainty. That the story isn’t over yet. We may know when Christmas is every year, but we will never know and can never know when the Son of Man will return.
The passage today reminds us that the season of Advent is not about looking forward to the comfortable predictability of holiday traditions. Advent warns us not to treat the Christmas season like a favorite movie we pop in the DVD player and watch from start to finish.
Sometimes it’s easy to act as if the master is already home. That Christmas and Advent are just about celebrating the birth of a miraculous child two thousand years ago. But if we do that, if we just prepare ourselves only for a birthday party and leave it at that, we forget that there is more of the story to look forward to. There is so much more promised to us.
The Son of Man will return in power and glory. God’s dream for the world will be realized. Love will win.
There are signs all around this world today that the story isn’t over. Love hasn’t won yet. This week, more than ever showed us that we are a nation waiting for justice and redemption. This week, we were reminded by thousands across the country that the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri should mean more to us that the facts and details of a case before a grand jury. Michael Brown’s death has become a symbol. It is a symbol of the mutual distrust and fear between law enforcement and communities of color. It is a sign that institutions of power are still sending the message to young people of color that black lives don’t matter. It is a demonstration of the danger and injustice our African-American brothers and sisters face every day simply because of the color of their skin. Racism isn’t over. And neither is the Christmas story.
Jesus tells us to do something else in this passage, too. Learn the lesson of the fig tree, he says. See how the fragile buds in spring are a sign to us that summer is coming. Amidst all these awesome signs of the end of world, amid earthquakes, trembling mountains, and the sky crashing down, Jesus points to the delicate buds of the fig tree branch.
In that parable, I think Jesus is challenging us to see hope, however fragile, in the chaos of an up-ended world. I think that Jesus is asking us to see how hope is a vital piece of anger and frustration at injustice.
When religious leaders from all faiths and denominations—Muslim and Jew, Protestant and Catholic, Baptist and Quaker, white and black, urban and suburban—people who would never work together on anything—gathered together on the streets of Ferguson, and when on Wednesday the crowds got rough and the riot gear came out, interlocked arms and stood as a human wall of peace between protesters and police, they were daring to become those tiny buds in the midst of overwhelming brokenness. When hundreds across the country lay down on the floors of shopping malls in the middle of Black Friday and halted our annual orgy of consumerism, they were calling for the greater founding values of this nation to triumph over fear. When a white police officer reached across to an African-American twelve-year-old protester and asked for a hug, and when that boy, sobbing, hugged him back, they were daring to believe that love will overcome hate. And when one hundred and fifty NAACP protesters setting off on a week-long march from the streets of Ferguson to Missouri’s Capitol stop first to console a small-business owner whose shop had been ransacked by rioters, they were acting in faith that this country can change. That systems of oppression and injustice can be dismantled. That this world can and will be torn down to make room for a new one. Today, on Advent, we await and celebrate the destruction of this world because we know that a better one is possible.
We should not accept the world as it is. We should not accept the Christmas story without Advent. We should keep awake to the way our society is failing our children, failing our brothers and sisters, and the way it is failing us. Advent reminds us that Christmas Day is not the full story, and that there is still so much preparation work to be done. We can stay asleep and go through the motions of the holidays on autopilot. We can make our faith about a person who came, a child who was born, and a story that ended. Or we can spend this season reminding ourselves that the story is still unfolding and that we have a part to play in it. When we keep awake to the ways the world breaks our heart, we keep the hope of Christmas alive.
Thousands of Americans took up signs, bullhorns, and hashtags this week so that Michael Brown’s story doesn’t end with a body in a street. We light the first candle today, the candle called hope, so that the Christmas story doesn’t end with a baby in a manager.
Keep awake, Jesus tells his disciples, keep awake because the story isn’t finished yet—and you’re the ones I’ve left in charge of the house.
Keep alert to the signs that there is more work to be done in this world. Now is not the time to give in, not the time to sleep. Justice is coming, love will win. The story isn’t over yet. And we have been given roles to play. Let’s not be found sleeping on the job.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent. It’s the night when we light the first candle on our advent wreath and most importantly in my house, the day we can finally start singing Christmas carols. So why read a passage about destruction and the end of the world today? Why read the bit about Jesus explaining that the apocalypse will feature the sun darkening, the moon going out, and the stars falling from the sky?
So it turns out that Advent is not about extending the Christmas shopping season after all. Advent is a thoughtful season of spiritual preparation. We read this passage on the first day of Advent because it reminds us that we are waiting and preparing for two things: the coming of the Christ child on Christmas and the second coming of Christ.
In the passage we just read, Jesus tells us a parable about how we should wait for his second coming. The second coming of Christ will be like a man going on a journey, leaving his servants in charge of his house and commanding his doorkeeper to keep watch. But the master does not tell the doorkeeper when he will return. The doorkeeper must keep awake at all times, all through the night, so that the master will not come home to find him asleep on the job.
One of the things I love about Christmas is that it’s so predictable. Unlike Lent or Easter, I can be sure it will always fall on December 25th. I can count on watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas with my cousins every Christmas Eve, I can rely on stockings with my sisters, and candy canes on the tree. And I absolutely love all of it. It’s a story I’ve memorized from beginning to end and as my family can tell you, I don’t like it when it gets told even a little differently.
But then here’s this passage. Here’s Jesus telling us that a huge part of the Christian faith is about uncertainty. That the story isn’t over yet. We may know when Christmas is every year, but we will never know and can never know when the Son of Man will return.
The passage today reminds us that the season of Advent is not about looking forward to the comfortable predictability of holiday traditions. Advent warns us not to treat the Christmas season like a favorite movie we pop in the DVD player and watch from start to finish.
Sometimes it’s easy to act as if the master is already home. That Christmas and Advent are just about celebrating the birth of a miraculous child two thousand years ago. But if we do that, if we just prepare ourselves only for a birthday party and leave it at that, we forget that there is more of the story to look forward to. There is so much more promised to us.
The Son of Man will return in power and glory. God’s dream for the world will be realized. Love will win.
There are signs all around this world today that the story isn’t over. Love hasn’t won yet. This week, more than ever showed us that we are a nation waiting for justice and redemption. This week, we were reminded by thousands across the country that the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri should mean more to us that the facts and details of a case before a grand jury. Michael Brown’s death has become a symbol. It is a symbol of the mutual distrust and fear between law enforcement and communities of color. It is a sign that institutions of power are still sending the message to young people of color that black lives don’t matter. It is a demonstration of the danger and injustice our African-American brothers and sisters face every day simply because of the color of their skin. Racism isn’t over. And neither is the Christmas story.
Jesus tells us to do something else in this passage, too. Learn the lesson of the fig tree, he says. See how the fragile buds in spring are a sign to us that summer is coming. Amidst all these awesome signs of the end of world, amid earthquakes, trembling mountains, and the sky crashing down, Jesus points to the delicate buds of the fig tree branch.
In that parable, I think Jesus is challenging us to see hope, however fragile, in the chaos of an up-ended world. I think that Jesus is asking us to see how hope is a vital piece of anger and frustration at injustice.
When religious leaders from all faiths and denominations—Muslim and Jew, Protestant and Catholic, Baptist and Quaker, white and black, urban and suburban—people who would never work together on anything—gathered together on the streets of Ferguson, and when on Wednesday the crowds got rough and the riot gear came out, interlocked arms and stood as a human wall of peace between protesters and police, they were daring to become those tiny buds in the midst of overwhelming brokenness. When hundreds across the country lay down on the floors of shopping malls in the middle of Black Friday and halted our annual orgy of consumerism, they were calling for the greater founding values of this nation to triumph over fear. When a white police officer reached across to an African-American twelve-year-old protester and asked for a hug, and when that boy, sobbing, hugged him back, they were daring to believe that love will overcome hate. And when one hundred and fifty NAACP protesters setting off on a week-long march from the streets of Ferguson to Missouri’s Capitol stop first to console a small-business owner whose shop had been ransacked by rioters, they were acting in faith that this country can change. That systems of oppression and injustice can be dismantled. That this world can and will be torn down to make room for a new one. Today, on Advent, we await and celebrate the destruction of this world because we know that a better one is possible.
We should not accept the world as it is. We should not accept the Christmas story without Advent. We should keep awake to the way our society is failing our children, failing our brothers and sisters, and the way it is failing us. Advent reminds us that Christmas Day is not the full story, and that there is still so much preparation work to be done. We can stay asleep and go through the motions of the holidays on autopilot. We can make our faith about a person who came, a child who was born, and a story that ended. Or we can spend this season reminding ourselves that the story is still unfolding and that we have a part to play in it. When we keep awake to the ways the world breaks our heart, we keep the hope of Christmas alive.
Thousands of Americans took up signs, bullhorns, and hashtags this week so that Michael Brown’s story doesn’t end with a body in a street. We light the first candle today, the candle called hope, so that the Christmas story doesn’t end with a baby in a manager.
Keep awake, Jesus tells his disciples, keep awake because the story isn’t finished yet—and you’re the ones I’ve left in charge of the house.
Keep alert to the signs that there is more work to be done in this world. Now is not the time to give in, not the time to sleep. Justice is coming, love will win. The story isn’t over yet. And we have been given roles to play. Let’s not be found sleeping on the job.
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